The Perfect Resume

During college a late night telephone call had a very different affect upon me than it does now. If it was a female caller it was usually an invitation to come study anatomy and if it was male it meant that I was invited to a party. The caveat being that I was being asked to be their taxi service.

Either way it wasn't a big deal. But these days it is a bit different. Now when the phone rings past a certain hour I begin to wonder if something happened to someone. Was there an accident, did someone die etc.

Needless to say that when the phone rang late Saturday night I was more than a little concerned. Fortunately it wasn't anything too serious, a friend was struggling to rewrite their resume and wanted to know if I could provide some assistance.

Naturally I said no and explained that I don't deal with crazy people anymore, be they transplanted Midwesterners or otherwise. In spite of my best efforts they convinced me to lend them some help which is why I found myself engaged in a marathon called creating the perfect resume.

I am a skeptic about resumes. I think that far too often they are massaged and manipulated into something that doesn't resemble the real experience and background of their owner. I have a simple formula that I use for constructing a resume. It is called tell the truth but be creative and descriptive while doing so.

See, nothing too profound there, but to my way of thinking it is a bit more honest. In truth the job search process for the candidate and the hiring company can be quite grueling.

From the candidate's perspective it can be quite challenging to find a way to stand out from the other applicants. You don't want to miss out on the opportunity to get an interview because without that you stand almost no chance of being hired.

Yet if you spend too much time dressing your resume up it can bite you in the butt later on. And that brings me back to trying to describe the perfect resume. If you ask me it doesn't exist, at least not in a singular, uniform document. You can't be all things to all people.

That's not to say that you can't work on customizing a resume for a particular position and company, because you can. But you still get stuck fighting a few battles, not the least of which is that you cannot rely upon people to be logical/rational in all of their decisions.

If there is one thing that I have learned from being part of the working world it is that not everyone succeeds because they are good or the best at what they do. Far too often it is better to be lucky than good, but that it is a different story altogether.

My New Desk- I Have To Get One

I love this new desk from Details. Here is a short blurb about it.

"The Walkstation is the fully integrated combination of an electric height-adjustable worksurface with an exclusively engineered, low speed commercial grade treadmill. And it’s the first product in the entirely new FitWork™ category of products from Details designed to bring healthy habits to sedentary workers while they are actually working."

Seriously, this would be outstanding. A simple and effective way to stay in shape.

Top 10 April Fools' work pranks

I found this list to be disappointing. Just not that creative. I much preferred the list here. Here are a few examples:

#6: Nixon for President

In 1992 National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program announced that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again. His new campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." Accompanying this announcement were audio clips of Nixon delivering his candidacy speech. Listeners responded viscerally to the announcement, flooding the show with calls expressing shock and outrage. Only during the second half of the show did the host John Hockenberry reveal that the announcement was a practical joke. Nixon's voice was impersonated by comedian Rich Little.

#7: Alabama Changes the Value of Pi

The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Before long the article had made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly made its way around the world, forwarded by people in their email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation. The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by a physicist named Mark Boslough.

#15: The Case of the Interfering Brassieres

In 1982 the Daily Mail reported that a local manufacturer had sold 10,000 "rogue bras" that were causing a unique and unprecedented problem, not to the wearers but to the public at large. Apparently the support wire in these bras had been made out of a kind of copper originally designed for use in fire alarms. When this copper came into contact with nylon and body heat, it produced static electricity which, in turn, was interfering with local television and radio broadcasts. The chief engineer of British Telecom, upon reading the article, immediately ordered that all his female laboratory employees disclose what type of bra they were wearing

#62: Freewheelz

The April 2000 issue of Esquire magazine introduced its readers to an exciting new company called Freewheelz. This company had a novel business plan. It intended to provide drivers with free cars. In exchange, the lucky drivers had to agree both to the placement of large advertisements on the outside of their vehicle and to the streaming of advertisements on the radio inside their car. Strict criteria limited the number of people eligible to receive a free car. Not only did you have to guarantee that you would drive over 300 miles a week, you also had to complete a 600-question survey that probed into personal information such as your political affiliations and whether you were concerned about hair loss. Finally you had to submit your family's tax returns, notarized video-store-rental receipts, and a stool sample. The entire article, written by Ted Fishman, was a satire of the much-touted "new economy" spawned by the internet. Attentive readers would have caught on to the joke if they had noticed that Freewheelz's official rollout on the web was slated to occur on April 1. But readers who didn't notice this tip-off flooded the offices of Esquire with calls, demanding to know how they could sign up to drive a free minivan. The satire also went over the head of the CEO's of a number of real internet start-ups with business plans similar to that of the fictitious Freewheelz, companies such as Mobile Billboard Network, Freecar.com, and Autowraps.com. Larry Butler, the CEO of freecar.com, later confessed to Fishman that he was so scared at the prospect of this new competition that he cried when he first read the article.

Big Brother In The Office

I find this sort of thing to be very troubling. I understand why companies try to protect themselves and I cannot say that I disagree with it....in concept. But there is a line that can be crossed and that bothers me.

"What I'm looking for is not so much someone sending out something intentional or volumes of info" inappropriately leaving the hospital, she says. "I'm looking at, is this a legitimate recipient?" Maybe an e-mail address was mistyped, for example, or one too many people was copied in on a spreadsheet with patient account numbers.

Such careful oversight is becoming more common. Many organizations, fearful that inside information can slip out through innumerable digital avenues, now govern precisely what employees can or cannot put into e-mails, instant messages, Web postings and even offline documents. But employers can't hold their workers' hands all the time -- so they're increasingly turning to software that tries to do it for them.

Offices have had strong computer controls for years, from inbound protections like antivirus programs to filtering technologies that block porn or Web e-mail sites. This new generation of software sticks its nose into even more of what people do all day.

For example, one communications-control vendor, Orchestria Corp., says its software could have prevented the CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc. from posting the rival-denigrating comments on Internet message boards that he later came to regret.

How so? Because Orchestria's software can be set to notice when certain keywords -- a competitor's name, for example -- are entered in documents or Web forms. The software can be set to block such actions or simply warn users that they're breaking company policy.

This fine-grained, automated monitoring is moving beyond highly regulated industries like health care and financial services thanks to a spate of new rules from government and the credit-card industry. Organizations also fear customer-account data breaches, insider thefts and other public-relations nightmares.

"The driver is ethics and reputation," says Joe Fantuzzi, CEO of Workshare Inc., whose software analyzes data-leakage risks. "Whether I'm regulated or not, I need to be seen as an ethical corporation. That affects my stock price, that affects whether customers are retained -- whether there's a leak or not."

These messaging-compliance technologies are still young. The Radicati Group, a technology research firm, estimates the market will ring up $670 million worldwide this year and more than triple in size by 2011.

Radicati analyst Masha Khmartseva says the technologies have some problems, including a tendency to mistakenly block or hold up too many items even if nothing in them flouts corporate policies. If an innocuous message is erroneously deemed sensitive and routed through an encryption server, the recipient has to spend extra time logging in to that server to retrieve the message.

Also, systems that warn employees if it appears they are about to send something possibly untoward -- say, the name of a product under development to a recipient outside the company -- can produce an annoying stream of pop-up messages, Khmartseva notes.

But get used to it.

"Very soon, everything is going to be controlled," Khmartseva said. "At least that's the idea. We'll see how it's going to happen."

Many of you are reading this blog from your office. It is quite likely that in many of those offices someone is receiving a report about your internet usage. They know where you went, when and for how long you were there.

As I mentioned above, I understand why companies want to protect themselves. I recognize their need to control information output and their desire to try and prevent employees from wasting time. Yet, there needs to be some understanding on behalf of the employee. Not everyone is trying to rob from the company. Not everyone is stealing time.

What is Your Dream Job?

Very few of us are Trust Fund Babies so it is safe to say that the overwhelming majority of readers are employed or were at one time. Sadly, relatively few of us have the opportunity to work in our dream job.

Sometimes that is because you do not know what that would be. And sometimes it is just because you haven't found a way to live your dream.

My question for you now is what is your dream job? If you are not currently doing it what do you intend to do to rectify that situation?

I look forward to hearing from you.