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[RedKing]

As a result, HR departments resort to draconian, mechanical ways to seperate the wheat from the chaff. In some cases, simply having a phrasing different that what they're looking for can make the difference between getting past the 1st cutdown and ending up in the trashcan. They might be looking for "project management" and your resume might say "Managed projects". Too bad, try again.

I know of several places that automatically discard resumes longer than a single A4 page. Handwritten or "fancy" resumes also go in the shredder.

Which is insane. They only want people with tons of experience and skills, but you have to fit all that into a single page. And make it legible. I know of HR departments that ditch any resume where the font is below a certain size, usually 10-point.

[Akura]

As a result, HR departments resort to draconian, mechanical ways to seperate the wheat from the chaff. In some cases, simply having a phrasing different that what they're looking for can make the difference between getting past the 1st cutdown and ending up in the trashcan. They might be looking for "project management" and your resume might say "Managed projects". Too bad, try again.

I know of several places that automatically discard resumes longer than a single A4 page. Handwritten or "fancy" resumes also go in the shredder.

Online applications don't have much better truck with that either. At this point, I absolutely refuse to utilize Snagajob.com for any job applications, due to the fact that I applied for Kohl's(a home furnishing store, for those who don't know), and despite answering the questions on the application in the "expected" way, what pops up when I sent it in basically said "We(Snagajob) don't like your application, so we're not sending it to the company you're applying for. In fact, we're deleting everything you just spent 15 minutes working on. Now go f*$k yourself."

[MaximumZero]

Three things caused seething rage in me today.

A) I went to my first Philosophy class. Hoo boy. Prof whipped out hoaxes that he believed were factual (someone found dozens of mastodons at the north pole? Where there's no land?), pseudoscience and vague science-ish sounding bullshit, declared all religions but one wrong and all but one god made up(although he didn't specify, I can take a guess), decried mathematics as "useless junk", and then said, and I quote (hence the quotes): "There are no atheists. Not one." I may have to nudge this prof to lean in a direction where he's not always right. If that fails, I will use every sales technique I have ever learned, and every Dawkins/Russel/Hawking/etc quote I have ever read, and crush this man under an avalanche of holes poked in his religion. Normally, I leave people alone with their beliefs, but you attack mine outright and decry them as wrong and immoral, I attack back. I will not be a captive audience to be brainwashed.

B) No one will let me buy a used car to build up my credit because I don't have enough credit. Fuck you, society. The way you work is moronic.

C) My wife bitched me out because I didn't get as much free money for my education as she thought I was going to. What the hell more does she want?

[/rant]

[Bouchart]

Back in 2008 I was called for an interview with a magazine publisher.  They wanted a Sales Analyst.  Number crunching type stuff.  With my two degrees from a good school I certainly qualified.

I spoke with a hiring manager named Greg Mason.  He said that with my resume and education I was basically a shoe-in.  The interview goes well.

A week later they call me back to do another interview with someone else from the same department.  That goes well too.

Then nothing happened.  A week or two passes and I call the hiring manager and get his machine.  Eventually the hiring manager gets back to me and says that the company decided not to fill the position and is looking for an ordinary sales job instead.

A couple more weeks pass.  I go back to the company's website and that Sales Analyst position is still listed as being open.  I try calling the hiring manager.  Never get a response.  Tried calling the HR manager.  No response.  I call every single day for two weeks.  They never pick up.

Eventually I call using a different phone number and manage to get through to the HR guy.  He says that Sales Analyst position was filled weeks ago and that day the position disappeared from their website.

The company declared bankruptcy six months later.

[Darvi]

That last sentence should go into the happy thread.

Had it coming, too.

[Vector]

decried mathematics as "useless junk"

Whelp, there we go.  Dude's in trouble now :I

(Honestly, though, I hear this more often than I'd like to admit)

[Bouchart]

Yeah, I'm on my way to a "job fair" in just a bit myself, with my incredibly sparse resume in hand, so I can at least show that I'm trying to not be an under-employed mooch the rest of my life.  Which I certainly don't want to be, but damned if the world ain't making it easy on recent college grads with no vocational skills or professional experience.

Some days, I wonder why I went to college at all.

My little sister who graduated at the top of her class and had a paid internship during college has been unemployed for over 2 years since she graduated. She got her Architectural Engineering degree just in time for the housing crash and is competing against people with 30 years of experience for entry level positions.

I graduated with a batchelors degree in math and in economics right before the banking crisis.  Same idea, really.  It's painful and demoralizing.

[olemars]

Plenty of openings around here in anything engineering or economics related, although I guess continent-hopping isn't anyone's first option.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

and then said, and I quote (hence the quotes): "There are no atheists. Not one."

....And he rationalizes this how, exactly?

[Darvi]

Rationalism is overrated if you have faith, duh.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Not rationalism. Rationalization. Different concepts entierly. In fact, my observations suggest that rapid and widespread rationalizations in many aspects of life are a component of what we call faith.

[Darvi]

Bluhbluh vocabulary and lack of sleep and I'm off to bed now.

[Vector]

Science is the new god, for many people.  We say "science says" as though following the practices of the church, trusting in things personally unverifiable... we say "my psychiatrist" when discussing functions that would typically have been performed by a priest in years past.

The information explosion has its own problems, as you might expect.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

They're personably unverifiable in many cases due to the level of devoted specialization required to understand the more complex areas of many fields. No one can learn them all, but we can trust that other members of the field will jump all over someone who tries to publish incorrect findings. Self-regulation is what makes science an effective tool to make discoveries. I don't think calling that behavior religious is accurate.

As for psychiatrists, I hate psychiatrists due to how soft their field of science usually is, but it cannot be denied that they know somthing about the human mind in terms of science. That's more than priests can give.

[Bauglir]

Yup, math sure is useless. It's not like it's been vital to essentially every scientific advancement ever made, in one way or another. And that's definitely not just one counterpoint out of many.