Re: [tlug] [OT] Good IT Resume

["Sam Morrison" <sam@example.com>]

On 7/20/07, Edmund Edgar <lists@example.com> wrote:

I'm a bit surprised the world hasn't yet managed to adopt a machine-parseable standard for resumes. (Or has it, and I just don't know about it?)

When I spoke to my previous employer about their views on this approach and their reaction was something like, "...we need to get people in here as quickly as possible, we don't want to make their lives difficult by telling them to use one format or another". The best I saw the industry come to approaching a standard was through HR-XML. But this was used primarily to pass resumes between companies (job boards -> employers, employers -> parsers). Though, once in XML resumes are easy to work with.

They even had me write a tool that formatted applicant resumes to a corporate standard format that we handed to our employers. The view was that people might be skilled at their profession, but most people suck at writing resumes. So in order to put everyone on the same playing field we organized the applicant's info into a pretty, formatted PDF. I was surprised at how many people couldn't even get a basic resume together. Someone might be a great chef, but a terrible resume writer.

sam