In the current economic condition and with the impending implosion of Satyam the frequency of resumes ending up in my mailbox has sharply increased. Typically now I get requests from people between 5 and 15 years of experience, all with completed university degrees and all making the same basic mistake. Here a sample: Hi
I am [Name removed to prevent embarrassment] with xx years of experience in IT Industry.
I request you to consider me as candidate for a suitable opening in your company.
Please find my resume attached
Regards
[Name]
>/font>
So what's wrong with that? Everybody likes to have a good job. Here we go:
I was on the BCC list. My spam filter had sorted it out. Advice: Put in that little effort and send individual emails. If a candidate isn't putting effort for the most important thing in his business (his own job), I can conclude, that he won't go the extra mile when working for me.
No personal salutation. Advice: The Internet is an open book. There are phone lines. Hiring managers have names and they like to be properly addressed.
Why did he write to me? I'm not working in the "IT Industry" (I guess my email came from an IBM business partner list, an outdated one). I work in a very specific niche: Craftsmanship around IBM's collaborative products. Advice: State and be very specific why you write to a specific company. Show that you did your homework and already know about the company. If you don't know what to say: at least state how the vision/mission/value statement resonates with you. This creates a feeling of "he is family" in the hiring manager.
No statement of contribution. Advice: If I hire you I want to know what I get. Yes I can read the attached CV, but I won't if I'm not convinced it is worth my time. So sum it up: managed projects in a CMMI5 certified company worth xxx dollars on time and cost. Passionate about [state your technology passion]. Will fit into [part of my organization, you have researched that isn't it?]
How should I know what position suits him? Advice: I know that feeling: first get a job and then see how to get into the position you like to do. But that's a bad idea. State clearly what you are good at, so it is easier for me to consider you. If you have praised my company enough you can state, that you also would consider a position that leads you to your desired role.
Resume formatting careless, no photo.
Resume format in MS-Word to an IBM Business Partner company. So you are not following what IBM is talking about? At least PDF would make sense. (I know that is controversial, but DOC isn't an ISO standard. ODF, DocX (eventually) and PDF are.
No web presence. : Do good and talk about it. If you don't have a blog at least show me where you contribute online (on OpenNTF, Notes.net, JavaRanch.com). If you don't use online resources and at least occasionally contributed back.... in what century do you work?
No chat. How can I ask you a quick question? Skype, GTalk, Yahoo are free.
Get yourself one or the other good guide to land a job and try again.
Happy Birthday Anthony and Ernest
Sun, Mar 14th 2010 5:35a Stephan H Wissel 10 years ago the biggest adventure of my life started. It is still on and I'm still learning.
Happy birthday Anthony and Ernest!
Being a geek dad we celebrate with the appropriate present and stuff to chill out afterwards. [read] Keywords:
56
Broadband and web2.0 applications
Sun, Mar 14th 2010 4:33a Stephan H Wissel Singapore is one of the most wired companies in the world with a Broadband penetration exceeding 100% (Korea take that ). I recently switched to Starhub from SingTel on one of their midrange plans (not the alledged 100 MBPS one), so I was curious and headed over to SpeedTest to check how I'm doing. Locally I got 8.42 Mbps and overseas 5.37 (Boston), 4.76 (San Franscisco) and 5.3 (Texas) Mbps.
Should be ample power for any web based application isn't it? Not so fast. Just recall how most of [read] Keywords: lotus
symphony
ajax
application
applications
development
google
network
web 2.0
web2.0
65
Boys and their toys VII
Sat, Mar 6th 2010 6:24a Stephan H. Wissel The good Movie Bag is loosing shape and SWMBO insists on replacement. SoI had a look at Varier: [read] Keywords:
164
Address Dialog on stereoids
Sat, Feb 27th 2010 3:23p Stephan H Wissel Over the long live of Lotus Notes the address dialog has been a trusted, never changing compagnion:
Over the years it got some facelift like the ability to drag and drop or the ability to sort by Notes hierarchy, language or corporate hierarchy (anybody seen that?) or to look at details in yet another window. It works OK as long as the number of names is small and diverse. However once you enter cultures that are notoriously short of last names and sport large companies it gets tedious to pic [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
show-n-tell
facebook
properties
60
Quote collection
Sat, Feb 27th 2010 3:23p Stephan H Wissel A collection of quotes I like:
Thomas T. Nagle: Sustainable cost advantages are realized not by constant belt tightening,
but by the efficient use of resources
Edsger Dijkstra It is never enough to satisfy your own intellect (since it will be laid in your grave with you), but one must teach others, to use their mind.
The more one focuses on these two tasks, the faster one realized that they are the two sides of one coin:
Who teaches himself, discovers what can be taught
Antoine de Saint-Exup [read] Keywords: lotus
127
JavaScript Closures
Sat, Feb 20th 2010 8:30a Stephan H Wissel XPages allow you to use JavaScript closures in both client and server side code. There are plenty explanations available, which seem to make them rather more mysterious. After looking at a lot of them I conclude: "JavaScript closures are like riding a bicycle: nearly impossible to explain, but obvious and natural once you get it". So here is my try, from a LotusScript perspective.
First step in the puzzle is the fact, that there is no difference in JavaScript between a function and a class. To [read] Keywords: lotusscript
show-n-tell
xpages google
java
javascript
server
wiki
Netgear support hell reloaded - Part 3 - Salvation
Tue, Feb 16th 2010 3:24a Stephan H Wissel Netgear's local support was incredible helpful (Thx Andrew Tan). It turned out the motherboard is fried and one of the disk behaves "interesting". The WD green drives look good on paper, but not so much online. Anyway Andrew was so kind to loan me a spare Netgear unit, so I could resync the faulty drive [read] Keywords: google
85
Boys and their toys VI
Mon, Feb 15th 2010 4:24a Stephan H. Wissel It is a public holiday here in Singapore, so I can catch up with blog reading while the gentlemen are busy to collect hong bao (red packets). The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is on with a lot of new toys:
The Samsung I8520 Halo running on Android with an integrated projector
Sony Ericsson X10/X10pro
More coverage at Heise (German), Engadget and elsewhere [read] Keywords: google
mobile
44
GTD in Singapore (or close by if you like)
Thu, Feb 11th 2010 3:24a Stephan H Wissel I love GTD. I'm a happy user of eProductivity (currently not so happy with myself, but that's a different story for a different day). Over time I got introduced to David and his team. In a recent conversation with Michael Dolan, the Director Coaching Services in DavidCo, he mentioned that DavidCo is planning to dispatch a coach to visit Singapore in the near future to serve an existing client. This presents the unique opportunity to engage DavidCo in a Corporate Seminar, get top quality Consulti [read] Keywords: consulting
twitter
wiki
or 
good guide to land a job and try again.
