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Seems to me like this has gotten into another one of those black-and-white, all-or-nothing debates. (I'm not just picking on Arlen here. His is just the last email so far on this subject.)
I don't see a problem with looking at the way an applicant's writing is structured, as long as it's tempered with a bit of common sense. I do it myself, and don't apologize for it. If the resumé was rewritten by the employment agency, of course I don't take it into account. Likewise, if it was converted from some other software, I'd think it'd be obvious by the document structure. And it's not a make-or-break issue. It's just another piece of information about the candidate.
But the resumé's one thing; the document samples are another. If the candidate claims FrameMaker on said resumé, I want to see some FrameMaker documents - in FrameMaker. If the candidate can't use paragraph formatting in Frame (and yes, I've seen it) then I have to wonder about how long it'll take to get them up to speed on the basic tool, or even if the candidate is one of these people who never will get the hang of it, as indicated in a previous post. I am not looking for expert knowledge. I just want to know if they have a basic grasp of the tool.
Again, it's all just information; one piece to the puzzle of whether this person will fit in and be able to do the job. If the candidate is otherwise good (ability to acquire technical knowledge fast, writing skills, document organization, creativity, etc.) then I'd question them closely about tool use to try to get a feel for how long it would take them to come up to speed.
On Wed, 30 January 2002, Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- jci -dot- com wrote:
>
> >Indeed, you did offer an admirable list of reasons that a Word resume
> >would not use styles, etc. However, the question is not "would" but
> >"should".
>
> So what you're saying, then, Darren, is that guys like me, who don't own a
> copy of Word, and would therefore have to use a conversion tool (which
> might possibly mangle the styles to a degree you don't find acceptable)
> shouldn't bother to apply?
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