Re: Resume inflation (was Re: [SAGE] Tests for SystemsAdministrator interviews.)

[Brad Knowles <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>]

At 10:11 PM -0700 2004-09-15, Trey Harris wrote:

>  And that, in turn, leads to job requirement inflation.  I recently spoke
>  to a hiring manager who told me she wouldn't consider a candidate who
>  didn't have at least ten years of Java experience.  I just stared at her.
>  (Maybe she actually had an open developer position to be filled by James
>  Gosling, but I somehow doubt it.)

	Indeed, that is a very real problem.  I'm seeing more and more 
jobs advertised that I don't think anyone in the world could possibly 
fill, and yet they are being advertised and presumably filled.

	The problem is that this then becomes a race, and jobs that are 
advertised with more reasonable requirements get lost in the noise, 
and everyone has to start inflating their requirements in order to 
keep up.

>  There's no doubt that using recruiters and personal networks can help
>  greatly with this problem.  But if you're on the tail end of a funnel that
>  starts with a non-technical recruiter doing Monster and Dice searches, as
>  many of us are, the complete disconnect of resume from reality really gets
>  annoying after awhile.

	Indeed.  This is part of the reason why I basically shut down and 
stopped bothering to look after coming over here to Belgium, because 
I knew that I would not be able to make it through this process, and 
I knew I didn't have enough personal contacts here to allow me to 
by-pass these issues.

	Now that my wife and I have decided to move back to the US, I 
have to start looking again, and given the inflation and other 
changes in the system since I left, it's almost like I'm starting 
over from scratch.  ;-(

>  I'm just not convinced that there's absolutely nothing to be done.  I'm an
>  optimist.  :-)

	Whereas I was trained as an engineer, and engineers are 
pessimists by trade.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.