Re: bogus resume requirements

["Kahn, Stacey" <skahn -at- WB -dot- COM>]

The sanctimonious explanation that the company wants to know all it can about
every prospective employee is both demeaning and dangerous. No matter how much
we love what we do, being an employee means selling your skills and time for a
somewhat-fixed number of hours each week/month/year, for a fixed dollar amount.
Nowhere is it implied or promised that this arrangement will be anything other
than temporary, i.e., no promise is made of lifetime employment, care, support.
It's a business arrangement-- on both sides. What we do on our own time is
*generally* beyond the legitimate concern of our employers. If we grant them
the right to nose into our distant past (pasts?) they've been granted a good
start in checking our current lives-- checking account balance, spending
habits, cholesterol level, medical bills, plans for reproduction, shoe size.
That's all either *way* beyond a legitimate criterion or illegal.

As for SATs in particular, let's get real. Does anyone *really* care how well I
solved geometric problems one Saturday morning in 1982? Does that have
*anything* to do with tech writing? How about those of y'all who grew up and
went to school in the South or Midwest-- did y'all take SATs, or ACTs? Or does
the fact that you didn't take the SATs, and therefore obviously didn't regard
yourselves as sufficiently brilliant to apply to Ivy League schools, eliminate
you anyway?

Sounds to me that what's being looked at is willingness to submit to
unreasonable and degrading treatment in order to get or keep a job.


--Stacey Kahn (1490, old scoring)
SKahn -at- wb -dot- com
speaking for myself and not for my employers