Subj : Re: SeekJob keywords (was: How much should I charge for fixed-price...)
To   : comp.lang.lisp,comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer
From : rem642b
Date : Sat Sep 03 2005 02:29 pm

> From: darr...@does.want.spam.com (".")
> I, personally, write my resume so the company knows who I am

That phrase makes no sense to me. Who you are is you, exactly you, and
nothing else except you. To say that you are somebody other than
yourself is nonsense. It makes no sense to tell somebody who you are
because you are you and they already know you are you.

> and what I can do for them.

This part makes more sense. Part of what you can do is just generally
the sorts of things you can do for anyone. Part of what you can do is
more specifically what you can do for that one company that would be
impossible to do for any other company, such as add features to a
product only this one company makes. Do I seem to understand that you
are referring to?

> If they list requirements I will make it INCREDIBLY easy for them to
> see that I meet or exceed their requirements. If the company uses
> someone who just scans the resume for keywords then most likely they
> are scanning the resume for keywords relating to the requirements for
> the position.

You are obviously talking about writing custom resumes, a different
resume for each job you see advertised such that you respond to it. It
has been recommended that I apply for ten jobs per day, despite the
fact that I haven't seen even one job I qualify for in the past ten
years, and it takes a full workday of scanning job sites such as
CraigsList just to find one or two jobs where I only half qualify.

It takes weeks or months to compose a brand new resume from scratch
without any base resume as a starting point. At present I have a half
dozen general resumes and a half dozen specific-area resumes, any one
of which might serve as a starting point for editing to yield a custom
resume for a single job ad. Unfortunately general concensus is that
every last one of my existing resumes is total crap and not suitable
for using as a base for any custom resume. I don't believe adding a
bunch of custom keywords to a crap resume would get me an interview, do
you?

> For example, if you apply for a job at IBM they have you do an online
> application. The application will quiz you on your skill set and level of
> experience. You will notice that all the technologies they quiz you about
> are also listed in the job ad requirements.

IBM actively discriminates against disabled people such as myself in
their advertising of jobs available, so I'd just as soon not discuss
them any further here.

> If the company is not going to put forth the effort to know assembler
> and assembly-language are the same thing then why would I want to work
> for them. I'm willing to put a great deal of effort into applying for a
> job but I expect the employer to put some effort into it as well.

I'm desperate for a job. If it's a company such as IBM that makes it
impossible for disabled people to even see their job ads, then I
dismiss them as fucking shitheads who deserve to be bombed by the
military by "friendly fire" or boycotted by all organizations that help
disabled people or all their employee's cars being attacked with 2-by-4
sticks of wood to break windows and dent bodies by vigilantees who are
fed up with their anti-disabled-people attitude. But if the company's
only problem is that they didn't happen to think of all the synomyms
when configuring their resume-filtering software, I'd be glad to
include both synonyms just to make sure their little oversight doesn't
deprive me of a job. I would consider their Web being accessible to
disabled people, so we can at least see their job ads, to be sufficient
effort by the employer.

.