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

[Chaos Golubitsky <chaos@glassonion.org>]

On Thu, 16 Sep, 2004 at 07:59:13 -0700, Josh Smith wrote:

> In my experience, bad situations are often caused by people who stand to
> gain as a result (or at least who think they do). Not always, but often;
> often enough that it leads me to wonder here: Who gains from the current
> situation? Is resume inflation just a runaway force of nature, or is it
> something that someone has a vested interest in encouraging?

It's presumably incremental.  If you and i have the same skillset,
but i play it up more on my resume, i'll probably get more interviews.
And, if i only exaggerate a little bit, i probably won't get called
on it.  So i crank it up as much as i think i can without getting
caught.  (Note: i do not personally do this, but i don't get
interviews either, and i suspect the two things are related. :>)

Once everyone is exaggerating a little bit, you can exaggerate a
bit more without getting caught, since now interviewers are wise
to it, and may not be as hard on you, because everyone does it.

On the other side... well, i definitely can't speak for the other
side, but presumably the theory is that posting more requirements
leads to getting better (or maybe even just *fewer* resumes).  And
that side is also self-reinforcing.


So, i think the real question is, how do you exert some downward
pressure to balance out the upward pressure?  It seems like attaching
some real stigma to lying on your resume would do the trick, but
i'm not convinced that that's within the power of the sage-members
mailing list.

-Chaos