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U.S.Laws May Make Online Job Hunting Harder 433

Posted by Zonk from the hunting-down-that-scourge dept.
j00bar writes "CNN/Fortune is reporting that applying for a job online is going to get harder. 'New federal guidelines meant to standardize how employers track data on the diversity of their job-applicant pool are taking effect starting today for jobs at federal contractors -- and similar rules will kick in later this year at U.S. companies with more than 50 employees. And resumes and search approaches that worked perfectly well before may no longer do the trick.'"
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U.S.Laws May Make Online Job Hunting Harder More

U.S.Laws May Make Online Job Hunting Harder

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  • Might be difficult.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SIGALRM ( 784769 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @01:58PM (#14661765) Journal
    According to this definition, an applicant must "express interest" in the job... That "expression of interest" must show that he or she has all the qualifications for the job listed in the company's job description (not just some or most of them)...
    By this definition, it's going to be difficult to "express interest" in the job listings for most tech companies, which are often loaded with specific qualifications (i.e. "Perl, JavaScript 1.0, Quark, MS Office, and Doom 3 experience"). I've never been to an interview for a job I eventually landed where I met 100% of their qualifications.
    • I agree.
      This may mean that companies have to stop from the absurd practice of over specifing what they need.

      The jobs I have really excelled at have been the ones where I didn't have all the qualifications.

      • This may mean that companies have to stop from the absurd practice of over specifing what they need.
        The ones that make me laugh are the "4 years of XML/SOAP" requirements. Yeah, there are like 3 people in the country that qualify on that basis.
      • When I write a job ad, I distinguish between what is required and what is an asset (e.g., "Shell scripting, Motif, and Snobol experience are all assets, but not required.").

        For the applicant we are saying "let us know if you have these things, but still apply if you don't."

        The idea is that the more accurately the applicants understands the requirements, the more effective they can be at communicating their suitability.

        I recommend this approach to everyone. Oh, and don't let human resources write, or e

    • Re:Might be difficult.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kawolski ( 939414 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:14PM (#14661974)
      You don't meet our qualifications? [ridiculous...stings.com]

      Required skills are:

      Linux Operating Systems (RedHat, CentOS)
      Linux Run Levels and Services Configuration (both xinetd and individual services)
      Server/System Troubleshooting Skills
      BASH scripting
      Basic PERL
      IPTables and Firewall Technologies
      Load-Balancer Technologies
      Intel Architecture Hardware Troubleshooting
      Windows Server Administration
      MSSQL, MySQL, and Sybase Administration
      SSH Protocol Key Authentication
      PHP Scripting
      Apache Configuration
      Mail Technologies (qmail, milters, spamassassin, clamav)
      Tomcat Configuration
      The importance of documentation and repeatable process.
      Long-term architectural planning.
      3 to 5 years of experience required

      Job is located in downtown Portland
      Job location is Portland, OR

      Compensation: $15/hr

    • Re:Might be difficult.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:14PM (#14661978) Homepage Journal
      It's cynical, but I believe they do this to make all of their applicants underqualified. That gives them a reason to pay them less than top of the scale. Where they list the job as $50,000-$75,000, you don't have the required 14 years of .Net experience so you're going to have to accept the $52,000.

      On the other hand, I know that some managers just don't understand it well enough to write a good position description. I've had to write several PDs (sometimes for a job I was leaving, sometimes for a position I was hiring, and finally sometimes because the higher-ups didn't like my level of job security). It's usually best done by someone who can do the job himself, but the next best thing is to define the roles and very basic requirements - will need to create web applications in a Linux-based environment.

      Just because it could be done in PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, or Java doesn't mean you have to list all of those. And if the language hasn't been selected yet, why bother listing it at all? There are excellent developers with PHP and Ruby experience that will be turned off from the suggestion that they need to use Java.
      • Ssimple you reqrite you resume to match EXACTLY.

        Yes i DO have 14 years of experience in .NET and 12 years using Server 2003.

        If you play the game you gotta play by the rules... simply find the loopholes in their rules.

        I have been on the NET and working with NET related systems for 14 years. and anyone posing that requirement dont know what .NET really is so it's easy to BS past it.

        being a really good BullShitter is key in jobhunting today. because they put in redicilous requirements now.

        Last posting for a w
    • I've never been to an interview for a job I eventually landed where I met 100% of their qualifications.

      So you didn't really have 10 years of experience in Windows 2003?

  • Ok, I'm lost. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kawolski ( 939414 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @01:58PM (#14661776)
    From TFA: To comply with these new rules and get the most diversity, employers will have an incentive to keep the pool of applicants for each job relatively small and as random as possible.

    So in order to get a more diverse and random selection of applicants, we're going to shrink the qualified applicant pool by making it more difficult to apply for a job? Can someone explain to me how this is supposed to increase diversity? I would think that if you want a more diverse selection, you would want to increase the qualified applicant pool so you have more people to choose from.

    • You would THINK that allowing companies to hire the most qualified applicants for the job would be sufficient.

      Sorry, but you do not have a RIGHT to a job. And especially to any PARTICULAR job. You only have the right to compete for the position. But what's REALLY boggling my mind is this is coming out of an administration that is supposedly so far in bed with business interests, that the resultant child is several weeks overdue. . . .

    • Re:Ok, I'm lost. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
      "So in order to get a more diverse and random selection of applicants, we're going to shrink the qualified applicant pool by making it more difficult to apply for a job?"

      The answer is...it doesn't matter. What is should be "obvious" to everyone, according to the Feds, is that the more diverse you are in your employment pool, the greater quality and better worksmanship you get. This is one of the great P.C. truths!

      Geez..I don't get it. I think they should actually BAN the listing of race and sex on

  • Good (Score:2)

    by Quaoar ( 614366 )
    I think we can all see from real-world examples such as Wal-mart how necessary this is. Corporations are out to make a dollar, the only reason they have in the current market to keep their workforce diversified is to avoid getting sued. Hopefully this will make sure that more subtle discrimination is kept in check.

    • Re:Good [using what twisted logic?] (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:20PM (#14662052)
      I think we can all see from real-world examples such as Wal-mart how necessary this is. Corporations are out to make a dollar, the only reason they have in the current market to keep their workforce diversified is to avoid getting sued. Hopefully this will make sure that more subtle discrimination is kept in check.

      What nonsense. If a corporation was only hiring people "to make a dollar," then they'd only hire the most effective, efficient people possible. You know, hiring people based on their actual merit. For that matter, if "making a dollar" is partly accomplished by lowering your overhead, then hiring the people willing to work for the least (in non-demanding retail positions, for example) would also be standard practice... and based on demographics, that would disporportionately result in the hiring of minorities and recent immigrants. So, no need to worry about quotas, right?

      Or, am I confused about what you think is the "subtle discrimination" as it relates to how a corporation "makes a buck?" How, in your view, does discrimination help a large corporation actually make a buck? Or are you making a very sly, dubious, stealthy comment implying that minorities aren't as able to help an employer make a buck? Make some damn sense, or be more honest about your biases.
  • I mean, seriously, its like none of their freakin business. Doesnt this help kill 'free enterprise' or deminish capitalism? This is like communist USSR here.

    It is our place and decision to run online employment boards how we see fit and put up descriptions of our jobs and post our skills to our own likings. We are free to find the people who we think may be good at the job by looking at their resume

    Plus, what the crap, if I "apply" for a job online they look at my resume and they talk to me, they setup and

    • IMNSHO, too.

      Best, Paul

      * .. Not So ..
    • Yes, but imagine being an employer, and for every job posting you put up, you get 10,000 resumes, and only 5% even come close to fitting what you asked for. Now you have to weed through all those resumes, and find the good ones, without throwing away the good ones. If everyone who applied for the job was actually qualified for the job, then it would be a lot easier to hire the right person.

  • So in other words (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheSkepticalOptimist ( 898384 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:01PM (#14661796)
    Instead of online job applications remaining relatively unbiased by age, race, culture, or even gender in some cases, now US guidelines are going to require that you specify if your are a minority, culture preference, a woman, your age, and other statistics that will force employers not to hire the best candidates, but to fulfill diversity quotas.

    Good one.

    • Here is a question (Score:5, Interesting)

      by drgonzo59 ( 747139 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:11PM (#14661935)
      What if claim that I am a African American, but I am actually white. Can they quantify and measure my race, will they sent to a local eugenics clinic to measure the size of my head or take my DNA to identify my race?

      What would happen, if I just tell them that my grand-grand-grand father came from Africa so deep down I feel like I am part of a minority?

      Actually I never check the "White" or "Caucasian" box on the race section on the forms, because putting myself in a race category just reinforces the fact that there are race categories and people are somehow treated differently because of it. Actually the word "Caucasian" comes directly from studies of eugenics at the turn of the century and I consider using it just as offensive as someone using the "n"-word, because it implies endorsing the values and attitudes of the time.

      • I always check "Other" and write in "American". I actually had standardized school tests in high school not give me my results because of it. They couldn't count me towards the test scores, apparently.

        Stupid standarized testing.
      • I used to work with a guy who was an immigrant from South Africa. Racially, he was Caucasian.

        But, he was entirely justified in clicking the "African-American" block: after all, he WAS an African who became an American. . .

        • Speaking about the term Caucasian, here is an article from the Journal of Internal Medicine [annals.org] that talks about the history of the term, and how it is basically just as offensive to use as "negro".

          The bottom line is that 'race is an unscientific construct'. And here is another small excerpt:

          Blumenbach, the German anthropologist and anatomist, first used the word "race" in 1775 to classify humans into five divisions: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach also coined the term "Ca

      • > What if claim that I am a African American, but I am actually white. Can they quantify and measure my race, will they sent to a local eugenics clinic to measure the size of my head or take my DNA to identify my race?

        Go for it.

        Teresa Heinz-Kerry, of Mozambique, is an African-American.
        Nelson Mandela, of South Africa, is not an African-American.

        If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for you. Any company that would circular-file an application when you remind them of those two facts, isn't

      • Re:Here is a question (Score:5, Funny)

        by exi1ed0ne ( 647852 ) <[ten.stsimissep] [ta] [elixe]> on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:45PM (#14662362) Homepage
        I've always been fond of checking "other" and putting "spawn of Cthulu"
      • Actually the word "Caucasian" comes directly from studies of eugenics at the turn of the century and I consider using it just as offensive as someone using the "n"-word, because it implies endorsing the values and attitudes of the time.

        Yeah. Funny how no body puts checkboxes for "Negroid" or "Mongoloid" anymore, but "Caucasian" still gets the thumbs up.
      • I was born in the US. If I move to Africa and become a citizen, can I check the "American-African" box on forms that I fill out there? :-)

      • "Caucasian" (Score:3, Interesting)

        by tomcres ( 925786 )
        I never check off anything marked "Caucasian".. my ancestry is Italian and German.. nothing to do with the Caucasus.. I'm not Georgian or Ossetian or anything like that.

        Besides, one of my German great-grandparents was a Jew, and one half of my Dad's Italian ancestry is Black African in origin.. Should I then claim Asian or Black?

        Heck, my wife is a Black Angolan immigrant. Our son is technically "African-American" since his mother is African and his father American... but he's not really an "African-Amer

  • Oh like it's not hard enough already!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:01PM (#14661803)
    Searching and applying for jobs online is already difficult enough. With applicant pools numbering in the thousands for many jobs, it's already a royal pain in the ass to get in for an interview. Aside from that, even if you do get an interview it might be one of those "well, we know we won't hire this one but we need to interview X number of people" and you end up being asked such illustrious questions as "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound?" (yes, an actual interview question for a part-time job at $8.50/hr).

    Keep your resume up-to-the-minute current. "The rules allow companies to pick a random pool of applicants by searching the job boards for 'most recent' qualified applicants," Crispin notes. "In those cases, no one will even look at a resume that is more than two or three weeks old." Yikes.

    Oh whatever, if the company is looking for someone with experience that most don't have they are going to look closely at the resumes. If anyone can do the job in the applicant pool they aren't going to care one way or the other.

    For the jobs that I have interviewed for through monster.com and careerbuilder.com applications, I have received a few offers -- none of which bettered my current job security and benefits (the pay was better).

    We don't need laws to make it more difficult to find work -- we need laws that make the jobs we have better than they already are.
    • I agree. All we need is a bunch of new government regulations to make it harder for employers and employees to get together.

      Has someone looked at the low unemployment rates recently and decided something had to be done to raise them, or what?
      • Unemployment rates are only low if you believe the stupid method the government uses to count the unemployed. Anyone over age X or under age Y pretty much doesn't count. Anyone that's been unemployed more than Z number of months doesn't count. That kind of bullshit. They can still be starving and living in a box but they no longer count as unemployed. From what I've seen they also don't seem to do much of a comparison between the number of jobs available and the number of unemployed. Last time I looked at a
    • Aside from that, even if you do get an interview it might be one of those "well, we know we won't hire this one but we need to interview X number of people"

      This happens for on-campus interviews as well. At one law school, for example, every firm interviewing must interview 20 people. However, because the resumes are submitted beforehand, the really prestigious firms basically pick who they are going to "call back" for a second interview before the interviews even start. (The people at the top of the class

    • Which goes to show that the only companies that follow these guidelines are the ones full of assholes. Hey, I don't want to work there anyhow! Everybody else will just fudge the numbers and hire qualified people whether or not their applicants strictly meet the guidelines on paper.

  • Leave it to the gov't (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:01PM (#14661805)
    To totally hose a good system to make it "fair" to people. Sorry, applying for jobs is not a "random" process. Both the worker and the company want what is best for them. picking people at "random" hurts the applicant and the company by bad pairings. way to go dc, inefficency is key!
  • This sounds like it was written specifically for lawyers to bring more Class Action lawsuits against companies and reap big rewards for themselves. Here is a noose, please put your neck in it.

    How long after they require all this tracking till they specify how many of X applicants you must have to obtain a federal contract? I would figure only a few years.

    The only reason to track diversity is to punish when it does not meet that requirement of the day.

  • um.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ryz0r ( 849412 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:02PM (#14661821)
    an applicant must "express interest" in the job

    Surely you wouldnt work in a place you have no interest in!

  • I wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Otter ( 3800 )
    This is going to be a huge hassle for HR departments and seems like it will make diversity harder, not easier to achieve. (The primary beneficiaries are probably the lawyers and extortionist organizations, now that companies have to generate more evidence to be used against themselves.)

    I wonder, though, if this isn't going to be a good thing for job applicants. Qualified applicants, anyway.

    • Actually, this should take the place of many techniques used to force diversity in the work place for government jobs. Instead of actively looking for candidates that will increase diversity percentages, HR departments will standardize the application process. These techniques have been proving to provide better candidates for positions and most companies with good HR departments utilize these techniques already. If you have not figured this out yet you may have already been missing the boat.

      This works b

  • I think this is BS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by trailerparkcassanova ( 469342 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:04PM (#14661844)
    This is a big deal and the only reference is this story. I could find nothing else. The story doesn't answer the diversity subject. BS I say.

  • Isn't it hard enough already? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:06PM (#14661870) Homepage Journal
    It seems they are going to regulate this country to the point where it's impossible to find a job. When's the last time any of the people making all these stupid laws actually tried to get a job? In the olden days you could walk into a place with a help wanted sign and get a job that day and just work - maybe for just that day or maybe for twenty years. Now it's so expensive for companies to hire people and such a risk for them to give someone a try that they often don't fill vacancies for great periods of time and only then when they find an applicant that has exactly the needed skills and referenced. No more picking someone with some skills and the ability to learn and just training them. God no - they could turn out to be a moron or lazy and you can't fire them because it's such a nightmare to do so. The number of unemployed in this country is pretty huge and the time a lot of people can go unemployed can be many months and it all comes down to all the red-tape involved.

    It's great to protect people from shitty employers but not a good idea to create so much red tape that you're keeping a significant number of your citizens from finding work. All this red tape is a good part of the reason temps and illegals are so popular as employees.
    • We are headed towards total socialism. Let government control this, let government control that -- bunch of bullshit if you ask me. I grew up and lived in the Soviet Union, and if there ever was a beaurocratic nightmare state , that was it. I came here to escape the corruption and avoid having to deal with miles of red tape, but it seems the situation gets worse and worse here too.

      So they want the companies to hire people "in a diverse" kind of way. Are they going to have race, gender, sexual orientation q

      • I'm not entirely against socialism but I think the US is ass backwards. We copy the worst elements of socialism but throw out the better elements as being to socialist. We're becoming a hybrid of the worst elements of capitalism and socialism which seems a bad idea. Nobody seems to have the ability to see the long term results of their decisions or maybe they just don't care. Let's all be sensitive of everyones feelings, and get those damn votes come election, and screw the future.

  • Scare phrases (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:07PM (#14661883)
    There are a lot of scare phrases in that article which are typically used to drum up business for consultants. I would talk to your Legal Dept (for a bigger employer) or CPA (for a small employer) before trashing every resume in the Inbox.

    sPh
    • See, this is really about job creation! Just think of all the consultants and legal eagles that businesses will need just to put a job opening up on their website...

  • Big deal (Score:2, Insightful)

    by kpainter ( 901021 )
    It is also illegal to hire an illegal alien in the US. How many businesses got fined for doing that last year nation wide? The answer is somewhere between 1 and 0. This will be ignored.
    • If they are doing all this to stop illegal aliens they are wasting time and money. That group traditionally go for very low end jobs that can evade taxes under the table. Online jobs are typically more engineering and business related. Federal guideline? Does this mean it has to do with the Bush administration?

      • Funny enough most the companies I've seen hire illegals give them $10/hr. That's without any taxes coming out of it. That's better money than a lot of people I know that have degrees are making. Really I have no problem with them hiring illegals as long as they are paying them this kind of fair wage and for temp positions it really makes sense for a company.
  • So if your pal at Ostrich Corp. wants to refer you for a job, know what Ostrich's policy is...

    Remember folks, Ostrich Corp's first policy is to get your head out of the sand and start winging it.

  • TFA? Useless and Misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:14PM (#14661976) Homepage
    My God folks, the article offers no clue whatsoever about where this supposed set of rules is coming from. No Legislative reference, no Government department - Nothing.

    Then it spins into a collection of rather bizarre "tips" for job applicants, most of which don't really seem to have anything to do with the alleged changes in government hiring practices, or even reality.

    Even for slashdot this is pretty weak.

  • Teach HR to write real Tech Job listings (Score:3, Interesting)

    by computer_redneck ( 622060 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:18PM (#14662024)
    Back in 2000 I was searching for a job. I saw a listing. With all the other criteria there was one that said "7 years Windows 95 experience" WTF. That would mean someone would have to have been using Win95 since 1993. Now I know there were betas running around back then and I had one of them at the time but other than me and a few other techies would have actually have had that experience?

    Also having to have exact skills to the job listing would increase the ammount of people lieing on their resumes which means that employers no long could trust that the resume was valid.


    Support our Troops
    Impeach our President

  • This will actually make matters much worse.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:20PM (#14662063)
    In many cases, government jobs are already required to be advertised widely, and candidates must be considered on the basis of their qualifications. This means, that if you have your golfing buddy in mind for the job, all you have to do is make sure the qualifications listed match his (and only his) profile. Now, if applicants have to conform to the qualifications 100% this is a much, much easier process. Imagine a wanted ad like "senior business consultant with 13 years experience in federal auditing blahblah and a minimum of 3, but no more that 4 weeks of experience in an abbatoir", or whatever crappy holiday job the schmuck had.

    Of course, if you do want to give a lot of people a shot, you just state "requirements: carbon based lifeform, literacy" and "the following are a plus: ......"

    So, really, this helps the government hiring cheats.

  • What this will really do... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The effect here will probably be to drive companies to third party recruiters, who will do the direct interaction with the applicant.

    Why? Because candidates are not going to reword their resume for every employer--that's tremendously expensive for the employee. Also, many qualified applicants probably won't have the skills to "search engine optimize" their resume to get noticed. And companies won't want to fall afoul of the law, so they're unlikely to relax rules and "read between the lines."

    This will pr

  • Law of unintended consequences again (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <jmorris@[ ]u.org ['bea' in gap]> on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:22PM (#14662080)
    Congress passes these ever more bigoted laws (in the name of diversity of course, gotta love NewSpeak) so they can feel good about having 'done something' about a problem that increasingly is made worse by more laws because it has been mostly solved. We long since passed the point where the negative impact of more laws were outweighed by the positive benefits. Thirty-forty years ago, yea, there were some serious problems still lingering in society. We talked a good "everybody is equal" but practice didn't match theory very well.

    But these days we have, if anything, overshot equality and went to tribalism amok. These days it seems the only ones who quotes King's "I have a Dream" speech's line about judging everyone on their ideas instead of their skin is Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich because the entire 'Civil Rights' establishment has invested all their political capital on maintaining quotas and pretending to be victims while having all the trappings (limo, jets, mistresses, etc) of the wealthy. Listen up folks, when (in theory if not in practice) the left, the right and just about everyone in between are in agreement on an issue it really isn't much of an issue anymore. The only reason it is still an issue is because too many people have made an industry out of "Oprah Nation" style victimhood as career.

  • Actual Details from Ars Technica (Score:5, Informative)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:26PM (#14662129) Homepage
    Hurrah - someone with research skills!

    The actual rule:
    http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/fedreg/final/200502017 6.htm [dol.gov]
    Obligation To Solicit Race and Gender Data for Agency Enforcement Purposes

    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060207-6127 .html [arstechnica.com]

    Do you know what the OFCCP is? It is the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and that little taste of bureaucratic alphabet soup is a part of the Department of Labor's Employment Standards Administration. The OFCCP's job is to ensure "that employers doing business with the Federal government comply with the laws and regulations requiring nondiscrimination." In essence, that makes the OFCCP one of the many departments that exist within the government to monitor activities and make sure things are done properly and fairly. A noble goal, to be sure, but the OFCCP has distinguished itself with a new rule going into effect this week regarding the tracking of those who apply for jobs on the Internet, and it may have repercussions for anyone using electronic means to search for a new career.
  • At the end of your resume cut and paste the job requirements. Of course this breaks Dice and other on-line places to search, but if you apply then all you do is list everything they've put.

    It's hard enough to find clued people now. Thanks for making it harder, asshats.
  • ...an overbearing, overweening, unresponsive , unaccountable government.

    *You* elected 'em.

    Think before voting, next time.

    Try holding your fave politicians ACCOUNTABLE for once. Sure, career bureaucrats are responsible, but they are told what to do BY CONGRESS.

    - A disgusted native-American male-lesbian libertarian activist

  • Online job hunting doesn't work anyway (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ashitaka ( 27544 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:39PM (#14662273) Homepage
    In spite of:

    - 20 years professional experience.
    - 7 years IT manager
    - C, C++, C#, .NET, VB, SQL Development
    - 10+ years project management

    No interviews or contact whatsoever.

    The only way to really get response is through personal and direct contacts with firm you are interested in.
    • Weird. I get sent job offerings once per week or two from a resume I last updated in August, and I don't have nearly the qualifications and experience that you do in terms of numbers of years.

      On the other hand, I don't have very generic qualifications that everybody and their brother has like "C, C++, C#, .NET, VB, SQL Development." Instead I emphasize my UNIX programming experience, the projects I've worked on, and my interest in continuing to work on such projects. My languages and environments are pra

  • Friend Computer! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Good Morning Citizen!

    Friend Computer has randomly chosen you! Yes, YOU CITIZEN! out of all the applicants for reactor-core cleaning duty!

  • here [washington.edu]

    This Annie person ought to be fired, IMO.
  • I read the article and didn't see how this is anything new.

    I loved the tips section about using correct spelling! If your resume doesn't have the correct spelling then you may not be found during a search....Duh!!!!

  • Hrmmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @02:54PM (#14662484) Homepage
    Guess it's time to add the old "P.S. I'm deaf" to my applications? I've noticed in the past whenever I mention my hearing I get ZERO responses... when I leave it out I often get interviews or an email asking for more info. Regardless, once they find out I never hear back from them. I even had a friend who was a (non-tech) recruiter and showed it to someone at their office who covered the tech jobs. "Wow! Great stuff, can't wait to meet him!" then he HAD to say "Oh, but there is one little thing"... I never heard from them. Now he knows never to mention it either. So what shall I do? If diversity is required why aren't they all over me? Anybody with more experience on this kind of thing have some advice for me? How do you tell them?

    • Re:Hrmmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by complete loony ( 663508 )
      My dad is an amputee, he has no hands. But he's never let that get in the way. He has the neatest "hand writing" I've ever seen. He's an analyst / programmer and he types with a pen and sometimes his elbow's. Sure he types a little slowly, but he gets more work done with shortcuts, keyboard macros and small shell scripts than people half his age. The only thing he can't do is the top button of his shirt, and that is only because he can't reach.
      During the boom he never had any trouble getting work. There wa

  • READ THE PDF! (Score:3, Informative)

    by oh_my_080980980 ( 773867 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:28PM (#14663503)
    For the love of Mike, people, READ THE FRICKIN' PDF!

    http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/fedreg/final/200502017 6.htm [dol.gov]

    The rule is for FEDERAL CONTRACTORS!!! Hello, can anyone read around here. This does not apply to NON-FEDERAL CONTRACTORS. Again, READ THE PDF. It's prefereable to having morons posting comments.

  • Does anybody check for age diversity? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @09:37PM (#14666139)
    When is it my turn to cash in on the affirmitive action jackpot?

    Why do employers demand you tell them your gender and race, but the employers are forbiden to even ask for your age?

    In IT especially, age discrimination is far more prevelent than gender or race discrimination.

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