Category: Job Search

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I admit it, I hate looking for a job, and have come to hate editing my resume.

Employment signs.I miss the days of simply having a resume that represented my work history.

Back in the day, because of my industry a resume could be cut & dried. We didn’t need to jazz it up or modify it for each application. We chiseled our history into a document that didn’t change.

We’d write a cover letter explaining that we’re appreciate the opportunity to interview and we’d interview with the hiring manager, not a committee of people from unrelated departments.

I’ve never understood the philosophy of Edna from accounting participating in an interview for a dude who was going to be slinging solder in the board repair department.

Unfortunately, the hiring process, over time, became more like a sorority rush, or the election of prom king & queen. Or perhaps more like the example provided recently by congressional confirmation hearings.

I’ve been in interviews where the hiring manager didn’t actually get to ask relevant questions or the answers “Timed-out” because the other unrelated departments needed to ask their irrelevant questions.

Point of interest… the troubleshooting procedure for a $50,000 high speed dye sublimation printer is radically different from changing toner in your desktop laser printer.

That troubleshooting procedure is not something that can be described in 5 minutes. However, to a hiring manager, the description of that process can tell him if the candidate has done the work and is qualified to do the job.

As a hiring manager, I’ve been overruled when requesting a small number of interviewers. HR’s explanation is, “Larger, more dynamic interview processes allow for determination of the candidates ‘team player’ abilities.” Trouble is, most of the people in my field are introverts. Many are just one step shy of being hermits. The really qualified, super smart, radically capable folks in my field are great in one on one, or one on three interviews. But put them in front of a crowd of 6 or 8 people asking them irrelevant questions and they freeze completely.

Not that HR departments ever listened to a hiring manager’s reason for keeping the interview small.

I digress. 

Several years ago, I’d been laid off, I was struggling with my resume, not because it didn’t represent me and my work. But because it wasn’t “Hip & Modern”. It wasn’t getting the attention it used to get because the HR departments dumped it into a database. The hiring manager didn’t see my resume unless someone in HR thought it was worthy.

It used to be, you mailed your resume directly to the hiring manager & they handed their selections to HR to schedule an interview. Way back in time, the hiring manager was on your phone themselves asking when you could come in for an interview.

Anyway, my resume was tailored to answer a hiring manager’s initial curiosity and provided enough technical data to peek interest.

That wasn’t working anymore. HR saw information that they couldn’t make heads or tails out of, and didn’t have the ability to do anything but robotic searches for keywords.

I’ve related the state of HR pre-screens.

HR: Do you know networking?
ME: Yes
HR: Do you know IP?
ME: Yes
HR: Do you know Ethernet
ME: Yes
HR: Do you know MAC address?
ME: Yes
HR: Do you know packet?
ME: Yes

All of those questions are encompassed by the answer, “Yes” to the first networking question.

A full and complete answer which doesn’t allow them to fill in check boxes is this, “I’ve been in the industry since RS-232 terminal connections were MUXed at 9600 baud to Super Mini computers like the Nova 1200 series.

I’ve worked with both token ring and the common star networking topology in use today. I’m certified in the operation of several network sniffing tools and therefore am familiar with the OSI networking model.

Now can we please move the fuck on?

That doesn’t work if you want an interview. Just so you know.

After talking with several people about my resume, I decided to get “Professional” help with a rewrite.

I was not pleased and didn’t get my money’s worth. This professional made my resume a word salad of meaningless drivel worthy of Kamala Harris.

I hated it, and guess what? As an experiment I submitted it to a couple of job application requests and got LESS response than using my old monolithic resume.

However, seeing what this professional had done, I tried to hybridize, incorporating some elements from the so called “professional”. It hasn’t helped.

I’ve also noticed that the resume rewriting services aren’t being pushed on LinkedIn as they were in 2019 – 2021. I’m guessing that enough people expressed their dis-satisfaction that LinkedIn decided it was a bad business model.

Since I’m actively looking for a job again I’ve been re-evaluating my resume. I’m not even pleased with the hybridization. There are too many strained sentences that fail to make the point. It looks like hyperbole and oversell. It feels like I’m telling lies.

I guess that’s the bottom line. It feels like the only way to get ahead, or in this case, just to get a freaking job is to dishonor myself by being what I am not.

It comes down to how much am I willing to give up in order to retain my honor?

Why can’t I just be who I am? Why can’t I apply for a job, without having to retool my resume again and again to highlight skills for each particular position? What does this do to my resumes already floating around out there? Are those the lies, or is this new one I’m sending, the lie?

I left management instead of continuing to slug my way up the corporate ladder. Apparently that was a no no. It always creates questions and my truthful answer many people take as a lie. 

I didn’t like what management at my level was becoming, and I didn’t want the whole corporate thing. I just wanted to do my job, then go home at the end of the day. I didn’t want to be on call 24/7 or deal with employees calling out sick then giving me excuses and having to sit in judgement. I just wanted to sit at my desk, produce good results, and be at peace.

To HR, this appears to have been a demotion, a failure in my ability. For them, the mad scramble to ascend to the heights of corporate infrastructure is the only measure of success.

For me, success was sleeping in my own bed at night, next to the person I loved, having enough money to pay the bills, and to not remember or care about the political machinations going on at work.

I truly wanted all the Machiavellian shit to be well above my pay grade.

HR and in some cases hiring managers don’t get it.

I’m no threat to anyone’s career because I’m not interested in politics. A lot of older hiring managers get it. But the gatekeepers in HR who, to be honest, are mostly female can’t process that way of thinking. 

They view everything as a means to an end. They’re always processing through the lens of breaking the glass ceiling. In that mode of thinking there is never an equilibrium between satisfaction and income.

The other thing that is really weird about job searching these days is that some recruiters only want the last 10 years, others want your full job history. The former say 10 years is good enough and demonstrative of your most recent experience. They’ll also say that no-one is going to read a long resume.

The latter say, having your whole job history is valuable and that interested hiring managers will read it all.

I’m not sure which is the right answer. Honestly I’m not sure that anyone really has the “Right” answer. I have come to realize that most people have zero respect for experience. 

I used to resent that. Now I look at it as a function of their education. The 20 to 30 year olds (myself included when I was that age,) always think they know best. When I was in school I was taught the value of history and on my first jobs I learned that experience often trumped book knowledge.

The elder mentors I was so fortunate to have in my career would say things like, “You can do it that way, which is by the book, and it’s gonna take 4 hours to assemble and disassemble. OR we can unbolt the unit, turn it on its side and access the broken part through an assembly access panel on the bottom. We’ll be done in an hour and can go have lunch. Your choice sport.”

I think a lot of the 20 & 30 year olds these days don’t have plain spoken mentors. They might not be getting the benefit of a mentor because there’s a lot of fear about thinking outside the box, so to speak. Someone is always going to raise a stink if you don’t do everything by the book. These days, the stink raisers can really fuck up a situation, and they manage to drag everyone down to their very limited view of any situation.

I guess that’s why I’m reworking my resume yet again. It’s why we have committee interviews that only muddy the waters about every candidate. It’s possibly why interviews these days feel like “The Dating Game” or Prom elections.

Oh well, back to the resume…

P.S.

If you’re looking for a worker that’s happy to do his job, show up for work every day, be trouble free, non political, and no threat to your position. Send me a message. If you’ve got a remote position available, let’s talk because if I don’t have to drive anywhere or deal with people, I’d work pretty damn cheap.

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Hmm, is this real or not…

I can’t imagine what kind of device Manuel might be.

I would have ignored this entirely except that it showed up in an email from LinkedIn. It was just too emblematic of the job search market to pass up.

I thought LinkedIn was supposed to be vetting their job listings. It looks like USTech is a real company, but I can’t locate this position on their web site.

So either it’s another SPAM job listing (All too common on LinkedIn) or it’s an old position that’s been filled so LinkedIn is just presenting it to waste the job seeker’s time.

I think it’s time to ask this simple question.

Is it time to abandon LinkedIn?

What does it really provide as far as service? The site has degraded to nothing more than a FaceBook clone.

Honestly, I can’t read more than a few of the posts before getting really bored. 

The years I was completely off of LinkedIn I got a lot less SPAM. Less than a week after rejoining LinkedIn, my SPAM levels tripled.

I only rejoined LinkedIn because a completely useless HR consultant told an entire class of people it was absolutely necessary to have social media and LinkedIn. This consultant supposedly walked everyone through the self marketing process. Social media presence, LinkedIn profiles, resumes, etc. Except they didn’t.

I can say, for me sitting in those classes was absolutely useless. I can’t say for certain that anyone benefitted, and the consulting firm doesn’t appear to be in business today. 

Our jobs, indeed most of our department was being offshored and the company had to wave its hands for the government, to make it look like they were doing something to assist those of us being laid off.

The majority of us who’d been through the layoff process before, knew within 5 minutes that these HR Consulting folks were bogus. These folks had the fundamentals of the layoff process incorrect and didn’t know that when a company lays off quantities of people above a certain threshold there’s government involvement and reporting.

They were getting paid likely an obscene amount of money but their curriculum was obviously a hack job and not one of them had ever taught a class or gotten up to speak  in front of a group of people. Yes, it was that obvious. Especially since I had stood up teaching classes to technical folks earlier in my career.

I’ve wondered what it would take for me to be one of the presenters for a corporation that does the “Employment Transitions and Assistance Classes” By the way, I claim that name, and the abbreviation ETAC as my own.

I’m sure I could put together a class that dealt with Social media (What to delete!) LinkedIn and resume writing. I’m also sure that I could put together something useful to the employees facing the end of their jobs. God knows I’ve been through the layoff process enough to have gained some useful experience.

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Interesting I just applied for a job in Rupees

So weird!

I converted my required American salary to INR so that I could apply for the job. What the hell is that about? I wouldn’t have bothered except that the company appears to be legitimate and it was on LinkedIn.

The job is in America so hmmm. I wondered if it was one of those silly HR tests to determine if you pay attention. Of course it’s entirely possible that the person putting the ad up on LinkedIn carelessly specified INR instead of American Dollars.

Who knows these days?

Every company plays games, and HR people seem to have orgasms tormenting folks just trying to find work.

It’s possible it’s just an artifact of an HR person that’s poorly educated.

This is what it’s come to. I’m mostly applying to jobs now, just to rub salt in my wounds. Call it an exotic form of self harm. LOL! I’m still applying only for positions that I’m entirely qualified for. I know that I’m never going to be actually interviewed by a human for any of those positions. So this is nothing more than beating my head against a wall.

It’s a total crack up in a very sick way, that now I’m applying just to attempt to annoy an automated system.

I suppose this is better than me creating a viral bit of code that utterly destroys automated hiring systems.

And yes, the thought has crossed my mind!

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I got to thinking about the whole Video Interview Thing…

Something about the “One-Way” interview has been bugging me. I tried to sort it out in the blog post here. I failed to clearly analyze what it was that concerned me.

I was denying my suspicious nature. A couple of good night’s sleep later and my concern clarified when I started down this path.

Have I become too suspicious? It that suspicion justified? Have there been simply too many bullshit recruiters and promises?

As I was thinking about it, I found myself asking this question.

“Why the one way video interview?”

The hiring manager still has to make time to review the video. Then they have to arrange to call the candidate back for another interview. This whole one way video interview paradigm saves no-one any time.

Why not just Zoom meeting or FaceTime, or whatever in the first place? Why add a layer of complexity?

Then it hit me.

The one way interview does allow for isolation, racism, and sexism.

The candidates are speaking blind to a dispassionate recording system. But the managers can review the video and easily allow racial, gender, or age bias to guide their candidate selection for second interviews. Since the hiring manager reviewing the videos doesn’t have to actually connect with the candidate, they can forget them without guilt.

It’s all done in the privacy of their office with no oversight or questioning of their choices or motives. It’s unlikely that anyone will take the time to review the reject pile.

If the manager said candidate X, Y, or Z isn’t appropriate, who’s going to go look at a video? Who will have the time to notice that the hiring manager is only interviewing candidates of a particular color or gender…

I’ll grant you, this can happen in any interview situation. But since most interviews are done with a minimum of an HR representative and the Hiring Manager present there is some oversight.

The old, “sort through resumes,” pick out those that have the skills you need and call those people for an interview tended to prevent racial stuff because you couldn’t justify hiring a less qualified candidate over someone more qualified, if you were hiring only on the merits of experience.

Looking at a resume you only had the name of the individual. I’ll grant that in more recent years, it became possible for racist bias to rear its ugly head because of the names some parents gave their children. “John or Julie Green” was pretty generic. (I’ve worked with two John Greens. One was white, the other black. Both were great guys and excellent programmers.)

With “Jose or Julia Verde” you could infer that they were of Spanish/Latin origin, but from where was the question. Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador? You might be able to narrow things down if they’d attended college or trade school in another country. If all their education was in country, you’d be fairly certain that they were at least first generation, so communication wouldn’t be an issue.

When you get to “DeKanye and Shaquanda Green” well, the parents of these children set their kids up to be victims of racism. It’s not right, but it is sadly true.

This name thing also works the other way. My surname screams white, and possibly NAZI to boot. So in this period of time I’m as susceptible to racial bias as poor Shaquanda. The only way we truly escape bias is if everyone changed our names to numbers. Perhaps our phone number or our social security number would eliminate all name based bias.

But we’d still have the physicality bias to contend with. The only way to eliminate that is to have everyone work from home and no video conferencing at all.

Which brings me back to the things that had been bugging me about the whole “One-Way” interview process.

1 It doesn’t save anyone time.

2 The candidate has little or no control over how the interview is used.

3 The “One-Way” interview can promote racism or sexism with no oversight.

4 This interview format imposes technological barriers such as compatibility and internet speed.

5 Technological barriers may indicate the economic level of the candidate, and be used in an exclusionary way or result in lower offered wages for the same work.

Now that I’ve worked through it I can tell my brain to work on something else. I hate it when my brain is chewing on something but can’t figure out what caught my attention.

If you’re looking for a job, consider the “One-Way” interview carefully. It may not be as much of an advantage as it’s purported to be.

I’d welcome an interactive video conference interview. That would in fact save everyone a lot of time and prevent un-necessary driving around.

Now I’m off to figure out why something Apple related isn’t working after their latest software update. I think it’s a bug but need to check out my settings before contacting Apple.

Talk about a company that needs good old fashioned manual testing and human eyes looking at their products…

Oh well, that’s never going to happen!

Have a good day.

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I hate these sort of things.

I’ve started applying for jobs again. I feel like I’m banging my heard against the wall but like the lottery, you’ll never win unless you play.

So I’m looking for jobs and applying only for positions that I’m qualified. I strongly suspect if everyone did that and the hiring / recruiting / HR departments actually read the resume and application materials then the whole process would be easier.

I too have considered writing a bit of automation that simply applied for every job on every job board that was remotely similar to my actual career.

After all that’s what the people at Indotronics do when they solicit my application. Hey Indotronics people, I’m a software tester, not a welder!

Not that it matters to them. I’m absolutely convinced many so called recruiter organizations are just scam operations. I’ve been convinced of that for literally two decades.

Anyhow, I sent an application to a company on Thursday. They responded asking me to do a one way video interview. Basically they want me to log onto some service, then do a monologue for their amusement about why I should be permitted to work for them.

I’m sure I’m being too cynical, but this feels like the whole “Who’s the most popular?” “Who’s going to be class president or Prom King?”

We all know the people who typically received the nominations for these positions weren’t actually the best and brightest, typically they weren’t even the kindest.

They were the prettiest, the only other requirement was that they have the capacity to fog a mirror. In the case of the Prom Queen it was often about being pretty and easy Although I think easy was the top requirement, pretty was secondary.

Then again the Prom King who was usually the top school jock, and often top bully, would make do with doggy style if the Prom Queen wasn’t to his taste.

“Uh, Carl… Just so you know I was there a month before you were, and also about a 1/2 hour before you on prom night. Yeah dude, she wasn’t wet because you were exciting. She said you were dumb as a post, a terrible lay, and had a little dick. (I know that last bit is true, I saw you in the gym showers.) Oh, BTW You’re welcome! I always did shoot big! ”

Probably TMI… I digress.

This company says they want to get to know me… Then why not call me or set up a video link with the hiring manager? The company says, the hiring manager will see my monologue, well if the hiring manager is making time to watch videos, then why not just cut to the chase?

They’ve also asked repeatedly about the salary level being acceptable. Uh I wouldn’t have applied it the salary wasn’t acceptable. In fact, the salary would be great especially if I don’t have to drive anywhere.

I find myself wondering if this is some new scam. Or if this is yet another immature harebrained substitute for actual physical contact.

On the other hand, the position is a remote position and that presumes that there might be some video conferencing, perhaps they’re wanting to get an idea of my set up and if video conferencing would be viable.

I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to do this. I have decided that if I do, I’ll be using a VPN.

I’m trying to weigh the pros and cons of this whole video thing while not exposing myself to another bullshit circle jerk where there’s no money shot.

I guess I’ll do some more digging around about the company and also about this video interview hosting site.

It really does feel a lot like some video dating site, and somehow slimy to boot. I just can’t put my finger on why it feels that way.

 I decided to give it a whirl then discovered I had used this service once previously in 2019, for a single interview. 

At the time I found that the service was incompatible with the Safari browser running on a Mac. This incompatibility is still extant today, four full Mac OS iterations further down the road.

I believe that I also tried using a VMWare Windows installation but in that case the service wanted to use Chrome, (a security nightmare,) but easily loaded in a disposable windows partition. However Chrome wouldn’t connect to either the internal or an external camera and to the service’s, servers. Since I wasn’t being paid to investigate the defect(s) I went to plan “C”.

Back in 2019 I loaded their IOS application on my iPad, completed the interview, then found that my iPad operating system was compromised by their client.

At the time it appeared their client also caused significant data loss upon its removal. A factory reset and restore of IOS was required to restore my iPad to full functionality.

I didn’t wish to repeat the experience, especially not for one video interview every 4 years.

I am troubled that the video interview from 2019 was still stored on the service and that apparently there is no way for me as a candidate to delete my account directly.

I have deleted the video but I’d like to delete the account too. If I were a citizen of the EU there does appear to be a process in place that requires multiple email exchanges between the candidate and the service’s support team. 

Again, overly complicated.

I just cancelled the interview…

I offered the following observation;

It seems that we’re adding layers of technology that complicate communications, rather than using technology to overcome communication hurdles. 

Then thanked the recruiting coordinator for the opportunity.