Musings

Thursday, April 16, 2009

A thousand times I’ll tell you… quit being a roadblock to your own success!

I have heard and seen it asked more times than I can count. I have seen and heard it asked by people looking for jobs, by people writing books, and any where else in the business world where documents are submitted electronically. While it changes slightly, the question is essentially the same.

I’m just curious as to why you, like many recruiters, emphasize a WORD copy of a resume for a position that requires a candidate who is, obviously, heavily into Linux. Like a growing number of Open Source professionals, I don’t use Microsoft products. Can you not make use of a pdf, or text format?

The above is a question asked on linkedin.com for a position for a LAMP engineer/Administrator.

To which there have been several replies…

I’m not sure about this case in particular, but recruiters like to have it in Word format so that they can add their logo/information to your resume. Can’t do that in txt or pdf.

...surely a copy of the resume saved as HTML would work, no? Then it could always be imported into Office or most any other word processing app. Just a thought…

So, here, with all my astuteness, is my response.

A word copy is required for many reasons. First, there has to be a standard. The standard in the business world is Microsoft Word. Second, recruiters live in a business world, not in the world that they are recruiting in. They don’t accept .txt, .html, .pdf, xml or anything else because it is not their job to prepare your marketing documents. It is their job to hook up candidates with clients. Third, they have written their tools and processes to work with the business standard. Recruiters, as a general rule, are not technologists. They are marketers, sales people, and the like.

YOUR job is to make THEIR job as simple as possible. YOUR job is to make THEIR job as efficient as possible. YOUR job is not to be a computer bigot, a computer snob, nor a roadblock to their success nor to your own.

It is not about doing something that could be imported or that “would work”. The more time THEY spend doing YOUR job, the less time THEY get to spend doing THEIR job, which means the LESS money YOU and people like you get to make.

I don’t really mean to come off sounding like a butt. I have heard this question and these types of answers more times than I can count. The business world doesn’t care about what we are using. They care about making money. They care about using the right tool for the job. The right tool (in today’s environment) for submitting an electronic resume is in Microsoft Word format. I am not in any way endorsing Microsoft or their products. However, I am a realist. That being said, I keep my resume available in Word, HTML, and PDF on my web site. The PDF almost never gets looked at (other than by the search engine bots), the html and word ones do.

One more thing, if you believe the format you desire your resume to be in can be imported into office, then great. Save it in whatever format you want, and then import it to office.

Actually, I have a better idea. I think you should leave your resume in pdf or txt or whatever. That way, I have a better chance of getting the job.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

40 Questions

Here are the rules - post this list on your profile (in Notes) replacing my answers with yours. Tag 15 people to do the same thing.

(What the heck happened to TWENTY Questions?)

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Yes, my mother’s cousin, David Coyle.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? about six months after my mother died.  I was in the parking lot of GELPAC about to go in and play raquetteball.  Sorrow, lonliness, a sense of loss, and probably several other emotions came over me and I broke down for about twenty minutes.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Like… hmmm… don’t care.  It hurts my hands to write much any more.  I am very much out of practice.  I haven’t written more than a couple pages in many years.  The only exception to that was probably in my econ class in 2006.  I might have writte 3-4 pages over the span of 75 minutes.  I have never liked writing.  My writing is way too slow compared to my brain so I get lost in what I am writing.  My typing, while vastly faster than my writing, tends to suffer from the same problem.  Had computers not become such a significant part of my life, I probably would have done two things.  First, learned to effeciently write backwards.  And, second, taken short-hand.  Shorthand so that I can get my thoughts down faster and backwards so I get less mess on the side of my hand when I write (other Lefties know exactly what I am talking about).

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Turkey.

5. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Good question.  I would like to think so.  I try to be a good friend.  People tend to like me. 

6. DO YOU USE SARCASM? Yes (very hard not to say No here, out of sarcasm).

7. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Very very highly unlikely.

8. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Cherios

9. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? No.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? There is a flavor other than chocolate?

11. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Hair.

12. RED OR PINK? Red!

13. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? Gluttony.

14. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? Mom

15. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST? No.

16. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? I’m in Kentucky, I’m not wearing shoes!  Pants are blue.

17. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Jango.com.

28. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Something on Netflix.

29. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? Blue.

30. SUMMER OR WINTER? Yes.

31. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Don’t know

32. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Don’t know

33. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? the Orthodox Bible, Pro Drupal Development.

34. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? my mouse.

35. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT? What was last night… Wednesday.  Hmmm… that Simon show was on TV… oh, American Idol.

36. FAVORITE SOUND(S). Sound of the wind rushing by while on a Jeep adventure.

37. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles.

38. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Across country - 3K miles.

39. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? No.

40 WHERE WERE U BORN? Kentucky. 

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Fond memories - May 3, 2003

Do you know what you were doing May 3, 2003?

If you are someone I know, then yes, you do.

No jail time, but the next day we did come back and make both our Jeeps muddy. This picture, so the story goes, is when someone decided that the pile of gravel could be gone over in the Jeep. I guess the little issue of clearance between the lowest point of the body of the jeep and the distance to the bottom of the tires was not sufficiently explored as the Jeep became one of the world’s most expensive teeter-totters.

The moral of the story is… never, never, never go Jeeping alone. Now that I think about it… we could have done the mudding the day before, and he wanted to sneak out on his own the next day and they had added the pile of gravel to keep numb-skulls from putting fresh tire tracks in their nice mud pit. Moral doesn’t change… memory is still fond. I still smile. No one got hurt. 

Updated by 30 minutes… snow is sticking to the ice.

We have had a half inch of snow fall in the past 30 minutes.  I decided to take one quick picture out the front door, so no screen shot.  Still have electricity!

The trees remind me of whales in captivity.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Christmas Cactus, part two

I mentioned before that I was pleased with my Christmas Cactus. I even showed a couple pictures of it with little buds. I am even more pleased with it now. The blooms remind me of dragons. I have a few pics, but they are kinda blurry.

This is one of the better ones.

Notice how the bloom folds back and looks like wings?

Here’s another shot.

As you can see, there are multiple blooms from this shot. We are having 3-4 bloom at any given time. We have had 6-8 full blooms so far, and another 15-20 on the way. Based on how these are lasting, I suspect we will have buds through the end of January; perhaps longer.

This last picture should give you an idea of how many buds we have.

Basically, every cactus growth has a bud at the end of it.