Only an idiot would make it that easy for a potential employer to see
that I'm over 40 and toss my resume in the trash without even glancing
at the rest of it. You want me to be an idiot, I presume?
Over 40! LOL. What year was it you started Uni - 63? Makes you a
little more than over 40! How do you think the interviewer will feel
when you come in weilding your zimmer frame!
OMG - if you cannot work that out, I'd hate to see how specific any
program specifications would need to be before your able to produce anything!
That's not important in a resume. I'm just trying to get a programming
job. If they want more info about my published papers, they can ask me
during a telephone interview. In fact I was never told where the NMR
paper was published, and I wasn't given a pre-print as I was promised.
It is important as it shows your definition of "published" doesn't
just mean stuck up on some bodgy web site. A paper which has been
refereed and published shows you have the ability to clearly
express yourself in writing. It is also a simple way to verify the
honesty of the applicant as its reasonably trivial to verify the facts.
How could you not know where something you wrote was published? All
the papers I've had published required be to do things like sign off
copyright or sign a statement that the work was mine etc etc. Surely
you had to submit the paper to a journal/publisher?
Were you the sole author of these papers - if not, you should be also
indicating you were only a co-author and not give the impression it
was just your work. Its the only explination I can think of why you
wold not know where your paper was published.
If the paper has not been published or was simply a tech report etc,
then don't mention it at all!
Why? Each language is somewhat different on each different platform.
The fact I've used the languages on lots of platforms shows I've used a
wide range of versions in a wide range of environments, hence some of
what I've done is likely to be similar to whatever the employer might
want. Somebody else who has never used any of the languages except on
an Amiga, might not have the foggiest idea how to interface to system
utilities on other systems, and might not even be aware that different
platforms have different system interfaces, and might be totally
stumped when Amiga software doesn't run immediately elsewhere. I'm
trying to show my versatility of experience, showing my ability to
adapt in the past and have a variety of experience possibly useful in
the future.
That may be relevant if you had worked recently on different
plaforms. However, your experience is so outdated its not worth
cluttering up and possibly distracting from points the employer may be
very interested in.
Not true. The server needs to have built-in support for CGI, and that
support must be enabled by administration. However I've split the Unix
part and the CGI part, and combined Unix with Linux, in my latest edit
on the master of the 2005.June resume on my Mac.
What do you mean "Not true" - There is lots of CGI stuff out there run
on nearly every platform you can think of, windows, Mac, Linux - none
of which are Unix.
I don't know how. You'll have to help me.
I don't have to do anything! This is your problem, work it out.
Only databases I created myself in MicroSoft ACCESS on Windows, and
only the default database in CloudScape on Linux. In both I then made
my own tables in that database, no pre-existing tables. For one
application I manually created all the tables and manually entered all
the data by copy&paste in the ACCESS GUI, and the JDBC application used
it as a read-only lookup table. In another application, creation of all
tables and loading them with all start-up data and adding new data
under user command was all done from JDBC.
On the other hand, anyone who had never used databases at all could lie
and write "used databases" on their resume, but only somebody who knew
a little about the techncal details could include all the specific
things that I did, thereby proving I am not lying that I wrote JDBC
software etc.
Actually, they shallow level of description you have made me think you
had next to no database experience at all. From what you have since
put above, I now see you have minimal or next to know experience - so
little, that calling it experience is pushing things a bit. Connecting
to a database using odbc/jdbc or any other bridge is trivial - you can
get the directions out of the manual and have it up and working within
a day. If you are going to sell database experience, you need to show
- Familiarity with SQL, especially the more advanced aspects, such
as nested queries, corelated queries, the transaction model
(commit/rollback), constraints, differences between DDL and DML,
outer join and outer-left join etc.
- Knowledge of the relational database model, a grasp of Cobb's
"Normal Forms" and general database design principles. A good
understanding of the differences between hierarchical, network,
relational and object relational databases is also useful.
- Familiarity with database constraints (i.e. null constraint,
check constraint, foreign key constraint and various different
indexing methods, the impact of functions and indexes etc are
all very useful.
- An understanding of differences in various ANSI SQL
implementations - for example, why might you get different
results for an outer-left join query between two different
databases with the same data which both claim to be ANSI SQL
compliant?
- Optimization. What can you do to optimize ODBC or JDBC (or
whatever) based database connectivity.
- NULLS - how should they be interpreted? When should you specify
"not null" as a constraint and when not to? is null and "" the
same?
These are the sorts of things employers expect someone with experience
working with a database will have. MS Access is barely a database in
the terms of what employers think of when talking about a
database. Database experience is "bread and butter" for most
developers and you need to understand it way beyond the ability to
connect to an access database or a stripped down "wannabe". Get
yourself an instance of postgres to learn with (don't bother with
MySQL). Learn how to use it features, how to administer it, optimize
performance and maintain it. Once you have all of that, you can claim
database experience. Until then, you can only claim minimal experience
with a database connectivity method - which is not much different from
claiming experience with ftp - both are assumed to be something anyone
applying for an entry level positin would have.
I have more than 22 years experience writing software, including
several large useful projects. How can I best convey that in my resume
without boring the junior staff member whose job it is to screen
resumes, but without making it obvious I'm over 40 hence unemployable?
Over 40 again - heee heee haaa.
Bottom line, stop referring to ove 20 years experience. You don't have
over 20 years experience - stop kidding yourself. When it comes to
jobs, the only experience that counts is paid employment
experiences. Unless you have sat programming 7-8 hours a day 5 6 days
a week for the past 20 years, you do not have 20 years experience. It
also makes you seem like a liar because your skills don't match those
of someone who has been doing it full time for 20 years.
Because although it was the best index on the net from 1991 to about
1995, since then it's been made obsolete first by Yahoo then by Google.
Nobody would want to look at it online now, but still it's impressive
that I created the very first toplevel meta-index to the InterNet
before Yahoo got the idea to start theirs.
Gee, maybe you gave them the idea!
If it was "the best" on the net during that period, then some of us
who have been here for a while should remember it - what was it
called? Just for interest, what web server was it being used with back
in 1991? Also, if it was the first, the techniques used to build the
index must have been pretty impressive - how did you do it?
Rapid prototypeing and development is a methodology, which can't be
demonstrated by listing projects that allegedly used it.
And trying to describe the methodology would require a major essoy, at
least ten pages, not anything suitable to include in or with a resume.
How would you propose I prove conclusively, by wording on my resume,
that indeed I use that methodology when I write most of my software?
Of course they are methodologies - but you cannot claim experience or
proficiency with a methodology unless you have used it in real world
situations (as opposed to contrived learning environments). Yo can
claim awareness and knowledge of such methodologies, but not
proficiency unless you have real-world experience applying the
methodology to something other than trivial problems.
Yes. I started with my best resume to-date, which you think is crap but
it's the best I have so-far, and cut out the parts totally irrelevant
to the particular job, and added stuff that wasn't in the general
resume starting-point but where my extra experience matched the
requirements of the job ad. Yielding the best customized resume
I could do when I had collected three or four job ads from a single
search of a job-ads site and needed to get out responses to all those
ads before they became stale. It would have been totally stupid to
spend two months writing a custom resume from scratch for each of those
simultaneously going-stale-fast ads.
You couldn't tell that each resume deleted different items and inserted
different new items?
For someone who keeps pulling up others on their failure to be
prercise, you seem to be able to get vague or inprecise when it suits
you. Read what I wrote again - I didn't say I couldn't tell what was
different from your resumes, I said I could not tell what job
type/class/catagory they were "customized" for. If I couldn't
determine that, its unlikely any employer would see anthing which
would get their attention.
One of the ads, found on CraigsList:
78086540
www.fairisaac.com/Careers/Opportunities. Job Req #383.
Another was: (e-mail address removed)
Another on CraigsList: 76790333 (e-mail address removed)
Another on CraigsList: 75462527 (e-mail address removed)
I don't give a shit about CraigsList and I'm not going to waste my
time holding your hand and spelling everyting out in detail and spoon
feeding you. The key point is that if the type of job was not obvious
to me reading your resumes, it is likely that any prospective employer
is not going to see what it is you have that might interest them.
I'm not going to bother responding to any more of your posts - I
realise now its totally pointless because your more intent on
justifying your current position and being defensive than on honestly
listening and considering either the validity of the criticism or if
you don't feel its valid, why people criticise it. You also seem to
have a real "victim" mentality and I cannot see you ever being able to
deal with it. I will try to put down for one last and final time some
points you may like to consider and possibly change your
perspective/outlook
1. You have been looking for work for over 10 years with no
success. Does this mean your doing something wrong or the whole
rest of the world is wrong?
2. If the whole rest of the world is wrong, why is it other people
find jobs and 10+ years of unemployment is considered excessive -
especially for someone with a University degree?
3. How many other people have you ever heard of who have spent 10+
years failing to get a job in a specific area, but have also failed
to find any other job?
4. Forget about constantly pushing "over 40". You had graduated from
uni before man walked on the moon! If I'm right and you started in
1963, and lets be generous and assume you were a bright school kid
who got through high school by 16 and started Uni at 17, that would
make you 58/59 this year. So, your nearly 60, have not worked for
10+ years, have next to know commercial programming experience with
modern/mainstream/popular languages and trying to get an entry
level position. Its not a position I would envy and I'm not trying
to make light of it, but honestly "Wake up and smell the roses" -
you are totally deluding yourself if you expect to get a
programming job - it just aint gonna happen. Its not fair, but the
world isn't fair.
To put it in a different perspective - I'm in my mid-40's and have
worked as a programmer (commercially) pretty much full time for the
past 19+ years. I was born in 1960 - three years before you entered
Uni. I've probably been a bit fortunate in being able to find jobs,
but I've also been able to find quite a few. The longest job I've
held at one place without a break is 5 years. I have been fortunate
in never having been fired and probably a third of the people I've
worked for have re-employed me at some stage to do additional work
for them. I have lived almost the whole of the last 20 years in a
rural location (a "city" of 20k people) and until about 5 years
ago, nearly all my work was done via telecommuting (apart from some
consulting where they wanted me to work on site).
The point of all of this is that I also have a lot of friends who
had difficulty getting jobs post y2k and the dot com bust. However,
they had similar work experience to me (possibly a bit more
"specialised"). These friends of mine are the ones you have been
competing with over the last 5 years (as well as young energetic
fit recent comp. sci grads). If these commercially experienced
friends of mine have had moderate difficulty in finding jobs and
competing with recent graduates, how well do you think you stack
up?
All of this is not meant to be depressing or cause despair. What I
think you need to do is a really honest and critical re-assessment
of what you want with honest and realistic reference to
reality. You are not going to get a commercial programming
job. However, you may be able to find something related which you
will find tolerable (possibly even rewarding), which will give you
the necessary finances to make life a bit easier and possibly
enable you to indulge in a more satisfying hobby of programming
where you can follow your real programming interests un-restrained
by what may or may not make you more employable as a programmer.
I'm out of this thread (and all related ones now). My apologies to the
rest of the list for this off-topic waste of bandwidth.
Tim
