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

[Steve Simmons <scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us>]

On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 08:08:22PM -0700, Trey Harris wrote:

> I have a gripe from the other side of the interviewing table--resume
> inflation.  The quality of resumes that have come across my desk over the
> years have been getting progressively more and more useless . . .

  [[ big snip ]]


At least part of it is a reaction to ludicrous requirements listings in
postings.  I went nearly a year with less than 2 interviews in spite of
my qualifications [[ An aside, for those who don't know me: I've chaired
LISA, been a board member of SAGE, done multiple site conversions, managed
everything from help desk to last-line-of-defense support staff for a pool
of 2,000,000 modems.  I didn't write the book on system administration,
but I've helped edit a few. ]] And I couldn't get an interview in my
home state.  Because I couldn't list WebSphere on the resume.  Or Apache
2 rather than 1.  The problem led to me writing carefully puffed resumes
to make my way past the keyword filters of the recruiters.  Once I started
doing that, I started getting more calls back.  Most of those ended with
be being rejected because I was overqualified.  I'd grind my teeth and
think "If you didn't need those skills, why did you list them?"

Even when the big boom was at its height, people get deluged with resumes.
When the crunch hit it got worse - and many of the newly unemployed should
never have gotten their jobs in the first place, and had gotten jobs in
the first place thru resume puffery.  Most companies and recruting firms
reacted to the flood by tightening requirements in the ads and listing
every Tom, Dick and Harry technology they've ever used.  One site wanted
someone with Tomcat and COBOL experience.  It's not totally unjustified;
there's an the off chance they might get the perfect person with the
experience and skills needed to touch those legacy projects.  But once
those lists of 'requirements' are in place, the only way to get past
the filters is to list all the damned technologies.

I've been on Trey's side of the table a lot, and know the problem
he's dealing with.  The problem is caused by lazy or incompetent
personnel staff and recuiting firms who either can't write an accurate
job requirement and instead play keyword bingo, or who are too lazy to
sift through the hundreds of actual resumes they got during the crunch.
Yeah, their job is now manageable since they just play checkbox roulette.
Since the only way to get thru the filters is play the game, one does so
while trying not to actively lie.  But it's folks like Trey (and me,
in earlier incarnations) who wind up shouldering the burden of this
cycle of misinformation.  Resumes are less reliable than ever, and
in the holy name of cutting overhead the burden of this has been sluffed
off onto the hiring manager.

I'm honestly sorry for you, Trey, but that's just how the game works
today.  From the job seekers side, not to play means not to work.  So
I don't see it getting better for a while.  The best source of candidates
is still networking, but when it fails, the fallback is pretty ugly.

Steve
-- 
"Lloyd's not a political junkie, but he's definately a user."
   -- unnamed friend speaking of her husband, July 2004