geekitarian

The iPad was announced this week and people seem to be underwhelmed.  Some superfans, loyal Apple customers, and of course Apple evangelists are excited, like this guy: A small group of fans are saying that this is going to be the biggest thing to geek out since Apple announced the Newton, which was obviously a huge hit. Apple's explanation of this device is very grand.  "The best way to experience the web, email, photos, and video.  Hands down."  Not only does it surf the web, view your photos, AND connect to YouTube, but it practically connects directly to your brain stem and detects everything that was ever fun in your life and presents it on a nice 9.7" screen.  Videos of dogs surfing galore! I love my iPhone.  It's probably the most practical and useful pice of consumer technology I've ever owned - I probably use it more often than my computer, TV, or any other overly expensive gadget I have lying around.  Unfortunately, I have ne

One of the biggest challenges about writing your resume is that you’re trying to write it for an “anonymous” audience. Unless you’re willing to go through a lot of effort rewriting it every time you send it, you’re trying to take a brief document that makes it appealing everywhere you send it – despite the fact that the audiences may be very different. However, you can simplify this a bit. While there are lots of technologies and even more companies, there are only 4 major types of people who will view your resume, each with their own interests and goals. Hiring Managers Technical staff working for Hiring Managers Recruiters or Human Resources Personnel Resume Databases Lots of times when you’re applying to a company, you’ll hit all four of these. Depending on the size of the company and the level of technical expertise, you may only hit a recruiter or hiring manager . If you have a really good idea of who will be seeing your resume, you can target it – but it’s hard to

The resume database is like a recruiter, only not nearly as intelligent (and that’s saying something, given some of the recruiters I’ve met – just kidding recruiters, you know I love you). Resume databases are either a collection of resumes on a job site, or a repository of resumes for a particular company. These resumes are often scanned, indexed, and categorized so that they can be easily searched at a later date. With most resume databases, you could just write a resume that only listed every single skill available and every single application of experience that an employer might be looking for, and you’d probably get a ton of hits when anybody is searching it, looking to fill a position. Here’s one important thing to remember about targeting the resume database: any time I’ve ever been turned down for a job, and received the “We will add your resume to our database and contact you if we find an appropriate fit,” either A) they’ve never actually found a fit, because I’ve never

The recruiter can often be a hard fish to fry. The recruiter may have been involved in technology at one point in his career, but more than likely was not. They may have a cursory understanding of technical terms and technical jargon, but likely they can just identify buzzwords. Even though a lot of these buzzwords may not really mean anything to a real geek, they’re very attractive to recruiters. Here, you need to think like a recruiter. A recruiter has probably been given a task (find me a programmer) and a set of skills (C++, STL), and experience (3-5 years). To get past the recruiter, you just have to match (or mostly match) this checklist. So, if you’re looking for a job as a Linux C++ server engineer, you need to make that apparent in your resume. If possible, you should list it in the skills section of your resume, and also in the experience section, if you have relevant experience. Typically, all you have to do to make it past the recruiter is match your resume to the

Developers and other technical staff are a hard sell (more so than Hiring Managers and Recruiters) with a resume. This might be because a lot of them (not all of them, but a decent amount) don’t have much experience with reviewing resumes or interviewing. They know what position needs to be filled, but they might not understand how that position translates into a written resume (lots of developers get into computer science because they don’t like reading and writing, right?). There might be a lack of understanding as to the responsibilities of the job, or what’s really required. Developers and other technical staff tend to have more bias as well – preference for certain educational backgrounds, technologies, or skillsets over others. Reviewing resumes and hiring probably aren’t their primary job responsibilities, either. They may look at this as an annoyance or something that keeps them from doing their real job. Knowing this, you’re going to have to work harder to appeal to th