resume night b4 Stammtisch

Tue Aug 18 22:30:08 MST 2015

Resumes are a horrid way to communicate one’s skills. Unfortunately, they seem to be the best thing anybody has come up with.

I had a screening interview with a recruiter yesterday. He spent 1/2 hour going through my resume with me on the phone. He called it an “in-depth look at my experience”. It was a farce.

The position was for a “senior Delphi developer”.  This guy apparently knew nothing about Delphi, so he spent most of the time looking for evidence of stuff that he DID know about, which seemed to be MS SQL Server.

I have done so many different things over the years in the course of my work and other side gigs that I have lots of talents I’ve accumulated that cannot ever be expressed in a resume.

For example, for over 10 years I managed my own Linux server that I had set up at a co-lo facility. After it died the 2nd time, I dumped it and just went to a reseller hosting account and have managed that for nearly a decade now. At the moment, I’m switching over to a VPS. 

I’m pretty good at Linux admin, php, html, and related stuff. But I have never had a “job” doing it. I’ve never been able to convince anybody to even interview me for any kind of role where these skills are a requirement. I’m no “superstar”, but I’m certainly competent. 

Why? I learned Unix back in the mid-80’s working at Motorola on the team porting Unix System V Rel III to the 68020. They gave me a box and said, “Here, learn how to make this sing and dance!” I did. Today recruiters say, “1985? Man, that was 30 years ago!” Yeah, so? I still work with Linux systems regularly, and it’s one reason I prefer working on Macs rather than Windows, which I’ve used for over a decade now.

I’ve had clients here and there where I helped them fix problems on their wordpress sites that required me to use these skills. I’m working with someone like that this week, in fact. I got referred to them b/c someone posted a question in a wordpress forum asking for someone with Excel expertise. Oh, there's another one … Excel. 

Anyway, when you “open” a .csv file, it usually opens in Excel, so this person naturally figured it was an Excel issue.

It turned out the data was wonky, and it took someone else 4 months to discover it. I could see it the anomaly in the data after about 10 seconds. This guy needed someone to fix it. Not at the spreadsheet level, but inside the custom wordpress plugin that they paid a guy to write (in php) 6 months ago; it’s counting things wrong, and the reports it’s putting out have a column with incorrect data in them. 

It’s a nice little 30-40 hour project. If I included every one like this on my resume that I’ve ever had, it would be 15-20 pages long! 

Nobody takes stuff like this into account. It’s impossible. 

I’ve yet to find someone who can suggest how to make it visible in any useful way in my resume.

I’m mainly a software developer. So they look for programming languages and specific software tools. I learn new tools in a few hours when I need to use them. Recruiters and HR people look for a job where you were using them regularly for 3 years!

Eg., I got denied a programming gig b/c the recruiter said the client was insistent that they hire someone with at least 3-5 years of “demonstrable hands-on experience using git”. I kid you not. This was just a programming job where they used git as their VCS.

Do any of you guys call out your VCS (git, svn, sccs, rcs, etc) experience on YOUR resumes, other than in passing?

This guy I talked to yesterday acted like he was looking for a MS SQL Server DBA. All he seemed interested in was how much expertise I had with SQL and TSQL. Not one single question was directed at Deplhi. But it was a Delphi programming role. I doubt I’ll hear back; he simply didn’t know what to look for, or what he was looking at, in my resume.

When using Delphi to do what the job req seemed to describe, you spend about 15-30 minutes composing a SQL query or stored proc, then about half a day building a form to work with the data. But when you don’t understand the role Delphi plays, all you can focus on is the SQL part, which in this case is minimal. Yet it’s the gating item for this job — according to THIS particular recruiter’s background.

This is why resumes suck. Too often, the people reading them initially have no clue what they’re looking at. These tend to be the same people who are deciding whether to pass your resume along to someone who DOES know.

So this guy will find someone with a shit-pile of SQL and TSQL expertise who’s got some Delphi background and THAT person will get hired. 

BTW, he told me they’ve been having a difficult time keeping this position filled. Anybody wonder why?

-David "The Tool Wiz" Schwartz

> On Aug 18, 2015, at 9:43 PM, Alan Pratt <alan at azdev.com> wrote:
> 
> I am an IT manager. When I have a position, the HR department scours several sources for candidates the meet the criteria and requirements and presents the resume of potentials to me. A resume is an absolute requirement and needs to be complete, concise, accurate and is your face to the hiring manager before you even get an interview.
>  
> 
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 4:58 PM, Stephen M <smelheim85 at gmail.com <mailto:smelheim85 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> I agree with Jerry. Although yes it is good to have some type of
> presence online you still need a resume.While social media has gotten
> bigger over the last few years nothing beats telling someone about
> were you been like a resume.  I have a Linkdin profile and I will
> change it once in a while but I also update my resume every month or
> 2.  Just depends on what you are looking for.
> 
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 11:27 AM, Jerry Snitselaar <dev at snitselaar.org <mailto:dev at snitselaar.org>> wrote:
> > On Tue Aug 18 15, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
> >>
> >>   Do people still use resumes? Seriously though LinkedIn and github
> >>   professionals seem to be the modern trend.
> >>
> >
> > Even with those I think you still need a resume to pass along into
> > their system once the process starts. At least that was the case for
> > me with Oracle and Red Hat.
> >
> > If I was searching, I would probably tailor my resume to the position
> > while my Linkedin profile wouldn't change.
> >
> > Jerry
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------
> > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org <mailto:PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org>
> > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> > http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss <http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss>
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Stephen Melheim
> 602-400-7707 <tel:602-400-7707>
> SMelheim85 at gmail.com <mailto:SMelheim85 at gmail.com>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org <mailto:PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org>
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss <http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss>
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.phxlinux.org/pipermail/plug-discuss/attachments/20150818/c3961015/attachment.html>