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	Sunday, May 18, 2003

How (Not) to Get a Job This post (and this weblog) has a new home. I haven't actually had a chance to see good old Bill Grosso since we were in graduate school together, but he hit the nail on the head with a posting about how (not) to get a job: Applying for a Job: Part I. The company I work for recently had a position open; we needed to replace someone who left in our deployment group. We wrote a fairly targeted and reasonable advertisement (e.g. it wasn't a laundry list of random acronyms; it really did describe the position and list the qualifications) and posted it to a local bulletin board. About 100 responses came in. I was the person who sifted all the resumes; what follows are some simple rules to get yourself past the initial sifting and to the phone interview. I agree with all of Bill's rules, especially the ones about the cover letter and spellchecker.  (I wrote one of these how-to's once upon a time that appeared in the SIAM News; it's essentially a transcript of a dinner talk I gave at a conference.  I've given a couple of colloquium talks on the subject as well.) I have a couple of additions in the form of ways to not get a job: Bluff about your experience and knowledge.  If I am interviewing you, I am interested in what you really know, and I will push you far enough to find out.  If you're a sales resource, your W-2 will speak for your performance.  If you're a Java programmer, I have a drawer full of esoteric questions waiting for you.  We do not hire dishonest people, but I do find resumes with ridiculous statistics amusing.  (My all-time favorite was "10 years of XML experience" on a resume from 2000 - difficult for a technology officially launched in 1998.) Send a generic cover letter and resume.  If you really want a job, put a little effort into screening your potential employers and learn about them.  It's very important, especially for management positions, to know why you want the job, why you want it with this company in particular, and to then communicate those reasons with your letter and resume. List your hobbies and likes/dislikes in your resume.  I usually read the first 25-30 lines of a cover letter and/or resume, so unless I get hooked by something in the first half-page, it's going straight to the round-file.  For that matter, a two-page resume for someone just out of school is silly.  (My resume is one page of really good stuff...) And that's just a start.  I'll watch for Bill's next installment. 5:09:17 PM