Bluffing or what?

[John Spiegel]

WOW, how do we get more people like you out there?

I've often suspected, and sometimes been told outright by headhunters (who I
suspect to had just learned how to _spell_ COM the week before) that I
wasn't qualified for a number of jobs because my resume only included SQL,
VFP, VB, ASP and COM, while the company wanted many of those plus PHP,
Oracle, CORBA,Acess, J2EE, ProMatrix, Peoplesoft, three different third
party tools and KitchenSink version pi.e.-1^(1/2). Oh and demonstrated
experience writing software for the animal husbandry industry.

My bestpartial theory has been that managers got in a mindset during the
feeding frenzy in the late 90's many haven't left yet, i.e., this guy's only
gonna be here for a few months so he better know it all while we've got him.
It's a vicious cycle: In an effort to reduce the number of resumes to sift
through, managers put outlandish requirements in an ads while programmers,
in order to get their resumes noticed, try to claim proficiency in a dozen
languages. These same managers start seeing scores of applicants claiming
these proficiencies which reinforces the idea that they're not asking for
too much.

[snap]

Of course these are the same headhunters that say, "If you've touched
something, put it on your resume."

Gee, would I have to tell my future employer of all the interesting things I
touched ? Could be an embarrassing situation and a LOOOONG resume ;-)

But yes, I know the type of aggressive resume-building mediators like to
portray. My career at Unilever started with me being 'sold' to them as Lotus
CC-mail expert by my agent, where the actual cc:mail knowledge I had was I
knew where the icon for it on my laptop was... I had NEVER written an email
before I stepped in their building.... Haha...
It also proved a lesson to myself, I picked up all I needed for the job
within 2 months, and the same applied for other 'invented' fields of
expertise. Since then I never looked seriously at the Experience paragraph
in someone's resume once I got to be the interviewer/hirer, and instead
tried to get a glimpse of someone's personality, response to unexpected
situations and their real interests in life. I think I've hired many of the
people no other clients would have hired, and I can't say my business ran
worse then theirs....

 

[Ron Vecchi]

It's hard to find a job posting out there that doesn't require everthing
under the sun. And with the ammount of people looking for work right now
it's a crap shoot if your resume is even going to get looked at. Mabey this
guy if getting frustrated and going for broke. To be honest I recently
graduated with a Associates which focused on web development, great grades
and attendence and all that good stuff, got a ton of experience outside of
school, Half way through an MCAD, but can't even get an interview. So now
when I see a job posting that has a few of the skills that I think I am
qualified for, Maybe not the 10 they are asking for I still apply. I don't
say I know any of the skills that I'm not qualified for but I also don't say
that i'm not qaulified. If a job asks for 5 years experience in a skill and
i've got three I still apply. Whatever it takes to get looked at. I'll
worry about the interview after I get one. Right now it's just getting it
that i'm concerned about.