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 I'm not working in the "IT Industry" (I guess my email came from an IBM business partner list, an outdated one).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.
XPages - the "other" skills
Tue, Aug 31st 2010 4:29a Stephan H Wissel In most of the XPages trainings I conducted in 2009 and 2010 there were participants with no prior exposure to Notes and Domino other than using it as a user. They all however had experience with web development. XPages' JavaScript, CSS and HTML was like their natural environment and they had no problem catching up with "the old Notes nuts". The later however, especially the "client only" developers struggled. They struggled not with DDE or XPages per se, but with the open standards it embraces. [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
ldd
lotus
notes
xpages ajax
css
development
dojo
eclipse
google
java
javascript
oracle
soa
wiki
xml
xslt
61
eLearning in the enterprise vs. eLearning in education
Sat, Aug 28th 2010 4:29a Stephan H Wissel I had an interesting chat with the IT teacher of Catholic High about eLearning. I'm following the subject for a very long time. In the early eighties I bought one of the earliest eLearning authoring tools called OpenICE from Dialog Video (a Swiss company which seems to be history now - the only trace of OpenICE I could google was in a document in the download section of The Morrison Company.
There is a lot of money spend both in enterprises and in academic, but the stellar success stories are f [read] Keywords: collaboration
css
enterprise
google
integration
widget
wiki
176
XPages Medical Advice
Mon, Aug 23rd 2010 11:38p Stephan H Wissel The truth about XPages:
But of course you know that and are in tune with the impermanence of being and continuous upgrade your skills. [read] Keywords: xpages wiki
66
Boys and their toys X
Mon, Aug 23rd 2010 10:33p Stephan H Wissel Huawei topped their already impressive E5 device
with a new entry, the E583C
On top of being a mobile hotspot for 5 devices it spots a OLED display and via microSD up to 32G shared storage. So a small team working away easily can share what they are working on and access the Interweb at the same time using a good looking gadget.
(via godevice.com) [read] Keywords: gadget
mobile
wifi
136
Visualize using Mindmaps
Sun, Aug 15th 2010 6:29a Stephan H Wissel Mindmaps are an incredible tool to collect and share thoughts on any topic in a very compact and comprehensive format. Just look at the sample Ernest did for Water (his current topic in science):
He used iMindmap which has the most natural look from all mindmap software offerings I've seen so far (and is available on Win, Linux, Mac and iPad). It is the commercial offering of Tony Buzan who claims the invention of mindmapping. If you like eProductivity, you might want to look at MindManager, [read] Keywords: notes
notes client
linux
mac
wiki
117
Speed boost for your Notes client on Linux
Sun, Aug 1st 2010 2:29p Stephan H Wissel You need enough RAM. Follow these steps (adopted from here):
Stop the Notes client
Create a new directory: mkdir ~/notestemp
Edit your notes.ini and add:
view_rebuild_dir=/home/[yourid]/notestemp/
NOTES_TEMPDIR=/home/[yourid]/notestemp/
TempDir=/home/[yourid]/notestemp/
Edit the mounting table: sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Add this line (one line, tab separated values):
tmpfs /home/[yourid]/notestemp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0
and save the file
Mount the new directory:sudo mount -a (a [read] Keywords: notes
notes client
show-n-tell
linux
72
Command line tool for Linux command line junkies
Mon, Jul 19th 2010 12:25p Stephan H Wissel I found a little gem for "Friends of the commandline"TM. Since the autor suggested to improve this with zenity I went ahead and created ~/bin/runthis:
#!/bin/sh
#~/bin/runthis
############################################################################
# Runs commands that have been entered in the prompt box
# Originally published here: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/2848/bash-at-your-fingertips-nifty-notifysend/
# Replaced command line with zenity dialog
######################### [read] Keywords: linux
76
Run
Mon, Jul 19th 2010 11:25a Stephan H Wissel KVM and VirtualBox are two virtualization solutions for Linux. KVM requires the module kvm_intel to be loaded, while VirtualBox can't run with the module running. So if you can't makeup your mind what to use, you need a little script magic to get this working. Here are the steps:
Download libnotify for nice bubble notifications (just eye candy):
sudo apt-get install libnotify (Of course you can use the Synaptics package manager in System-Administration and simply search for the library, but th [read] Keywords: administration
linux
virtualization
248
Getting close with IBM OneUI
Sat, Jul 17th 2010 8:24a Stephan H Wissel I recommended the use of IBM OneUI before including a helper stylesheet. While there is a complete documentation available, a little explanation about the how and why goes a long way. The OneUI is not so much about colours and fonts, but about structure, navigation and layout. Following its guidelines your applications get a consistent look, which user studies show increase user confidence about their ability to use your web application. This translates into less help desk calls. Any consistent [read] Keywords: ibm
ldd
lotus
notes
notes client
xpages application
applications
css
development
105
Multi column checkboxes and radio buttons
Mon, Jul 12th 2010 11:24p Stephan H Wissel Brian shared his implementation of multi-column check boxes. Having such a control mimicking the functionality of the Notes client is pretty helpful. Brian's approach however wasn't very re-usable, so I though of a way to come up with a more reusable solution:
The resulting custom controls can be easily added to any page with a few lines of code. You need to reference 2 supporting JavaScript libraries and then add a few lines to your page:
< xc:MultiColumnCheckBox numberOfColumns="3"dataB [read] Keywords: notes
notes client
xpages bleedyellow
bleedyellow.com
javascript
openntf
xml
or 
good guide to land a job and try again.
