January 8, 2002

You ever read those "How to Write a Resume" books? What's with that shit man? All of the examples they give in there are pretty much people who are like....incredibly hireable. If that's a word. Which it's not. But seriously. You look at some of those examples. And they're like oh, John was previously the CEO of this company, CIO of that company and CFO of this other company. John has also won a Nobel Prize in Physics and has a Ph.D in engineering from MIT. I mean......come on. John isn't going to have a whole lot of problems finding a job, okay? It's Joe Schmoe who was a full time chicken mascot for John's Fried Chicken Store who's going to have a tough time finding a job.

Or what about the recent graduate, from high school or from post-secondary. It'll be Jack, who has graduated on the Dean's List, Honour Roll, 4.2 GPA and has won numerous scholarships on his Masters degree in Linguistics. He spent two summers working with Noam Chomsky and has co-published a paper with him. He also spent the last two years of his university career holding two part-time jobs, one as a TA for a lower-division linguistics class and the other doing part-time speech therapy at the world-renown Pittsburgh speech therapy clinic. He also volunteers at the homeless shelter nine days a week. You know the guy too? Jack the jerk.

What about the little people? The people who had enough trouble staying on top of their courses that they didn't go looking for jobs in linguistics. In other words, probably more than half of the linguistics department. No resume examples for them. They don't even seem to be acknowledged. No tips. No help. No resources. How are you supposed to get the experience necessary to get the job? It's impossible. Resume books are designed to help the "good" people get to the top and stay on top, and to keep the "shitty" people (ie. most of the the world) on the bottom minimum wage jobs exactly where they are. Where are those books? Just another trouble in a troubled world.

whats a CIO and CFO or are you merely being sarcastic? why dont you write a book then if you want to help out the $hi**y ppl?

anonymous weenie

CIO is chief intelligence officer and CFO is chief financial officer. I only make stuff up if I don't know the answer. Which is never. Why don't I write a book? Because I don't know the first thing about resumes, and I think that all resume books are bullshit anyways.

Calvin