Zainab's First Week as a Junior Developer
Zainab Farooq finished a bootcamp in Lahore and started her first job in March. Bilal asks what surprised her, what scared her, and what she wishes someone had said.
The Recruiter Who Reads Your CV in Eleven Seconds
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Show notes
What actually happens to your application
Farida Noor has recruited engineers for firms in Dubai, Berlin and Karachi for twelve years. She tells Bilal, with real numbers, how long she spends on a CV, what she searches for, and why a long skills list can hurt rather than help.
- The eleven-second first pass and what it is looking for
- Why a GitHub link with three honest projects beats a long list of tools
- How to explain a gap or a career change without apologising
- What recruiters actually tell hiring managers after a call
- The follow-up message that works
Send this one to the friend who keeps hearing nothing back.
Transcript
Welcome to Merge Request Mornings, I am Bilal Mirza. If you have ever sent a CV into the void and heard nothing, this episode is for you. My guest is Farida Noor, a technical recruiter who has screened more than twenty thousand applications over twelve years, in Dubai, in Berlin and here in Karachi. I asked her to be blunt, and she was. She reads a CV in about eleven seconds on the first pass, and she is going to tell you exactly what she looks for in those seconds and what makes her move on. We also talk about gaps, career changes, the GitHub profile, and what she really says to the hiring manager after your call. Nothing in this is a trick. It is just how the pipe works. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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