Pros: Slightly less likely to steal from honor snack bar

That's the one positive I can see from the candidate who put this on his resume:

"Accomplishments: One of my greatest personal accomplishments in life was losing weight I was able to lose over ninety lbs. in about eight months through exercise and diet."

Cons: ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT TO ANY JOB OUTSIDE A FITNESS CENTER AND/OR JENNY CRAIG-TYPE PLACE. (For which I am not recruiting.) (And yes, quite frankly, I DID mean to shout, Reader.)

I know I know, there's that one employer who already is firing people for the unhealthy lifestyle choice of smoking, but we're not there yet.

And I mean, kudos, Candidate, it's great you did that for your health and all and I'm feeling a little Grinchy complaining about it...but still. This is a resume, NOT your autobiography.

Confidential to Mr. Pissy-Pants

To the dude who just sent a bitchy note to a hiring manager complaining about her lack of response to his interview follow-up questions? And then who said at the end of said bitchy note that he hoped his bitchy note wouldn't impact his chance for future opportunities with the company?

Well, for one, you're right, it is crappy that she never responded to you.

But, yes, you're also right in your suspicion that when you clicked send, your chances at this company went up in flames. Indulging your indignation, however righteous, is rarely a fast track to a sign-on bonus.

E-mail in haste, repent at leisure, Bud.

My Kind of Worker is Not in This Commercial

The Assimilated Negro: What Kind Of Worker Are You?

Because my kind of worker always skates out of these kinds of meetings. (I'm a Milford [wo]Man.)

File Under: Knowing When to Fold 'Em, Walk Away, Etc.

A while back, one of the After-Dark Ill-Suit's gigs was writing music reviews.

One day, I received a CD and a sheaf of accompanying materials. I mean, generally bands would include a little press blurb or something, but this band included nearly everything positive that had ever been committed to paper about themselves.

I listened to the CD and I did not like it. I didn't hate it, but it just wasn't all that great. So I had to write a not-great review.

(Aside: This might come as a shock to you, Reader, but I didn't really enjoy doing that. It's one thing to critique candidates when a) it's unlikely they will ever read this unless my regular Readers - AKA parents - both apply for a job with a company I recruit for AND make some embarrassing gaffe and b) I leave the candidates as anonymous as possible and change identifying details. But I don't actually want to make someone feel personally bad. In general, I was a bad reviewer because I was like a kindergarten teacher: "I'm sure they did the very best they could!" So for me to write a negative review...let's just say it took a lot.)

Anyway, I made the band verrrreeeee unhappy. And so they posted a rebuttal to my review on their website AND e-mailed me and my editor a link to their post.

At first, I was freaked out because they were hating on me - with first and last name - on their website and that's a little weird. I am a Good Girl People Pleaser and want everyone to like me. So at first, I felt a little bunched up about it, but the more I thought about it, the stupider it seemed that this band was so insecure that my one bad review on that one teeny website got them so worked up. (I also found it appropriate that - as my main criticism was they were too cerebral and wordy - their response was to WRITE an ESSAY. Like, aren't you rockers? Shouldn't you be too busy banging groupies and - I don't know - writing actual rock songs to compose counterpoint arguments with critics?)

What is my point and what does this have to do with looking for a job?

Well, a few candidates I've encountered in the past year have illuminated for me that what I experienced with the band - from the initial press kit through the denouement - is actually a kind of personality tic that comes up in recruiting.

The candidate who responds to my initial "Hey can I phone screen you?" with an e-mail that has forty-five attachments of, again, every positive thing that has been committed to paper about them, up to and including their second grade report card scanned into a PDF, will then inevitably be incapable of answering Yes/No questions with a Yes/No answer during the phone screen. Even simple questions like, "Have you ever worked for this company before?" will be met with a paragraph for an answer.

And then, if I have to reject the candidate, the INEVITABLE answer to my rejection note is: an argument of our assessment, frequently with a veiled criticism of me or the company.

If your time on the playground and/or in romantic relationships hasn't taught you this, I know that my attempt is probably futile, but generally, you cannot argue people into liking you better. You can present all the facts and figures you want, you can point out how flawed the other person is for Not Getting You (always a head-scratcher), but generally, at the point at which you either receive a bad review or an interview rejection letter is generally the point at which you have to let it go.

How can I help you? No, really, how?

I am at my desk, the phone rings, and I have my usual argument with myself about picking it up. (I really don't believe in picking up the phone, it's so rarely a good idea.)

But I do and it's Candidate, whom I've already screened for the position and told I would be submitting to the hiring manager. I also let her know if she is selected for an interview, she might find out before I do because she might be contacting by our coordinators who get a direct notification from the hiring manager.

Reader?

Reader, wake up!! (tapping on inside of computer screen)

I'm sorry, I promise to leave out those details in the future.

Soooo, Candidate is calling me back about a week later.

Candidate: Hi, Ill-Suit. I was contacted by someone to set up an interview. They said they needed to check on the interview arrangements since I'm not local and would get back to me. I was wondering what my status was for the position.

Me: (after long pause) Um. You've been selected for an interview and it sounds like they are working out the logistics?

Candidate: Oh, okay, thanks!

Me: (with giant cartoon question mark floating above my head) Um. Sure?

Actual Unfortunate Names: Link Russian Roulette Edition

www.Doostang.com

Is Doostang "an online career community that connects people through personal relationships and affiliations"?

Or is the candidate who tells me this playing some kind of trick on me and this is really some kind of meatspin type website that will immediately flag me in my company's IT department as some kind of link-clicking-floozy degenerate? (For the love of all that is holy if you don't know what meatspin is, DO NOT TRY TO FIND OUT ON A WORK COMPUTER or if you are of delicate constitution.)

Point being: I just don't know how I feel about the name DOOSTANG. It doesn't fill me with a sense of overwhelming...ummm...professionalism. It makes me want to make jokes like as though I were a twelve-year-old boy.

Like (oh my god Reader I am SO SORRY for the stupid immature joke I am about to make): "You stink - do you have a doostang in your underwear?"

(And twelve-year-old boys everywhere think, "What is she talking about? That joke is beneath me.")

Don't our men and women in uniform deserve better?

If you are part of a company responsible for procuring the parts for Tomahawk missiles, shouldn't you know that they are called "Tomahawk" and are not - as this candidate whose resume I received today seemed to think - named for some dude named "Tom Hawk?"

Hopefully she's working on the ones for export.

It's National Phoning It In Week!

I just decided.

That or it's a Snow Week, or whatever other excuse someone will accept as to why my posts are crap.

Another blogger - some hot shot with like four readers or something - made a disparaging comment about bloggers who apologize for lack of/poor-quality posts when they only have two readers and those readers are their parents.

What Mr. Four Plus Fancy Pants doesn't realize is we are really apologizing to OURSELVES and to our own HIGH STANDARDS and also we do it to HEAR THE ECHO.

I now consider this blog to be like a sand mandala. It's a totally pointless act of creating ephemera. But it's like way more tolerable than actually meditating. (I have ADD and ergo actually trying to meditate makes me want to gouge out my own eyes.)

Anyway, if I ever have had or will have a good post, it will not be this week. I can tell already. Mainly because everyday my day is thrown off by the fact that the Ill-Suit Who Wants to Stay Asleep is FAR craftier than the Ill-Suit Who Wants to Get Up and Take on that World Now. The former's new trick is to take the miniature alarm clock and - again, without waking up - hit snooze and then TUCK IT UNDER HER TORSO so that when the alarm goes off again, it is MUFFLED BY HER OWN BODY.

(Why can Sleepy Ill-Suit figure THAT out but not figure out how to just turn OFF the alarm so it doesn't go off again? Neurologists: chime in.)

So anyway, I set aside all this AM time to do my own stuff and then sleep through it. I will never get out of having a day job at this rate.

I have to go into a kind of fugue state to get through my work day too...

...but if you work for yourself - and in fact have been self-employed for years and do not appear to have any employees - why does your resume declare in big block letter:

"CONFIDENTIALITY REQUESTED AND APPRECIATED."

Sure, no prob, it's a given...but confidentiality from whom?

If I can't call you at work and you work from home...help me out here.

The shark has pretty teeth, dear.

When I read this on a resume:

"Relentless in the pursuit of excellence"

I know that after I phone screen this person, I am going to need an entire bottle of Gatorade and a nap to replenish myself after they have nearly sucked my soul out of my body with their aggressive, nearly violent can-do attitude.

Man Down!

This is my 100th Post, but it has not come without a cost.

Today, in an unfortunate coffee mishap, we have lost a key. Colon/Semi-colon appears to no longer be working. At least not when you actually tap the key itself, although a random ghostly semi-colon keeps attempting to insert itself when other keys are depressed.

And I stabbed myself in the thumb with a metal ruler trying trying pry up the key and now I am bleeding all over everything because I used up all my band-aids on the Rocker Contractor when he slashed open a finger not once but twice in the span of a half hour on Thanksgiving morning. (But as mentioned, he only weighs like twelve pounds, and ergo probably only has about a pint of blood in his body total, so really, it was probably the best use of the band-aids, otherwise I would have had Dead Rocker Contractor for Thanksgiving.)

This is my $50 ergonomic Microsoft keyboard so I am a little heartbroken at the possibility that it might now be garbage. For now, I am going to see how much not having access to two punctuaction marks affects my writing. One positive thing - no more emoticons. Let's face it - they're a crutch. (I would have used colons in both the prior sentences. I don't think this is going to work.)

Speaking of 1947...

Today appears to be the day that I receive resumes from a wormhole opening into the first half of the Twentieth Century. Along with the Mrs. mentioned previously, I just received a resume that starts out addressing me and my counterparts as "Gentlemen."

Okay, it's 2007, and unless you are posting a memo above a urinal, it's no longer really safe to address any business correspondence to only "Gentlemen."

Before the Contrary Maries and Misters start waxing red-faced about political correctness, it's not about that. It's just a question of ACCURACY.

Especially with a resume, because if my experience is any indicator, Human Resources is like 90% ladies. Sometimes I get a sinus headache from all the estrogen.

ANYWAY. Just say like "Hiring Manager:" or "To Whom It May Concern" or whatever. I don't care. Just don't call me Mister. I had a short haircut when I was a kid and somebody called me "Young Man " once and the wound still smarts.

"I'M MARRIED I'M MARRIED!!!!!!!!"

I've never understood the whole "I've been planning my wedding since I was a little girl!" thing. I don't know why but I never had those fantasies. Probably because I always feel like a drag queen or Easter Peep when I am in a dress that's not black and tailored so the typical images really didn't, ya know, speak to my aesthetic. (You can take the girl out of art school in Manhattan, but you cannot scrub the art school in Manhattan out of the girl. Or, who knows, maybe you can but I haven't found the right solvent yet.)

And it's not just the wedding, just thinking of the concept of marriage makes me feel like I have a too-tight wool turtleneck on.

But I get that it's some people's thing, like MOST people's thing. I realize I'm the weirdo in this situation.

And today I think I came across the resume of my polar opposite, the Bizarro Ill-Suit. This woman appears to be so THRILLED to finally have gotten married (four years ago) she had to reference it not once, not twice, but SEVEN TIMES. ON HER RESUME. Like it's 1947 and she wants to assure the Boss Man she's not one of those slutty Career Girls or something.

The references are as follows:

• References Maiden Name vs. Now Married Name
  
• References Marital Status (Guess what? MARRIED!!)
• Includes Spouse Name
• Includes Date of Marriage
• Indicates Relocation due to "Spouse's Employment"
• Indicates Relocation due to "Fiance's Employment"
• Indicates Relocation due to "Engagement"

So...um...I guess, Congratulations, Candidate!

"Plus a whole lot more!"

Should never ever be a bullet point on your resume.

You are not a multi-tool, the Magic Bullet Blender or a product being offered by Ron Popeil.

Unless you truly are a sleep-walking entrepeneur...

...and need to make the distinction, you can leave the following emphasized word off your resume:

"Made conscious decision to establish my personal stand-alone enterprise."

From my experience, few people make that decision unconsciously or subconsciously.

And you ESPECIALLY do not need to put the following on your resume (which is how the above actually appeared on the real resume (emphasis added)):

"Made conscience decision to establish my personal stand-alone enterprise."

I appreciate that you actually spelled the word correctly, but it's the wrong word.

Conscience? It's a noun. Means your sense of right and wrong.
Conscious? Adjective. Means what you meant to say but didn't need to.

Terminology to Keep Internal

During an internal company call today amongst the recruiters:

"What we need to determine is how to lure candidates into [company]'s web."

(And not meaning "web" in the "World Wide" sense.)

I have an idea!

Don't use language that makes it sound like being recruited for this company is akin to being pulled into a Ponzi scheme.

Today's post has been outsourced...

...to Pablo Neruda:

Walking Around

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground,
a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

Translated by Robert Bly.

Quote of the Day

From phone screen, in response to a question as to whether or not Candidate had ever interviewed with the company before:

"I dunno...I might have in 1998. Or else that was earlier last year."

I hear ya! 1998, early 2006, who can keep it all straight?

Sadly, No Singlets

I just had to sign a sort of agreement in order to work with a certain client.

One of the Standards of Behavior required is that I do not “fight, encourage a fight, or wrestle.”

This is disappointing because I am trying to be a more positive person in 2007 and I would certainly like to be able to provide encouragement to my fellow Co-workers and/or Candidates in all their endeavors.

And no WRESTLING? What kind of mildly homoerotic activities WERE going on in the breakroom previous to that update to the agreement?

2007 Job Search Trends

I know it's a bit early to be making predictions, but I think I know what the new 2007 Candidate Flavor is already. Do you wanna know? Ready?

Bonkers!

Crazy, batty, kooky, lunatic, unhinged. Whatever you want to call it.

As dorky of a concept as it was, Time clearly hit the nail on the head by naming You POTY. My experience as documented here through the tail end of '06 was that the Candidate Flavor of the Moment was, in fact, You. (Again, I want to clarify that by "You," I mean THEM, Reader, all those OTHER people.) You in all Your self-expressive, TMI-sharin' glory.

But starting with this guy, we got a little crossover. Sure, he was all about totally questionable personal disclosure through the job search process, but he was, also, frankly, a nutjob. And since then, up to and including Sir Slursalot I mention below, it's gotten increasingly crazy-style out there.

Maybe it is just remaining high-spirits from the holidays. We'll see. But, as mentioned, I love the crazies! They are among my favorites. So in addition to the FULLY OPERATIONAL TOILET IN MY HOUSE that I got for Xmas (jealous????), I have this to look forward to.

2007 is totally going to ROCK. I can feel it!

This week's good thing.

Candidates who come drunk to a phone screen. What more can I say?

I don't do that kind of screening.

(Okay, is this a prank of some sort that I should have been able to find on Snopes? Well, I couldn't so I 'm just going to assume this is what it is.)

So for some reason, candidates sometimes either add my name to their address book or else their e-mail program does it automatically, but at least once a month I get some random mass mailing from someone I sent a job description to a year ago.

Usually these mass e-mails are…well, the usual: hacky jokes about Men vs. Women or cute cute cute puppy pics or poems about Footprints or vaguely depressing holiday clip art.

But the below is a completely new one. I think I conducted a phone screen with him like in the tail end of 2005...but it's always nice to hear what folks are up to.

----------------------------------------------------
"From: [redacted Candidate Name]

Sent: Tue 1/2/2007 6:47 PM

To: [Everyone, apparently, that this Candidate has ever received an e-mail from, including his bank, Monster.com, etc.]

Subject: I GOT AN STD

I got Herpes from my ex wife [redacted]and gave them to my girl, I feel like shit... I just want everyone to know how sorry I am. "

Name Repetition: Rapport-Building? or Bats**t Crazy?

I don't know what particular self-improvement book/philosophy/guru espouses the power of name repetition. I think Dale Carnegie mentioned it, but not sure if there is some other popular thing out there that has convinced the MBA-types it's a good idea to say my name 45 times in an interview...but it's not a good idea.

(I don't mean to keep picking on the MBA's - I mean, my best friend has an MBA - but then again, quit doing this stuff, MBA's)

I know name repetition is also a memory-improvement technique to help people remember names, and that seems okay.

But I'm talking about over the phone, where all you need to remember my name is to look at the four e-mails we exchanged to set up this meeting. When nearly every other sentence you say is either begun or finished with my name, it doesn't so much build rapport as make you sound like a total nutbag.

Here's the progression:

First use of name: Not a big deal.
Second use of name: Slightly odd coming so soon after the first.
Third use of name: Starts to feel condescending - is this dude trying to Build Rapport?
Fourth use of name: Definitely condescending.
Fifth use of name: [you get a pass with this one because I was looking at shoes online and temporarily distracted]
Sixth use of name: Is he kidding me?
Seventh use of name: Mildly psychotic.

And so on.

It probably doesn't help that most of the people who are doing this have a Ted Haggard-vibe to them, you know, "I appear almost aggressively wholesome and to be a pillar of the community but actually right after this call I will be having a coke binge with a hooker, [insert my name]."