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Subject:Re: resume fondling -- am I being too picky? From:Laura Lemay <llemay -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 29 Apr 2005 15:54:17 -0700
On 4/29/05, Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com> wrote:
> One of the last times this discussion came up, several posters were
> surprised that anyone would eliminate a candidate for not using styles
> on the resume. Their reasoning was that, on a short document like a
> resume, using styles would be too take more effort than it saved. Some
> of those who held this view, if I recall correctly, were highly
> employable people, including Eric Ray and Laura LeMay.
>
> In that round, I was on the side of using styles in all circumstances.
> However, this time around, I feel less strongly about it.
Well, here's an irony. Since the last time we had that discussion,
I've completely changed my mind. I use styles now. :)
My argument then was that a resume was a one-off document,
infrequently updated, and usually intended to be printed. Styles, I
argued, are intended to be used for ongoing document management, for
consistency across multiple documents, and for softcopy.
I can still agree with both those statements, but I have been
persuaded by the additional argument that a Word-based (or HTML-based)
resume is an example of your ability to use the tool, in the same way
that the writing in a resume is an example of your ability to actually
write. Doing shoddy work in the development of the resume can be as
as much of a faux pas as bad grammar is in the writing. You have to
put your best work forward in absolutely everything you do.
That said, I've been experimenting with single-sourcing my resume
recently, developing the original in XML and then writing XSLT to
automatically generate output in ASCII, HTML, PDF, and RTF. Alas, I
am pretty sure that the resulting Word file is going to end up styled
entirely as Normal, although it will say something like "Generated
from XML" on it to give a hint as to its origins. These days I'm
working mostly jobs where my ability to work with geek tools like XSLT
is usually far more important than my knowledge of Word, so I hope
that hiring managers will forgive my, uh, lack of style.
Laura
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Laura Lemay Killer of Trees lemay % lne.com lemay % gmail.com http://www.lauralemay.comhttp://blog.lauralemay.com
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