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When I was hiring writers, I wanted to see their actual resumes, not
the damaged second-generation dreck that the agencies generated. This
always surprised the people at the agencies, who had never heard of
such a thing.
Yet many tech writing managers state proudly that they will not
interview someone whose resume contains errors. I'm forced to assume
that these managers are complacently rejecting perfectly good writers
on the basis of resumes that are the work of a third party.
During the all-too-frequent layoffs that happened back when I was an
employee, the employers often had a state policy that you could come
in and use the phones, copiers, and fax machines for a few weeks while
you looked for a new job. Yet I've heard at least one person on this
group say that he would reject a resume with a fax header that
indicated that it was sent from an employer, on the grounds that the
sender obviously lacked ethics. Furthermore, many people who are
self-employed, or who have spouses who are self-employed, will fax
their resumes from a home office. These resumes will appear with a
corporate fax header at the top, which may well fool such managers.
-- Robert
Robert Plamondon * High-Tech Technical Writing
36475 Norton Creek Road * Blodgett OR 97326
541-453-5841 * Fax: 541-453-4139 mailto:robert -at- plamondon -dot- com * http://www.pioneer.net/~robertp
