Job ads

[talexb-SBdzbUvMQDunS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org]

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004, Phillip Mills wrote:

> On Aug 22, 2004, at 8:09 PM, Ralph Doncaster wrote:
>
> > I find it rather ironic when people complain about not getting an
> > interview at a company due to stupid hiring practices.  If it's a dumb
> > company, why would anyone intelligent want to work there?
>
> If a company is doing interesting things with neat technology, it may
> not be a dumb company.  If it's of any size at all, it may have a
> "dumb" employee...or a smart employee who did a "dumb" thing.  (Let's
> see...have I *ever* felt as if I could be described that way?)

I agree .. I once took a job at an organization that supplied computing
services to an insurance company, so to say it was bureaucratic would be
an understatement. They were also a 45 minute commute away, but they
wanted to hire me to work on application development in OS/2 (in 1990)
which was exactly the field I wanted to work in, and one that I thought
would take off.

> Also, no job description for a position with any creative scope ever
> survives contact with reality.  Within a month, the person getting the
> job will have modified it by applying knowledge that the hiring manager
> didn't have.  Even without that, in any technology-oriented company,
> people, projects, and goals change frequently.  (Which is why I shake
> my head so often at ads that insist on experience with "SomeDatabase
> version 13.04".)

This is a good time to roll out my Boneheaded Headhunter story, where he'd
written down something to do with networking digital's VAX systems called
DELNET. I explained that it was the _digital equipment corporation_ that
built VAXe[ns], hence the networking protocol was DECNET -- he'd written
the name down wrong. "Yeah, whatever" was his casual response.

Frankly, I have sympathy for the headhunters in a technical field: in my
opinion, only a geek knows and remembers the different versions of DOS and
how well each one did: DOS 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.31, 4, 5, 6, 6.1 -- and that
some of those were Microsoft efforts and some were IBM productions. Then
there are the DR-DOS versions as well as the clones like PC-MOS.

To bring that attempted paralell into the present day, if you know the
provenance of the flavours of Unix/Linux, then you have a rough idea how
similar each version is (BSD vs. SysV). Some commands are more or less the
same across the flavours -- some will have you heading to the man page in
frustration. Some are better at networking, some are better as desktops.

> Apart from discouraging capable candidates, the problem with
> ridiculous/impossible requirements is that a literal, checklist
> approach to screening responses gets the managers interviewees who have
> been selected for their ability to generate B.S.

I imagine the literal checklist happening with a left-brained or junior HR
drone writing up the ad.

The intelligent job seeker will use a cover letter to explain that while
their resume says ThisDatabase 7.1, version 7.3 (what the employer has
specified) is almost identical in functionality .. that's exactly what a
cover letter can be used for -- to fine-tune the resume to target a
specific employer.

And if the only thing separating you from getting a job is a difference in
SQL flavours, that's really not a big problem unless you're expected to do
some Pretty Magical Things with the system tables. For the most part, SQL
is SQL.

Alex


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