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> It is a business relationship, but he/she who has the money
> makes the rules.
Ah, the arrogance of capital. It wasn't so long ago that he/she
who had the skills made the rules. I agree though, tech writing
skills alone probably aren't going to put you in the driver's
seat.
> Hacking web servers is fun too, but it can also wind you up on
> the wrong side of courtroom.
Who is talking about hacking web servers? I'm talking about
adaptive re-use of existing fields in public web forms I have
been invited to use. I want to make sure their process works for
my maximum benefit; what's wrong with that?
I know you know what real hacking means, and I'm not talking
about hacking. I wouldn't even know what to submit in a buffer
overflow.
> Likewise, psyching out screening processes may
> be fun, but it holds the chance of doing more harm than good.
I think the nation will endure.
> Mike, why would a company that is honestly looking to hire a
> qualified person make the application process misleading?
> That would only lead them to get unqualified people.
Andrew, now you are on to something. That's exactly what is
happening out there.
> I mean, if that's the case, then you could extrapolate that
> the employer was stupid and therefore - why would you want to
> work for them in the first place?
I'm a consultant... I don't want to marry them, I just want to
date them. Sometimes stupid employers (your phrase) have good
projects that I want to work on. Sometimes there are no good
projects and I need to work on a less desirable project if I
want to keep working. We are all stupid sometimes.
> It makes no logical sense for an employer to needlessly throw
> out potentially qualified people.
The process doesn't get the most qualified people. It only gets
people who are buzzword-compliant. And I have no faith they are
even screening for the right buzzwords, either. If somebody
wants me to document a C API, do you really thing "C" is the
first buzzword they should be looking for? (maybe you do).
Andrew, look at your previous posts on the qualities a tech
writer should have (which I usually agree with, by the way) and
tell me if you think recruiters are actually screening for those
qualities.
See Matloff http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html (yeah I
know it's a few years old but the points are still valid. And
no, I don't buy into the anti-H1B angle, but I otherwise agree
with the analysis).
> The process of whittling down resumes and applicants to a
> managable hit list has to start somewhere. Web forms are
> arguably a poor way to do that, but sometimes such measures
> are necessary.
And sometimes counter-measures are necessary. Sauce for the
goose, gander, etc. The only conclusion I can make is that
automated recruitment or job-hunting generally cheapens the
employment experience for all parties.
> Yeah, the recruiter probably doesn't. That's because
> recruiters are worthless. But the hiring manager DOES. And
> he/she isn't going to find your pages of searchbait (I like
> that word, by the way) very clever.
By the time I am talking to a hiring manager, I make sure they
have my proper documents in hand and they are getting my fully
tailored sales pitch.
In reality though, the odds of getting a job through a national
database are probably lower than getting hit by lightning. The
best way to use them is for intelligence-gathering: If you
cross-reference all the multiple postings, you can usually
triangulate enough information to find out which companies have
active IT projects and who is really hiring. The job postings
are sometimes created by cut-and-pasting the raw req from the
client! And the juniors who call back have no real stake; so
they will sometimes give out info if you probe them. Then you
can set your personal network in motion to try to get the job.
> That's because the DMZ database doesn't have that kind of
> security. When the data gets transferred via a stored proc
> through the firewall to a backend system, fields with too many
> characters get dropped because they might contain a buffer
> overflow. FUD or not - it happens.
I've never seen a job form that blackholes you because a few of
your submits flunked the edit checks. They are usually more than
happy to let you try again.
Regards,
Mike O.
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