My Corner of the Interweb

Nothing like a quick shootdown....

Mood: Vaguely grumpy.
Music: Remind me to reinstall iTunes.
Game: World of Warcraft, COD2, DOA4
Book: Foundation and Empire, Isaac Asimov.
Weather: Cool and clear.

First, to my lovely Landry...I feel reasonably certain that you simply transmitted said cocktail...you didn't actually PARTAKE of it. Not your fault. If you had partaken, you'd KNOW it...because your browser would explode, and every 5 seconds, a popup window selling some bullshit product would appear on your screen, preventing you from doing anything else. You know, when your machine wasn't ground to a halt attempting to search your hard drives for interesting data.

Don't sweat it. It's gone. I still adore you.

OK, anyway, so about 3 hours after applying to those jobs at Expedia, they sent me emails saying that they weren't interested. I suppose it's a mixed blessing.

I've applied for about, say, 30-35 jobs so far. Aside from Expedia, who shot me down in hours, only Starbucks said "No, thanks...good luck with your job search." After a few weeks, you don't really harbor any hope that those people will call...but it'd be nice to get a "We're not interested because of X."

Now, who am I kidding? I've looked through THOUSANDS of resumes in my previous jobs, looking to hire people. Hell, I'd throw a resume aside if it had a single misspelling or if I just didn't like the color of the paper that day. And I certainly didn't have time to write a little note telling each person why I'm not even going to look at them. I vaguely wonder if any of those people looking at my resume said "I don't THINK so" the way I used to when someone with not nearly enough experience applied for a job that he or she clearly couldn't do. And then I tell myself that I'm being paranoid.

I KNOW the trick is to get noticed...am I going about this wrong? I cleaned up my resume with substantial help from Thorn...but maybe the resume is now...non-descript? I could be anyone. Perhaps I need to revisit my resume. Again.

The problem I'm having is that after speaking to so many people, my resume has drastically changed so many times, that I have no concept of what makes a good resume any more. Some people like buzzwords. Some don't. Some people want a lot of detail. Some don't. Some people want punchy one line descriptions. Some disagree.

I have NO idea what my resume should look like.

And all of this is freaking TRIVIAL, since once someone actually SPEAKS to me, they're going to realize that I have a TON more experience than I could possibly put on a single sheet of paper...or even allude to.

Yes, I'm feeling a bit discouraged. I'll get over it.

Eventually.

Posted by Glenn at January 26, 2006 11:22 AM