Subj : Re: Resume questions, how convey? (was: How much should I charge fo...) To : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.lisp From : Tim X Date : Thu Aug 25 2005 09:40 pm rem642b@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes: > > > 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? Over 40! LOL. What year was it you started Uni - 63? Makes you a little more than over 40! How do you think the interviewer will feel when you come in weilding your zimmer frame! > > > - Among top five (in whole United States) in William Lowell Putnam > > > undergraduate mathematics competition > > Shorten the first one. > > How? OMG - if you cannot work that out, I'd hate to see how specific any program specifications would need to be before your able to produce anything! > > > - 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. It is important as it shows your definition of "published" doesn't just mean stuck up on some bodgy web site. A paper which has been refereed and published shows you have the ability to clearly express yourself in writing. It is also a simple way to verify the honesty of the applicant as its reasonably trivial to verify the facts. How could you not know where something you wrote was published? All the papers I've had published required be to do things like sign off copyright or sign a statement that the work was mine etc etc. Surely you had to submit the paper to a journal/publisher? Were you the sole author of these papers - if not, you should be also indicating you were only a co-author and not give the impression it was just your work. Its the only explination I can think of why you wold not know where your paper was published. If the paper has not been published or was simply a tech report etc, then don't mention it at all! > > 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. That may be relevant if you had worked recently on different plaforms. However, your experience is so outdated its not worth cluttering up and possibly distracting from points the employer may be very interested in. > > 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. What do you mean "Not true" - There is lots of CGI stuff out there run on nearly every platform you can think of, windows, Mac, Linux - none of which are Unix. > > > Re-work this to give a better impression > > I don't know how. You'll have to help me. I don't have to do anything! This is your problem, work it out. > > > 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. Actually, they shallow level of description you have made me think you had next to no database experience at all. From what you have since put above, I now see you have minimal or next to know experience - so little, that calling it experience is pushing things a bit. Connecting to a database using odbc/jdbc or any other bridge is trivial - you can get the directions out of the manual and have it up and working within a day. If you are going to sell database experience, you need to show - Familiarity with SQL, especially the more advanced aspects, such as nested queries, corelated queries, the transaction model (commit/rollback), constraints, differences between DDL and DML, outer join and outer-left join etc. - Knowledge of the relational database model, a grasp of Cobb's "Normal Forms" and general database design principles. A good understanding of the differences between hierarchical, network, relational and object relational databases is also useful. - Familiarity with database constraints (i.e. null constraint, check constraint, foreign key constraint and various different indexing methods, the impact of functions and indexes etc are all very useful. - An understanding of differences in various ANSI SQL implementations - for example, why might you get different results for an outer-left join query between two different databases with the same data which both claim to be ANSI SQL compliant? - Optimization. What can you do to optimize ODBC or JDBC (or whatever) based database connectivity. - NULLS - how should they be interpreted? When should you specify "not null" as a constraint and when not to? is null and "" the same? These are the sorts of things employers expect someone with experience working with a database will have. MS Access is barely a database in the terms of what employers think of when talking about a database. Database experience is "bread and butter" for most developers and you need to understand it way beyond the ability to connect to an access database or a stripped down "wannabe". Get yourself an instance of postgres to learn with (don't bother with MySQL). Learn how to use it features, how to administer it, optimize performance and maintain it. Once you have all of that, you can claim database experience. Until then, you can only claim minimal experience with a database connectivity method - which is not much different from claiming experience with ftp - both are assumed to be something anyone applying for an entry level positin would have. > > 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? Over 40 again - heee heee haaa. Bottom line, stop referring to ove 20 years experience. You don't have over 20 years experience - stop kidding yourself. When it comes to jobs, the only experience that counts is paid employment experiences. Unless you have sat programming 7-8 hours a day 5 6 days a week for the past 20 years, you do not have 20 years experience. It also makes you seem like a liar because your skills don't match those of someone who has been doing it full time for 20 years. > > > - 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. Gee, maybe you gave them the idea! If it was "the best" on the net during that period, then some of us who have been here for a while should remember it - what was it called? Just for interest, what web server was it being used with back in 1991? Also, if it was the first, the techniques used to build the index must have been pretty impressive - how did you do it? > > 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? Of course they are methodologies - but you cannot claim experience or proficiency with a methodology unless you have used it in real world situations (as opposed to contrived learning environments). Yo can claim awareness and knowledge of such methodologies, but not proficiency unless you have real-world experience applying the methodology to something other than trivial problems. > > 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? For someone who keeps pulling up others on their failure to be prercise, you seem to be able to get vague or inprecise when it suits you. Read what I wrote again - I didn't say I couldn't tell what was different from your resumes, I said I could not tell what job type/class/catagory they were "customized" for. If I couldn't determine that, its unlikely any employer would see anthing which would get their attention. > 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 I don't give a shit about CraigsList and I'm not going to waste my time holding your hand and spelling everyting out in detail and spoon feeding you. The key point is that if the type of job was not obvious to me reading your resumes, it is likely that any prospective employer is not going to see what it is you have that might interest them. I'm not going to bother responding to any more of your posts - I realise now its totally pointless because your more intent on justifying your current position and being defensive than on honestly listening and considering either the validity of the criticism or if you don't feel its valid, why people criticise it. You also seem to have a real "victim" mentality and I cannot see you ever being able to deal with it. I will try to put down for one last and final time some points you may like to consider and possibly change your perspective/outlook 1. You have been looking for work for over 10 years with no success. Does this mean your doing something wrong or the whole rest of the world is wrong? 2. If the whole rest of the world is wrong, why is it other people find jobs and 10+ years of unemployment is considered excessive - especially for someone with a University degree? 3. How many other people have you ever heard of who have spent 10+ years failing to get a job in a specific area, but have also failed to find any other job? 4. Forget about constantly pushing "over 40". You had graduated from uni before man walked on the moon! If I'm right and you started in 1963, and lets be generous and assume you were a bright school kid who got through high school by 16 and started Uni at 17, that would make you 58/59 this year. So, your nearly 60, have not worked for 10+ years, have next to know commercial programming experience with modern/mainstream/popular languages and trying to get an entry level position. Its not a position I would envy and I'm not trying to make light of it, but honestly "Wake up and smell the roses" - you are totally deluding yourself if you expect to get a programming job - it just aint gonna happen. Its not fair, but the world isn't fair. To put it in a different perspective - I'm in my mid-40's and have worked as a programmer (commercially) pretty much full time for the past 19+ years. I was born in 1960 - three years before you entered Uni. I've probably been a bit fortunate in being able to find jobs, but I've also been able to find quite a few. The longest job I've held at one place without a break is 5 years. I have been fortunate in never having been fired and probably a third of the people I've worked for have re-employed me at some stage to do additional work for them. I have lived almost the whole of the last 20 years in a rural location (a "city" of 20k people) and until about 5 years ago, nearly all my work was done via telecommuting (apart from some consulting where they wanted me to work on site). The point of all of this is that I also have a lot of friends who had difficulty getting jobs post y2k and the dot com bust. However, they had similar work experience to me (possibly a bit more "specialised"). These friends of mine are the ones you have been competing with over the last 5 years (as well as young energetic fit recent comp. sci grads). If these commercially experienced friends of mine have had moderate difficulty in finding jobs and competing with recent graduates, how well do you think you stack up? All of this is not meant to be depressing or cause despair. What I think you need to do is a really honest and critical re-assessment of what you want with honest and realistic reference to reality. You are not going to get a commercial programming job. However, you may be able to find something related which you will find tolerable (possibly even rewarding), which will give you the necessary finances to make life a bit easier and possibly enable you to indulge in a more satisfying hobby of programming where you can follow your real programming interests un-restrained by what may or may not make you more employable as a programmer. I'm out of this thread (and all related ones now). My apologies to the rest of the list for this off-topic waste of bandwidth. Tim -- Tim Cross The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out! .