Re: Re[2]: bogus resume stuff

["David S. Broudy" <broudy -at- BCF -dot- USC -dot- EDU>]

Garret Romaine <GRomaine -at- MSMAIL -dot- RADISYS -dot- COM>:

>But for just a moment, put
>yourself in the shoes of someone trying to build a writing staff. You can't
>just put up a sign that says "Idiots need not apply."

You can't, much as you'd love to.

I was in the odd spot of hiring my own replacement once. This company made
hardware add-ons for PCs and Macs and I cranked out about 200+ installation
booklets. They "promoted" me to the marketing dept (long sad story). We
placed an ad in the paper and got about 500 resumes of which maybe *30* met
the minimum qualifications, which were BA, intimate knowledge of Pagemaker
and Freehand on the Mac, print production experience, and preferably, some
tech or non-tech writing background with clips. Knowledge of PC/Mac
hardware innards was a plus, but not necessary.

Why do people bother applying for jobs in which they aren't even marginally
qualified? Some of the six people I actually interviewed had lied, or
misunderstood the qualifications (Hello??), or had five years' experience
with Ventura Publisher (the ad said "Pagemaker" folks!), or who had no idea
of how to use a Mac "but were willing to learn." Jeez, I can't distill
eight years of Mac DTP experience to a novice in a few days.

I even had one of my high school biology teachers apply for that job. It
was a tough time in SoCal, so I suppose a lot of people were grasping at
straws for jobs.

I ended up hiring a fresh-out-of-college journalism student who proved to
be an excellent choice. He didn't know much about the subject, but he sure
knew a lot about using PM on a Mac, which meant that instead of pestering
me for lessons he could concentrate on pestering the engineers for info
about the products.

-------------
broudy -at- mizar -dot- usc -dot- edu  --  http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~broudy/
Warning: Severe Tire Damage   /=/ /=/ /=/ /=/ /=/ /=/ /=/