4 ms·

I got a CV through the other day from a stranger. The guy had some great experience but the CV was weird. It was 10 pages long for 4 jobs. He listed every cou

by shubb 13y ago

I got a CV through the other day from a stranger. The guy had some great experience but the CV was weird. It was 10 pages long for 4 jobs. He listed every course he'd ever been sent on, including health and safety and diversity training ones, and just mixed his degree in somewhere with them. He listed each version of word he'd used (seemly every version released) with equal prominence as Java and SQL. Each time he'd been hired as a temp contractor he wrote his job title as CEO, because he was getting paid via his company. My boss laughed at it and told me to bin it. He needed to know what was wrong, or he'd stay unemployed (which was a shame for a guy with some great skills). I agonized for about a day and finally sent him some tips from my personal email, but I'm sure we could get sued if the strangeness was due to a disability. Something wrong there.

7Figures2Commas 13y ago
I'm curious about your comment "but I'm sure we could get sued if the strangeness was due to a disability." If the possibility that the candidate's "strangeness" was due to some sort of disability crossed your mind, how did you justify putting your employer at risk of a lawsuit by communicating with the candidate, particularly when your superior had directed you to ignore his submission?
- Retric 13y ago
  Doing the right thing is worth taking a little risk. As a side note, some people send out a crap resume while on unemployment so they don't get interviews. In theory you need to look for work, but if you have a fair amount of savings and want to spend the summer surfing then it's a 'safe' way around the rules.
  - 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
    > Doing the right thing is worth taking a little risk. I won't disagree outright with that, but what is "the right thing" here? The threat of litigation is incredibly real when it comes to employment issues. Even the most proactive employers (those that attempt to follow the law and keep meticulous records) face lawsuits from employees, former employees and job applicants. The potential damages can be significant (particularly for certain causes of action) and even small and seemingly baseless claims can easily result in five figures worth of attorney's fees (or more). Here, despite apparently having some idea that his actions could expose his employer to a lawsuit, an employee decided that his employer should take on legal risk despite the fact that his supervisor effectively told him to proceed in a manner that would reduce risk substantially. If as a result of this employee's actions, the company was unable to pay someone's salary, or had to allocate money from expansion to legal expenses, would you still suggest that the employee did "the right thing"?
    - tomrod 13y ago
      Yes. Ethics are often at odds with legality.
      - 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
        So it's ethical to disobey instructions from your superior and take an action that could negatively affect your employer and the other people it employs? That's not "ethics". That's an unwillingness to make a difficult decision (leave your job if you truly believe that you have been asked to take an unethical action).
nknighthb 13y ago
You can't be liable for a disability you don't know about, and I wouldn't assume he has one. At some point, probably around the time he was graduating from high school or college, somebody helped him put together his first resumé, and since it was naturally thin, they probably encouraged him to put in everything that might catch an employer's eye. He's probably never read anyone else's resumé. I've seen this several times, and I've seen the opposite extreme, too. Somebody gets told early on "fit it on one page", and thinks that's how all resumés should be, forever. None of these people have any disabilities I'm conscious of, though in tech, a mild ASD would hardly be shocking. They've just been given advice that's either wrong or incomplete. Meanwhile, I know one guy very well who does have a disability, and whose resumés have frequently been complimented. You'd have no way of knowing from them that he's in possession of a document from a psychologist that says PDD-NOS on it, and unless you know exactly what you're looking for, you're not going to notice when you meet him, either.
- 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
  > You can't be liable for a disability you don't know about, and I wouldn't assume he has one. When it comes to employment matters, you can be sued by just about anyone for just about anything. Opposing counsel can and will spin every fact that seems meaningless or innocuous. For example, the poster here indicates that he responded to the applicant through a personal email. This is not normal behavior, so you can bet a plaintiff's attorney would focus in on that and try to use it to suggest that the poster didn't response through his work email because he knew something wrong was being done. Talk to any defense-side employment attorney and they'll all tell you the same thing: flimsy, baseless lawsuits are filed against employers every single day. But responding to a flimsy, baseless lawsuit costs money, and many of these lawsuits are settled because it's more cost-effective and expedient to pay to make the case go away. Bottom line: taking action based on an unrealistic "you can't be liable..." attitude is extremely dangerous.
bobbles 13y ago
IMO CVs should be 3 pages. 1) Cover letter. Explain why you want the job and why you're a good person for that job. 2) Contact Details & Education. Most relevant and recent should be top of the list. 3) Previous Work experience. List only relevant skills from each position. Less is more. If they want more detail they will ask for it in the interview.
- nilkn 13y ago
  How does (2) fill an entire page outside of someone applying for an academic post who has to list all the conferences they've been to, etc.?
  - bobbles 13y ago
    All mine has is name / address, etc followed by course studied and the relevant topics studied during that course. It's not a 300 word page filled with text. Leaving space is also a good way for people to take notes on the CV (I've found that during my interviews the interviewer often used the CV like a checklist for asking their questions on my experience)

by shubb 13y ago

7Figures2Commas 13y ago

I'm curious about your comment "but I'm sure we could get sued if the strangeness was due to a disability." If the possibility that the candidate's "strangeness" was due to some sort of disability crossed your mind, how did you justify putting your employer at risk of a lawsuit by communicating with the candidate, particularly when your superior had directed you to ignore his submission?

Retric 13y ago
Doing the right thing is worth taking a little risk. As a side note, some people send out a crap resume while on unemployment so they don't get interviews. In theory you need to look for work, but if you have a fair amount of savings and want to spend the summer surfing then it's a 'safe' way around the rules.
- 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
  > Doing the right thing is worth taking a little risk. I won't disagree outright with that, but what is "the right thing" here? The threat of litigation is incredibly real when it comes to employment issues. Even the most proactive employers (those that attempt to follow the law and keep meticulous records) face lawsuits from employees, former employees and job applicants. The potential damages can be significant (particularly for certain causes of action) and even small and seemingly baseless claims can easily result in five figures worth of attorney's fees (or more). Here, despite apparently having some idea that his actions could expose his employer to a lawsuit, an employee decided that his employer should take on legal risk despite the fact that his supervisor effectively told him to proceed in a manner that would reduce risk substantially. If as a result of this employee's actions, the company was unable to pay someone's salary, or had to allocate money from expansion to legal expenses, would you still suggest that the employee did "the right thing"?
  - tomrod 13y ago
    Yes. Ethics are often at odds with legality.
    - 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
      So it's ethical to disobey instructions from your superior and take an action that could negatively affect your employer and the other people it employs? That's not "ethics". That's an unwillingness to make a difficult decision (leave your job if you truly believe that you have been asked to take an unethical action).

nknighthb 13y ago

You can't be liable for a disability you don't know about, and I wouldn't assume he has one. At some point, probably around the time he was graduating from high school or college, somebody helped him put together his first resumé, and since it was naturally thin, they probably encouraged him to put in everything that might catch an employer's eye. He's probably never read anyone else's resumé. I've seen this several times, and I've seen the opposite extreme, too. Somebody gets told early on "fit it on one page", and thinks that's how all resumés should be, forever. None of these people have any disabilities I'm conscious of, though in tech, a mild ASD would hardly be shocking. They've just been given advice that's either wrong or incomplete. Meanwhile, I know one guy very well who does have a disability, and whose resumés have frequently been complimented. You'd have no way of knowing from them that he's in possession of a document from a psychologist that says PDD-NOS on it, and unless you know exactly what you're looking for, you're not going to notice when you meet him, either.

7Figures2Commas 13y ago
> You can't be liable for a disability you don't know about, and I wouldn't assume he has one. When it comes to employment matters, you can be sued by just about anyone for just about anything. Opposing counsel can and will spin every fact that seems meaningless or innocuous. For example, the poster here indicates that he responded to the applicant through a personal email. This is not normal behavior, so you can bet a plaintiff's attorney would focus in on that and try to use it to suggest that the poster didn't response through his work email because he knew something wrong was being done. Talk to any defense-side employment attorney and they'll all tell you the same thing: flimsy, baseless lawsuits are filed against employers every single day. But responding to a flimsy, baseless lawsuit costs money, and many of these lawsuits are settled because it's more cost-effective and expedient to pay to make the case go away. Bottom line: taking action based on an unrealistic "you can't be liable..." attitude is extremely dangerous.

bobbles 13y ago

IMO CVs should be 3 pages. 1) Cover letter. Explain why you want the job and why you're a good person for that job. 2) Contact Details & Education. Most relevant and recent should be top of the list. 3) Previous Work experience. List only relevant skills from each position. Less is more. If they want more detail they will ask for it in the interview.

nilkn 13y ago
How does (2) fill an entire page outside of someone applying for an academic post who has to list all the conferences they've been to, etc.?
- bobbles 13y ago
  All mine has is name / address, etc followed by course studied and the relevant topics studied during that course. It's not a 300 word page filled with text. Leaving space is also a good way for people to take notes on the CV (I've found that during my interviews the interviewer often used the CV like a checklist for asking their questions on my experience)