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Subject:Re: I Just Got One of Those Resumés From:MichaelHuggins -at- aol -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 01 Feb 2002 12:34:59 EST
I share the concern of the person who received a resumé from the self-described MS Office expert.
To claim expertise in MS Office is to imply expertise in any of its applications, including Word. To imply expertise in Word and then submit a word-processing artifact that reflects no such thing is, at the least, to impose on the recipient by asking him or her to disbelieve the evidence of one's own submission.
Purported expert or not, to produce a word processing text with manual spacing instead of tabs is to function beneath the level one would have the right to expect of an office temp with only a high school education. Use of tabs isn't even a software application skill; it is a typewriting skill, and was when I had to use them as a clerk typist for the Army Corps of Engineers in 1970, long before anyone ever heard of computer-based word processing.
To claim to be an expert and submit work that fails even to reach the level of an office temp, for consideration of the position of writer, is astonishing in its obtuseness and presumptuousness.
None of this is a "Holmesian deduction," nor does it imply excessive negativism on the part of the hiring manager. On the contrary, the implications are right in front of one's face and impossible to avoid.
To whoever wrote the original post, I would say that the applicant has effectively damaged his own chances, and you are right to wonder about him.
Michael Huggins
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