RE: Tips on Getting Hired

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>]

Jim B said:
> It's difficult for me to imagine some of the people on this list 
condensing
> their 20+ years of experience, education, goals, awards, etc. to two 
pages.
> It would look something like this: "Widget Co., 1984-1985, Tech Writer:
> Worked hard, got paid, liked it".

Unless there's something about the Widget Co. job that directly relates 
to the position you're applying for, that's probably all you can or 
should say. If you're still a working writer, presumably you have much 
more recent experience that would cover whatever relevant skills you 
used back then.

Of course there are times when you should emphasise even older projects 
or positions:
- high-profile employer or project
- sounds cool
- rare skill

So if the employer has a middleware product for creating defence 
simulations on UNIX, you might highlight the time you worked at defence 
contractor A in the early 90s, the middleware toolkit you wrote about a 
few years ago, any UNIX or Linux projects you've been involved with, and 
so on.

I don't usually say much about my time as a mainframe programmer in the 
1980s, because so what? Mainly I keep it there to show that I wasn't 
hoboing or in the slammer between 1984 and 1991. But if the job 
description mentions mainframe skills, experience in a s/w development 
environment, surveys, data mining, etc, you can bet I turn those three 
lines into a couple of paragraphs.

Stuart
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