Re: The resume grinder

[Geoff Lane <geoff -at- gjctech -dot- co -dot- uk>]

On Thursday, December 15, 2005, Rebecca Stevenson wrote;

> Look on the bright side - now you know where to focus your efforts?
> Perhaps we should not bother with the grinders, but tend to our
> networks instead.
---
Your resume is still evidence of your technical communication
abilities. As a technical communicator, you analyze your audience to
establish their needs and preferences, and you create documentation to
meet them. You still need to do that for your resume, but your
audience has changed from a human to a robot.

FWIW, I'm considering adding a "keywords" section to my CV. That
section will be aimed squarely at the robots, while the remainder will
be aimed at those humans who might deign to read my CV after it's been
through the mangle! Whether to format the keywords as hidden text is
another matter!

> And perhaps the current trend will backlash. I've been contacted by
> recruiting firms lately that must have turned up my resume in a
> buzzword troll and never even looked at it, because the jobs were
> hilariously unsuitable. I'm usually the first person to extoll my
> own flexibility, but I'm *not* a system architect! :-) Think of the
> time they must be wasting.
---
I get many offers from agencies. As with your experience, most of
those offers are so wide of the mark it almost defies belief. I
suspect this is because robots can't differentiate between
documentation and creation of the product.

The frightening thing is that these robot resume readers are so wide
of the mark that they probably eliminate the best candidate for the
job. However, I suspect that the recruitment agencies don't care
because they've placed someone with who the end-client is happy, and
so have their commission.

That said, although I get most of my offers from agencies, I get most
of my work from recommendations and my own marketing efforts.

-- 
Geoff

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