Dumbing down your resume/life
The Strib writes about disembellishment, or dumbing down your resume. I left a comment:
This is hardly something new
From 1988-2002 I wrote resumes for over 7,000 clients. People have always dumbed down their resumes precisely because HR is clueless and more obsessed with cost than suitability. But while you should not lie on your resume, an omission is not a lie.
I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a teacher who had a Master’s degree who wanted that on their resume. School districts don’t hire teachers with masters. The school would benefit, the students would benefit, but a younger teacher would be cheaper. Age discrimination is illegal, masters discrimination is not.
If employers really played by the rules, lying by omission wouldn’t be necessary. The necessity of concealing your age or qualifications is, however, very necessary because employment laws are not enforced in this country thanks to four decades of laissez faire Republicanism in which all rewards accrue to those at the top while the rest scramble for the crumbs.
No, I don’t write resumes anymore. After 14 years of it I was starting to feel like a trustee at a concentration camp. Our employment system has been gamed by the business colleges and no longer works. We have the laws to fix it, but not the political will. The deference shown by this reporter to the HR folks demonstrates the degree to which the process has been distorted.
Thanks to technology, there will never again be enough jobs unless government chooses to create them. There is no marketplace solution for an ever more productive workforce, but the government could remedy this if we would just let them enforce the laws already on the books, and then tax the overpaid to help finance jobs creation (building/repairing infrastructure, more teachers, more daycare, more healthcare personnel, research and development, etc.).
I probably shouldn’t have left that comment. Everytime I do something like this, the phone rings and people try to hire me to write their resumes. In truth, I haven’t stopped writing resumes, I’ve just stopped working with bankers, financial industry types of all stripes, healthcare administrators, insurance people, pharmaceutical sales folks, etc., etc.
If this recession was the German occupation of France, the recovery would see an explosion in kangaroo courts with the end result of practically our entire management class having their heads shaved by angry resistance fighters.
Seriously, the only reason that day is so far off is because any chance of a real recovery is really far off. Obama’s about to lose Axelrod, Emanuel and Summers. IF he replaced them with actual thinking, caring and compassionate human beings, that day could come sooner.
But if we elect some teabaggers to Congress and give the Republicans some momentum, that day might never come.
Yes, it’s almost time for another election and yes I’m bowdlerizing my posts again. Nothing negative about Democrats, but a new twist this year. I’m cutting back on the outrage stories as well because I think we’re all exhausted by “their” bad behavior.
They want us tired. They want to create outrage fatigue so we’ll stay home on November 2. Fuck you if you don’t vote this year, and fuck you twice if you don’t vote for Democrats (with very few Blanche Lincolnesque exceptions).
But you know more than most people because you read blogs. Because you read blogs you better understand the stakes. For you, voting is not enough. You need to help turn out others to vote.
It’s not a vote for Obama or the stunted solutions of the Wall Street enabled moderates. It’s a vote to kill off the idiocy once and for all. Until the 20% hard right is discredited and humiliated, they will continue to be the “he” in he said/she said.
The alternative to winning this election (and we win all ties), is to live the rest of your life in a world where you have to hide your leadership qualities from others, not letting them know how smart or talented or experienced you are lest they see you as a threat, and not a good hire.
The system is broken and only those who approve should apply. Employers want loyalty from you while they offer none in return. Hard work to make up for the slackers in the executive suites. Creativity to compensate for inadequate supplies due to overly generous dividend checks. Silence in response to abuse, obeisance in the face of obtuseness, meekness in reply to belligerence.
If they win, this will never be America again. All the qualities we culturally prize from independence to innovation are despised by those who hold advanced business degrees and who have expertise in cannibalizing resources and cutting manpower.
This November 2, vote like every job you’ll ever have depends on it, because it does.
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A federal judge just made a rare ruling that reinstated a wrongfully fired worker. Margaret Witt was an Air Force nurse with the rank of major. She was discharged after 17 years of honorable service to our nation for allegedly violating DADT rules.
The judge ruled she hadn’t, and must be reinstated. With back pay that means she’s put in her 20 years and can retire with a full pension.
I think the real story here is obvious. The teabaggers would let the military continue to purge gays, and would look the other way while the Christianists push out the non-fundamentalists in the military.
The left creates jobs by promoting growth. The right creates jobs by firing the left and taking their positions.
Fuck you if you don’t vote November 2.
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Terrance Heath has a pile of links all about poverty, the work force, and how the right is crushing American values all in the name of American values. Robert Reich writes about how our income gap is killing our economy.
The GOoPers are also amping up to go after “overpaid” federal workers. Just like they’ve gone after overpaid teachers. Before that it was union members (back when we still had unions worth mentioning).
If you get paid, they’re offended. If you have benefits, they’re horrified. If you don’t vote for them, they think you hate America.
They want you to stay home on November 2.
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Masturbating on the edge of the apocalypse.
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The UM is coming up with new plans to force students to graduate in four years.
Fucking hypocrites. The first thing you learn from writing resumes in the Twin Cities is that no one graduates from the UM in four years, because the UM’s graduation requirements can rarely (if ever) be fulfilled on time due to overcrowding in required classrooms.
My experience working with UM students taught me that it only takes one mistake in scheduling to miss an on-time graduation. This is not the fault of the students, it’s the fault of a University that is genuinely unaccountable.
They got their way on the their new football stadium, and now traffic on University/4th Street is completely broken down. They schedule on campus dental appointments at the same time as classes change because the hell that creates for their patients is not a matter of concern for them.
Their highest paid professors teach the subjects like business, and their graduates exacerbate our already bad situation.
They dumped the General College because they didn’t care about C students, i.e. inner city trash.
They’re stymying light rail because change frightens them.
No one graduates from the UM on time because the UM is not a competent institution. How could it be when they pay their top administrators so much?
Overpaid administrators have to cut during lean times because how else could they keep their fat paychecks?
If they succeed and more students graduate on time, it will be because those students had less face time with actual profs, completed classes led grad students, and took more easier classes that theoretically fulfilled general liberal arts requirements.
Education won’t have anything to do with it and no, the UM could give a shit less if you vote or not.
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An end to the insufferable teabaggers would also mean an end to judicial reconstruction by the right.
In Iowa, they want to oust all the state supreme court justices who voted for gay marriage. If that works, they’ll go after every judge who offends them by interpreting the Constitution in a non-teabaggish way.
If we don’t stop them this fall and then again in 2012, emigration won’t be a joke, it will be the only recourse.
We’re not fighting the 20%, we’re fighting the corporations. Teabaggers are just orcs in the service of our corporate Sauron.
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Etc.:
Roseanne Cash says that her dad went into his final coma worrying that we would invade Iraq
Ed Kohler went to that breakfast with Brother Ali and has a report & pix
37 years of enabling MPR pissantry (without this cash cow, MPR would have probably have truly become “public” radio at some point, instead of Bill Kling’s private revenue stream)
Sorting out the ownership of a half-billion dollar emerald (I guess the notion that it belongs to the indigenous people of the region in which it was found is too utterly alien for the courts to consider)
Should a college honors student go to prison for life for a stupid mistake? (a stupid mistake that killed four men?) (just like Bill Janklow killed a guy but got a wrist slap for?) (more about Bill Janklow)
It would be easy to despise Obama, but nothing you care about would improve if he was further handicapped by an even worse Congress
Don’t blame Obama, don’t blame Congress. Vote because it’s the only meaningful tool you or I have for fixing things. Vote like you had a real choice because if you don’t, you’ll never have any real choices ever again.
Just found you: Loved your resumes post, love all your posts, couldn’t stop reading. Finally, someone who writes what I’m thinking on many of my favorite subjects. And yes, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show WAS the best.
Welcome to Minnesota. Not sure from your blog if you’re in the Twin Cities, but — depending on what you’re into — I think you’ll like it here. Most people do.
Think twice before ordering seafood. If you’re an Irish brahmin, you’ll have to go Eastern European to get your cabbage fix (your choice of Russian or Ukrainian). Guinness we’ve got.