Have It Our Way

It's been over a month since I announced to the world that I need to get a job and asked for help toward this end, and to date I haven't gotten a single response. I haven't even attracted any 'hate mail' ("You shlub, do you really think anyone cares about you and your blog?"), employment spam, or scammers - man, I must creep people out or something. Maybe I should have just begged for money; that's what everyone else would have done.

What next? Using the Web as an employment resource is a bit overwhelming, and it is easy for a person in my position to succumb to 'Internet Information Overload'. I figured the next most basic thing to do would be to post my résumé at some job board sites. Accordingly, I gave my résumé a thorough overhaul as I hadn't touched it since 2003:
(1) I subtracted several sections (e.g., Graduate School Teaching Experience, Publications) that struck me as either outdated or irrelevant to the work I am hoping to find;
(2) I reordered the remaining content and
(3) prepended to that content a Current Work section that briefly discusses my blogging work; and
(4) I inserted a position-specifying "headline" (but not a "branding statement" nor a "professional profile") between my contact information and the Current Work section.

Using this type="text/plain" résumé at QuintCareers.com as a stylistic model, my updated résumé looks approximately like:

ANDREW PEAK

Here's how you contact me, here's where I live…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TECHNICAL WRITER * WEB CODER
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CURRENT WORK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blogger, reptile7's JavaScript blog: http://reptile7.blogspot.com/
More stuff relating to my technical blog…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PREVIOUS PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Visiting Professor of (Organic) Chemistry, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
1995-1999, Spring and Summer 2000, Summer 2001 (B6 Session), 2003-2004

...

~~~~~~~~~~
EDUCATION
~~~~~~~~~~
Here's where I went to college and what I specialized in…

Between you and me, I view my résumé as a cold, sterile document that does a poor job of representing who I am (if you do want a good representation of who I am, then you should read my (other) blog, of course). Moreover, I am acutely aware that only a tiny minority (as in < 5%) of job placements occur via Web job boards. But onward we forge. "If nothing else, we can see what happens - think of it as an anthropology experiment of sorts," I said to myself.

The Resources sector of Mojo40.com recommends the Indeed.com job board - This aggregates all the other jobs boards so no need to go anywhere else - so I went there first. Using a password generated by the code discussed in this post, I set up an Indeed.com account and attempted to upload my résumé as a .txt file via the file select (<input type="file">) control provided on Indeed.com's "Post your resume" page. Annoyingly, Indeed.com did not upload my résumé as is: it subtracted the headline and the Current Work section and outputted an "Indeed Resume" stating that I was still a Visiting Professor at Tulane University, with which I parted ways almost ten years ago (vide supra). I deleted the file-upload résumé and then built a new résumé using Indeed.com's "from scratch" option.

The Indeed Resume section of Indeed.com's FAQs page(s) sports a Why is your resume parsing not completely accurate? question. Indeed.com responds:

We're currently looking into ways in which we can improve the resume conversion process. In the meantime, try uploading a Word Document instead of a PDF. We find that Word Documents are converted much better.

Why are you converting résumés at all, Indeed.com? Why, indeed?

In sum, be prepared for some 'transmogrification' if you upload your résumé at Indeed.com. Moving on, I'll tell you about the free résumé critique that the aforementioned QuintCareers.com did for me in our next episode.