Re: Employment history low points

Subject: Re: Employment history low points
From: Andrew Plato <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 10:42:51 -0800 (PST)


"Mike O." wrote...

> These systems are evil and applicant-hostile.

The entire process of job hunting is "applicant-hostile." Any time you are
asking somebody else for a favor there is a natural power-imbalence. They have
the job, you have skills. You have to prove to them you are right for the job,
hence you have to survive their challenges.

> To achieve their
> evil, these forms depend on you following their rules, so don't
> follow the rules. Use your knowledge of web forms and databases
> to game the system.
>
> Every system is different, but here are a few ideas I have used
> successfully in the past.

No offense Mike, but anybody with 1/10th of a clue will see right through these
ploys. They are not that unique or new.

> Remember, your audience isn't READING the stuff you type into
> the application form. They are just searching for strings
> embedded in it.

That is not true. Somebody does read those forms, eventually. Cute tricks and
pages of searchbait look awfully desperate. And the original material will
probably go past the junior level person on up to the regular person. And that
regular person may see those tricks and think, "this dude can't even follow
directions on a web site" and toss your resume into the trash.

Moreover, some companies have security measures on their web databases that
will automatically kick out text in fields that is too long or contains long
strings. Attempts to repeatedly bang against the web server could get your IP
address dropped into a kill file and blocked.

It would be more beneficial for job hunters to network with decision-makers and
technical staff then trying to outsmart web servers.

Now, a really clever person would take the time to figure out what the employer
wanted and then custom design a resume that met those needs - without having to
resort to cheap web server tricks.

Andrew Plato


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