[geeks] RHCE advice

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 @ 22:00 -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke said:

> I provide my risumi in HTML, PDF, PostScript, and ASCI text.  If their
> computer systems are too retarded to open that in Word, or their
> operators are too lazy to do so, so am I.  For the sake of perversity, I
> use Microsoft Word for step #4 and then "protect" the document so that
> nothing can be selected or copied without typing a password.

I need to find a way to do that.

My problem is that these idiots *EDIT* my resume without asking
permission.

I mean, it is *MY @#$% DOCUMENT*, and I did not give them permission to
do any editing.

I have found several recruiters severely butchered my resume.

The last guy I talked to said he *HAD* to use Word documents because
they were required to submit the resumes on company letterhead.

I wrote back that I didn't work for their company, and the client should
know that, so why did my resume have to have their letterhead?  I also
pointed out that he could use a cover page with his letterhead, and that
would neatly meet his own company's stupid requirements.

> It seems that they only want a Microsoft Word[0] edition of the file so
> that they can feed it into some luserware that does keyword searches.
> At least, it's patently obvious that the headhunters don't -read- what I
> send them, or I wouldn't get offers to move to Michigan for a 3-month
> contract doing Microsoft sExchange admin work.

Amen to that.

I have specific instructions in my cover letter and other submitted
material telling them what I'm willing to do and how to contact me.

They obviously never read it.

The other huge peeve I have with all of them is this insane desire to
use the telephone.

I hate the damned telephone.  For one thing, it requires realtime
matching of caller and receiver.  For another, 99% of the calls I get
are useless so they waste a lot of time on telephone tag and having to
wait around for the call.

A lot of these idiot recruiters and HR droids won't even tell you what
the job is in email, which is the most bloody stupid thing.  How do I
know I want to try my 1% odds when I don't even know what the job offer
is?

> [0] They get miffed when you ask "which format is that"?  I mean, do they
>     want the old pre-OLE format from Word 2 for Windows?  The simple
>     marked-up format from Word for DOS and OS/2 and Unix?  What about
>     the nearly-ubiquitous (in its day) Word for Macintosh format?  Maybe
>     they're cutting-edge and want the new XML-laden document format?

The thing that really ticks me off bad is that I did use Word for a few
months one time, and over half of the recruiters using Word could not
load the file due to incompabilities between versions of Word.

I find it pretty ironic that Open Office can read and write more Word
formats than Word can.

Also, I can't help but notice that the Mac version of Word can also read
and write more Word formats than Word for Windows.

The Mac team at Microsoft seems to be a lot better than the Windows
team.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Meddle not in the affairs of Wizards, for
thou art crunchy, and taste good with ketchup." -- unknown]