Subj : Re: Resume questions, how convey? (was: How much should I charge fo...) To : comp.lang.lisp,comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer From : rem642b Date : Thu Sep 01 2005 08:28 pm > From: darr...@does.want.spam.com (".") > When you get the interview and the employer looks at you they are > going to wonder why you are talking about things that happened two > decades ago. Your remark is based on a false premise. I don't intend to talk about anything the interviewer doesn't ask about, and I don't think any interviewer would ask me about anything more than 20 years ago. > A company will probably receive a few hundred resumes for a position. More likely two thousand resumes for one position. That's the way statistics have been during this recession. At a recent job fair, there were only five employers, with probably one job each, yet several thousand applicants came in person, lined up for hours just for their brief moment inside the room with the five tables. > They will spend a minute (or less) looking at each one until they short > list it to 2 or 3 dozen resumes. They won't look at any of the resumes at all (for that first elimination round). A computer program will scan each resume for buzzwords and any resumes that don't have the right buzzwords will be eliminated before any human ever sets one glance at any of them. I estimate 95% of the 2000 resumes are eliminated in that one scan, leaving only one hundred resumes for some minimum-wage staff member to scan to eliminate all but 20 resumes, before the actual hiring manager spends five seconds on each of them. I have no way to know whether my resume didn't have right buzz words so got eliminated in the first round, or didn't look right to minimum-wage staff member so got eliminated in second round, or didn't look right to actual hiring manager so got eliminated during third round. I'm thinking the only way to distinguish between pass/fail on first round is to put something really threatening in the wording, whereby the minimum-wage staff member will report me to the FBI if my resume is even seen by a human, so if the FBI never visit me then I know I don't have the right keywords. > You have two jobs when writing a resume. The first is not getting cut > from the short list. The second is getting an interview. I agree. In theory it's the buzzwords that make the pass/fail difference for the first round of screening. Unfortunately, except for my idea just above, I have no way to know whether I passed the buzzword test or not, hence no idea what part of my resume needs the most work. > Don't assume you have to convince the person reading your resume. If > you give an example of where you used JDBC then I'd trust you. You'd never see my resume, it'd be eliminated before any human ever took one glance, even before the e-mail server passed it to anyone human, if it didn't have all the right buzzwords in it. How do I describe, via buzzwords, that I used JDBC to query a set of linked tables that represented a tree structure, to allow the user to select components for building a custom PC system or select some appropriate standard system given choice of some individual components? That I used JDBC to set up and maintain and query a set of linked tables that represent a message system for taxicab dispatchers? > It would be during the interview that I would expect the details. What happens at the interview is the least of my worries at this point. I haven't had an actual interview (except for library page, in 1999, which had 200 applicants for two positions) since mid-1994. > What have you done recently? I set up a whole fucking set of Web pages to detail what I've been doing the past several years, to answer exactly that question, after several others asked it just as you did now. Didn't you take even one glance at it? Linkname: My recent specific accomplishments URL: http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/WAP/SeekJobAccom.html Yeah, it lists a very large number of accomplishments, because I've been very busy, accomplishing a lot in recent years. Next time, RTFM before asking a stupid question already answered. > I did some really impressive things int he 80s. I don't list them on > my resume because companies only care when the last time you did > something impressive. How many impressive things did you do *after* the 1980s? From your wording above it sounds like you've done only one impressive thing since the 1980s, but I want to check if that was correct. I've done lots of impressive things since the 1980s. Should I list only the very last one of them, because that's the only one (1) that companies care about? > the purpose of writing a resume is to get an interview. I agree. My 1991 resume, which everyone hates, got me an interview for CAD Lisp, data compression, data encryption, and information classification. All of those were from direct ads, none via agencies. My more recent resumes haven't gotten me even one interview since 1994. I don't understand it, except if companies have totally stopped posting direct ads, now posting only through agencies, and the agencies have not been showing my resume to the employer. I don't know any way to get my resume seen by an actual employer with an appropriate opening now. > The first few resumes will crash and burn. Learn from your mistakes. > Talk to the people who rejected it. Everyone rejected it. I don't know how to talk to any of them, because I don't know who any of them are. Just I see a job ad, send my resume to the e-mail address or FAX number in the ad, and have no idea who actually attends that address which is for resumes only, hence no way to contact the person informally to ask a question. > Talk to people who hire but are not currently looking. How would you propose that I meet such people? In the absense of a newsgroup thread already started, what would I say to a total stranger like that? .