Subj : Resume questions, how convey? (was: How much should I charge fo...) To : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.lisp From : rem642b Date : Wed Aug 24 2005 10:46 pm > From: Tim X > why the mixed case in the domain name It's easier to visually identify that various sub-words that way. > What about the year you graduated? Only an idiot would make it that easy for a potential employer to see that I'm over 40 and toss my resume in the trash without even glancing at the rest of it. You want me to be an idiot, I presume? > What about the courses you have done since (Java, C, Data structures etc) My 2005.June resume includes that information. My 1998 resume, and the early-2003 rearrangement of it by my job coach at Focus for Work, didn't include those classes because they didn't start until 2003 Summer. > > - Among top five (in whole United States) in William Lowell Putnam > > undergraduate mathematics competition > Shorten the first one. How? > > - Report on nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation published > > - Report on English-language programming for robot published > For the published papers, where were they published, when and in what? That's not important in a resume. I'm just trying to get a programming job. If they want more info about my published papers, they can ask me during a telephone interview. In fact I was never told where the NMR paper was published, and I wasn't given a pre-print as I was promised. > Drop the stuff about the platforms. Why? Each language is somewhat different on each different platform. The fact I've used the languages on lots of platforms shows I've used a wide range of versions in a wide range of environments, hence some of what I've done is likely to be similar to whatever the employer might want. Somebody else who has never used any of the languages except on an Amiga, might not have the foggiest idea how to interface to system utilities on other systems, and might not even be aware that different platforms have different system interfaces, and might be totally stumped when Amiga software doesn't run immediately elsewhere. I'm trying to show my versatility of experience, showing my ability to adapt in the past and have a variety of experience possibly useful in the future. > Why Unix+CGI - there is no specific relationship here - you can do CGI > programming on any platform which has a web server. Not true. The server needs to have built-in support for CGI, and that support must be enabled by administration. However I've split the Unix part and the CGI part, and combined Unix with Linux, in my latest edit on the master of the 2005.June resume on my Mac. > Skip the brand names (ie. Red Hat). Done in master 2005.June resume on Mac. > Re-work this to give a better impression I don't know how. You'll have to help me. > what databases did you use for this Only databases I created myself in MicroSoft ACCESS on Windows, and only the default database in CloudScape on Linux. In both I then made my own tables in that database, no pre-existing tables. For one application I manually created all the tables and manually entered all the data by copy&paste in the ACCESS GUI, and the JDBC application used it as a read-only lookup table. In another application, creation of all tables and loading them with all start-up data and adding new data under user command was all done from JDBC. > I would assume anyone working with data retrieval and databases and > java would have all of this. On the other hand, anyone who had never used databases at all could lie and write "used databases" on their resume, but only somebody who knew a little about the techncal details could include all the specific things that I did, thereby proving I am not lying that I wrote JDBC software etc. > Based on the above, I would assume you have no work experience at all, I have more than 22 years experience writing software, including several large useful projects. How can I best convey that in my resume without boring the junior staff member whose job it is to screen resumes, but without making it obvious I'm over 40 hence unemployable? > > - Toplevel meta-index to the Internet (including Usenet and Bitnet) > > published electronically and available via HTTP/WWW > Huh? What is this? If its published and available via the web, why not > include the url so that they can check it out? Because although it was the best index on the net from 1991 to about 1995, since then it's been made obsolete first by Yahoo then by Google. Nobody would want to look at it online now, but still it's impressive that I created the very first toplevel meta-index to the InterNet before Yahoo got the idea to start theirs. > I will also challenge your claim to proficiency at rapid prototypeing > and development as there is no evidence you have devleoped anything > other than a few very minor small apps. Rapid prototypeing and development is a methodology, which can't be demonstrated by listing projects that allegedly used it. And trying to describe the methodology would require a major essoy, at least ten pages, not anything suitable to include in or with a resume. How would you propose I prove conclusively, by wording on my resume, that indeed I use that methodology when I write most of my software? > I noticed that they were all based on the same flawed starting point Yes. I started with my best resume to-date, which you think is crap but it's the best I have so-far, and cut out the parts totally irrelevant to the particular job, and added stuff that wasn't in the general resume starting-point but where my extra experience matched the requirements of the job ad. Yielding the best customized resume I could do when I had collected three or four job ads from a single search of a job-ads site and needed to get out responses to all those ads before they became stale. It would have been totally stupid to spend two months writing a custom resume from scratch for each of those simultaneously going-stale-fast ads. > Funny that if they were taylored for specific jobs how I couldn't > tell what the jobs were. You couldn't tell that each resume deleted different items and inserted different new items? One of the ads, found on CraigsList: 78086540 www.fairisaac.com/Careers/Opportunities. Job Req #383. Another was: job-77759158@craigslist.org Another on CraigsList: 76790333 hrsea@nextbio.com Another on CraigsList: 75462527 rita.mujral@rht.com See if, upon reading the actual job ad, you can match the tailored resume with the corresponding ad. .