Re: Anti-spam, resumes, classes (was: can anyone offer Lisp job?)

rem642b@xxxxxxxxx (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes:

> > From: David Steuber <d...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Check out their careers section on their web site. They have some
> > programming challenges and you get to pick your language. Proving
> > your ability will trump anything on your resume.
>
> http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/eng/job1.php
> Hmmm, a curious set of toy problems. Maybe I'll try one of them when
> I'm in the right mood. (Most of the time I prefer more useful problems.)

More useful problems? I thought your stated problem was not being
able to get an interview. If solving one of those toy problems gets
you an interview, then you have solved your stated problem of not
being able to get interviews. That sounds useful to me.

But some folks at ITA probably lurk on this news group so you may have
already poisoned that well. It's a shame too because ITA is a cool
company with cool people doing cool things. If you did well on the
phone interview you would get to meet them in Cambridge and talk to
several nice people and do another little programming exercise. At
that point you could at least say you gave it an honest shot.

> > What would be a tremendously useful tool is something that can custom
> > craft a resume for a given job position. What it should do is read
> > the requirements of the position and craft a resume that states the
> > existence of these requirements in priority order as implied by the
> > job listing.
>
> So you're suggesting somebody write a program to allow spammers in
> penetrating HR departments the way they've already penetrated (and
> destroyed) e-mail by using every possible means to bypass filters?
> Here's the lastest spam to bypass Yahoo! Mail's filter:
[don't care about your spam]

Sure. Why not? If nothing else, you would prove your buzzword key
search theory and force humans to look through the resumes. Or at
least yours if you don't go distributing the software.

If you are really as good as you say you are, then all you need to do
is game the system so that you can get face to face with someone who
can see that and hire you.

It may prove to be more satisfying than whining on the Internet.

An alternative would be to find some newer hardware that is cheap or
free for the asking so that you have the infrastructure to do your own
independent software development. I think someone has already
suggested that. A three to five year old PC can still run Linux and
SBCL along with Emacs and SLIME. I'm sending this post from just such
a machine (it was new when I built it, but not leading edge).

--
My .sig file sucks. Can anyone recommend a better one?
.

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