My Top Personal Hates on Testing CVs

1) Long lists of qualifications - Nearly every job opportunity will be a little more open if you have some form of certification, that is relevant to the job applied for. Thus for a test automation job, if I have to wade through your Prince 2, banking qualifications and pig breeding artificial insemination degree, then I lose the will to live. As a minimum I the candidate appears too lazy or not wanting the job to care to amend the CV. Preferred - tailor the list so only relevant certs are listed. Any additional certifications, put "additional certification details available on request" 

2) Apprentice - Over the top statements that might have appear as a soundbite on an Apprentice audition video. E.g. "if the sky is the limit, why are there footsteps on the moon? That is my target". None of these statements can be backed up by any kind of valued judgement or evidence. They just me think "what a *******" Preferred - Leave off the florid language. Use simple language and only assertions that can link to easily linked to factual evidence in the CV.

3) Old and irrelevant employment

4) Easily disproven assertions

5) Unexplained gaps in employment

6) Education missing

7) Too long

8) Hard to find details

9) Essential reason to employ them hard to find

10) Tools

Tester Candidates - CVs I like

1) Employment history - periods of between one and three years where the candidate has made a commitment to a project or programme.

Conversely, the client or employer has kept them on the same project. CVs with a long list of projects/employers with "(3 months)" indicates to me they will either cut and run or they will have performance issues.

2) Test Knowledge - the candidate displays a knowledge and experience of implementing a range of test methodologies or frameworks. The degree of knowledge/experience required would depend on the role applied for. A test analyst has the basic work package planning and execution experience. A programme test manager should not only initiate a framework, but be able to implement a change of framework/methodology e.g. Waterfall to Agile, across multiple projects.

3) Test Tools - Every tester has used at least one tool, even if only Word to do planning with. I expect them to be able to talk the pros, cons, their experience and ideally how to improve the usage.

On the negative side, people who put every tool under the sun, puts two thoughts in my mind:

a) the candidate has only very light experience of each

b) has not bothered tailoring their CV to the post I am interviewing for.

4) Automation I consider Automation as a subset of Test Tools. Quality Center and QTP are only tools after all.

The candidate should at least demonstrate they will be able to talk some theory about automation. If they are claiming "automation" experience, then this should either be as a test engineer or as a test analyst creating test cases. An engineer should be able to describe how they developed frameworks, particularly at the code level.

5) Qualifications A fairly minor item in my opinion. ISEB / ISTQB Foundation is OK as a badge. However they would not influence the Yes/No decision. The Advanced levels certainly do though. The advanced levels can only be gained if you have substantial hands-on experience and not only classroom theory.