• (cs) in reply to Secret Santa
    Secret Santa:
    gabba:
    Why is he limited to Pennsylvania if he can just park his RV anywhere and work?

    Warrants for his arrest in New York, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia, and New Jersey.

    He's boxed in!

    He could slip out through Delaware. But then, he'd be in Delaware, so that's no good.

  • Brian (unregistered)

    My favorite resumes were years ago when Word macro viruses first came along. I was the IT manager at a tiny low budget shop and fully half of the resumes I would get had a virus attached.

  • morry (unregistered) in reply to java.lang.Chris;
    java.lang.Chris;:
    The thing that amazes me whenever we're recruiting is the amount of lies people put on their resume (or CV to a Brit). Time and time again I've had candidates come in, only to find out they have never used some of the programming languages, operating systems or other technology such relational databases that are mentioned on their CV. I'm not even talking about stuff that's irrelevant to the job they're applying for, or even listed as a I nice to have, this is the key skills the job demands them to have!

    On the flip side, I've seen too many job listings that ask for the moon, or ask for skills that are never needed. My current position is a prime example. The position was advertised with the below requirement (among others):

    • Excellent knowledge of COBOL, IMS, DB2, VSAM, JCL, TSO/ISPF, Fileaid and MQ.

    Of all of those, I only know TSO/ISPF and even then, I would not call my knowledge excellent. I applied and got the job (obviously) and after 3 years, there has been no mention or need for any of those other skills. I know why the company did it, but it's lying, just the same. Had I not had the years of experience to know I could ignore that line of requirements, I either would have not applied, or felt compelled to lie in order to meet the minimum.

  • ChiefCrazyTalk (unregistered) in reply to Fizz
    Fizz:
    King of Prussia is a real place. It's out by Philly. All I know about it is there is a big mall out there.
    LOL I'm from Pittsburgh, and even though I've never been there all I know about King of Prussia is the mall, too.
  • (cs) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    I can't think what I'd have said if someone asked me for an example of 'out of the box' thinking.

    It's not something you deliberately remember (at least, I wouldn't), and in hindsight it might not seem to be 'out of the box'.

    In any case, thinking 'out of the box' isn't always a good idea for a developer - if it's too far out of the box it can be hard to maintain... "Good" thinking out of the box would probably be totally forgettable because the result is so elegant and 'obvious' (in hindsight).

    I suppose a good example of thinking "out of the box" would be the first person who came up with something like quick sort or radix sort instead of bubble sort (which is the most obvious sorting technique). If so, then if that's the sort of 'optimisation' the interviewee did, it would seem to be good to me.

    (See http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/v4i30_hargadon.html )

    re: an example of out-of-the-box thinking. The post from yesterday (re lock and timer verses win-98 pc's and tanning beds), or something analogous would be a great answer.

    Personally, my out-of-the-box story happened a couple of years ago. The company had a login policy of something-you-have and something-you-know (site-certificate and password). The rule was that the cert's couldn't be distributed by e-mail (yeah, I know, but whatever). Thus, they needed to be distributed in person to each Pc at each company site every 3 months. Since we have customers globally, it got really expensive really fast. The users who were paying for all of this wanted a cheaper alternative. The engineering group proposed something for 6 million dollars and 6-12 calendar months of effort. I laughed, took 2 hours to code up a couple of cold fusion pages with short-lived challenge-response passwords to limit access. Total cost: $1500 for the CF license and the (old) PC was free as it was collecting dust in a closet. The security folks approved it and a day later it was deployed.

  • (cs) in reply to Secret Santa
    Secret Santa:
    gabba:
    Why is he limited to Pennsylvania if he can just park his RV anywhere and work?

    Warrants for his arrest in New York, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia, and New Jersey.

    He's boxed in!

    Then he probably wouldn't be able to answer the "thinking outside the box" question either.

  • SkippyForce (unregistered) in reply to ChiefCrazyTalk

    While the King Of Prussia mall is a large attraction, there are a lot of tech companies in the area as well.

  • (cs) in reply to Patrick
    Patrick:
    Written test, isn't that a little bit over the top? I'd be weary of any place that forces a written test.
    I once went into a 7AM interview, and while I'm a morning person, it happened to be one of those days when I just couldn't get my brain in gear. The guy hands me a written test to code up a binary tree implemented using doubly linked lists. Now, I don't claim to be Mr. Wizard, but after 25 years, I can code most things without a whole lot of thinking, but at 7AM on that particular day, my brain just wasn't up for it. He told me that I just wasn't qualified to be a programmer. I laughed in his face, and wound up getting another position that paid a whole lot more. I often wonder if those written tests are there because the folks at the other end simply don't know how to tell if you know what you're doing without being able to compare your answers to an answer key.
  • (cs) in reply to SuperousOxide
    SuperousOxide:
    Secret Santa:
    gabba:
    Why is he limited to Pennsylvania if he can just park his RV anywhere and work?

    Warrants for his arrest in New York, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia, and New Jersey.

    He's boxed in!

    He could slip out through Delaware. But then, he'd be in Delaware, so that's no good.

    Yeah, there's nowhere to go from there - still surrounded by New Jersey and Maryland... Plus he'd have to go dangerously close to Philly to get there.

  • (cs) in reply to Brian
    Brian:
    My favorite resumes were years ago when Word macro viruses first came along. I was the IT manager at a tiny low budget shop and fully half of the resumes I would get had a virus attached.

    To whom it may concern:

    Dear sir:

    My resume and a sample of my work are attached. Please review and contact me at your earliest convenience regarding the open position at [[tiny low budget shop]].

    Sincerely,

    1337H@xor

  • Neal (unregistered)

    I was sitting at home some ten years ago, contemplating career and employment, when my telephone rang. Calling was an engineer with a large multi-national company. He was based in Texas, at one of the company's defense and aeronautics divisions. He mentioned that he'd been looking at my web page, which was very heavily biased towards electrical engineering and building prank UFO's, and then he asked me a few odd questions then thanked me and the call ended.

    The call struck me as a little wierd but I decided he was just curious and dismissed it. A few days later he called me again, with another engineer, on speakerphone and they asked me a few more questions about my UFO projects, my engineering interests, and the like - then they thanked me and that call ended. "Ok," I thought, "that was really strange," and then I shook off the wierd feeling and forgot about it.

    The following week I recieved a third call from this engineer who turned out to be a project lead and in charge of hiring. He spoke to me a minute and then said they'd like to fly me down for a few interviews and to offer me a position. Well, since I wasn't interested in moving, especially halfway across the country, I said no thanks and explained why. I was met by the longest silence, some confused mumbling and obvious disbelief, and finally a question presented in a most puzzling tone. "If you didn't want to move here then why did you apply for a position and why have you been interviewing with us?" Before I could answer he sighed, said they were really excited about getting me, and hung up on me.

    I never got the chance to tell him that I hadn't applied for any position, not with his company or any other, and that I had no idea I that was being interviewed. I could only come up with two possible explanations for this bizarre happening: 1) A headhunter had found my resume on my web site and had forwarded it on hoping to get a fee. 2) Someone in the company had seen my resume on my web site and sent it thinking I'd been a good candidate but something was lost along the way.

    Naturally, failing to grab this opportunity that was dropped into my lap is something I still regret to this day.

  • Craig (unregistered)

    Gee, this is sort of sad. You can almost picture it - young guy gets into programming back in the 70s and does well, gets married, has kids. The employer overlooks the guys personality quirks since he is nominally productive. Then a few deadlines slip and he laid off. Has a hard time and starts drinking. Stressed out. Loses the wife and kids in the 80s and hits bottom with the drinking. Gets a few DUIs and loses his license. Homeless on the street. Finally gets into the 12-step program in the 90s and pulls himself back out. Finds an old school bus that he fixes up to live in and flips burgers for a while. Finally decides to try his hand at programming again, but the neurons just don't want to connect anymore. Yeah, he does his best at calling his old bosses and lining up agreements to say nothing bad about him, but those old Wordstar skills just aren't up to handling modern word processing, the verbal and written portions of the brain were burnt out on all that MD20/20 and the result is the sort of pitiful attempt we see here.

    Yeah, laugh now me buckos - life is sweet, you are young, and you have the world by the cojones - but when the big AIs take over writing all software and you find yourself thinking seriously about flipping burgers or picking lettuce, the guy that wrote this resume will have grabbed the job of polishing the AIs knobs or feeding it fuel rods and will be the section chief responsible for reviewing potential resumes for other janitors - like yours for instance :-)

  • Smash (unregistered) in reply to AC
    AC:
    Ok, so the Sybase/Oracle database thing was really dumb.

    But what would have been a good answer to the Google/Microsoft/etc. question?

    Raja: "Why do you want to work for Sybase, and not at, say Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, or Oracle?"

    Candidate: "I actually applied for them too, but I can't just sit while I wait for their call. In fact, just supposing they might not have an opening right now is more than enough reason to keep spreading my resume to other companies."

    There you have it, this answer shows you're proactive and considers possibilities (which means you're used to plan ahead). On the plus side, if your resume is decent enough, they will think their competitors may take an interest on you and they may lose the opportunity to hire you if they take too long to make an offer.

  • Martin (unregistered)

    I can't think what I'd have said if someone asked me for an example of 'out of the box' thinking.

    If you tout yourself as an "outside the box thinker", you better be able give some examples of that! As with anything you say you know or did.

  • Played a dba on TV once (unregistered)

    is Sybase really still has a database company? Gee, who knew.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Is there any other type of a .NET developer than the "fresh out of school" one?

    Also, did anyone else notice Scranton mentioned in the cover letter? (you'd have to watch a certain comedy show for such a discovery to be amusing)

  • FormerOracleDBA (unregistered) in reply to AC

    TRWTF is that the INTERVIEWER thought that Sybase was a database company.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Is there any other type of a .NET developer than the "fresh out of school" one?

    Also, did anyone else notice Scranton mentioned in the cover letter? (you'd have to watch a certain comedy show for such a discovery to be amusing)

    Scranton, Pennsylvania is a real place. The writers of "The Office" didn't just make it up.

  • Jay Levitt (unregistered)

    I want to know what a feather is.

  • Smash (unregistered)

    Though Alan pointed out the creepiest quirks on the guy's resume, the full PDF version has a few more WTFs. I liked this stretch:

    "... I worked for Robotics For Agriculture of Selden, NY. I developed a package for them. It included an add/delete feather. An edit feather and a Monthly/Quarterly report. It was constructed of Visual Basic and Visual Fox Pro. I have written programs in Visual Fox Pro. I have discored Visual Basic Guide To The Windows32 API, also SpyWorks..." and it goes on and on.

    Seriously, halfway through reading it I could swear there would be a "No Quack" at the end.

  • Charlie (unregistered)

    Wading through a bunch of job application emails, The following subject line caught my eye:

    "Hai i am loking for developer job"

    The thought of hiring a lolcat was appealing, but i decided against it.

  • (cs)

    The author of that resume couldn't find anyone that would take his programming skills seriously, so he set out to launch his pet project on the world: A desktop search system written in VB!

  • sweavo (unregistered) in reply to gabba
    gabba:
    Why is he limited to Pennsylvania if he can just park his RV anywhere and work?

    Nun o' your damn business!

    Jeez, some interviewers are nosey

  • Marcos (unregistered)

    Why oh shy Raja didn't you tell him Sybase is a database company? I know it's probably related to "being nice" and "not wanting to embarrass him" but sometimes you just have to put the lulz first, I bet his response would have been hilarious.

    CAPTCHA: nulla

  • Harrow (unregistered) in reply to Frank Wilhoit
    Frank Wilhoit:
    20 miles would be a LONG run of Cat-5.
    Thass OK I are also a networkking guru.

    An I pasionate! Hoo boy I pasionate, I hav my own plyers.

    -Harrow.

  • Stupidumb (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    Anonymous:
    Is there any other type of a .NET developer than the "fresh out of school" one?

    Also, did anyone else notice Scranton mentioned in the cover letter? (you'd have to watch a certain comedy show for such a discovery to be amusing)

    Scranton, Pennsylvania is a real place. The writers of "The Office" didn't just make it up.

    You're right. But Anonymous never claimed that they did make it up.

  • (cs) in reply to Patrick
    Patrick:
    Written test, isn't that a little bit over the top? I'd be weary of any place that forces a written test.

    I'd be weary only if the test were several hours long. I wouldn't be wary, however, of a reasonable attempt by a company to make sure I actually know how to code before hiring me.

  • Gonzalo (unregistered)

    the rose is red violets are blue honey is sweet and how are you...

    can work with qwerty keyboards. can work with 640X480, 800X600 and will try to acomplish 1024X768 in the future... would like to work in a company that made software (not database). Would like to work in a major project (like a new google). I have 2 month of experience and I made a full site in HTML with about 6 pages... And i can write some code in vb4 (never fully understand vb5 but i try my best!)

  • Lord Parity, Last Count of Register (unregistered)

    My "personal best" was from an 18 year old who had recently graduated from a local high school, applying for a senior development position. The resumé had 128 words, 35 of which were misspelled.

    I cut off the name and address at the top and sent the "headless corpse" to the chair of that high school's English department.

  • (cs)

    I know this guy (he used to be a colleague) who never made it to his interview either because of the following:

    By mistake, he ended up (unaware) at the company (although there was a name similarity, it was nevertheless not the company he applied at) I was working for then and said to the receptionist that he was to have an interview. As things weren't organized that well at the time, the manager just believed there had been a miscommunication and told the guy that he could have the interview. He got hired after the interview (I can tell you that he was very good indeed), leaving the company he originally applied wondering ever since what happened to their applicant...

  • Tp (unregistered)

    Thinking outside the box??? Excuse me, but at my company we are only allowed to leave our cubicles for feeding purposes!

  • (cs) in reply to Tp
    Tp:
    Thinking outside the box??? Excuse me, but at my company we are only allowed to leave our cubicles for feeding purposes!

    Sounds inefficient. They should just shovel the slop over the cubicle walls.

  • (cs) in reply to Charlie
    Charlie:
    Wading through a bunch of job application emails, The following subject line caught my eye:

    "Hai i am loking for developer job"

    The thought of hiring a lolcat was appealing, but i decided against it.

    im in ur office, writin ur codez

  • (cs)

    Back in college, I made a few attempts to tailor the "objective" section of my resume to the specific job I was applying for. After a few "attaching the wrong file" mishaps, I ended up sending IBM a resume saying that I wanted a job with Microsoft.... Needless to say, I didn't get that job (or one with IBM).

    Now I just don't include an objective.

  • Tp (unregistered) in reply to Smash
    Smash:
    AC:
    Ok, so the Sybase/Oracle database thing was really dumb.

    But what would have been a good answer to the Google/Microsoft/etc. question?

    Raja: "Why do you want to work for Sybase, and not at, say Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, or Oracle?"

    Candidate: "I actually applied for them too, but I can't just sit while I wait for their call. In fact, just supposing they might not have an opening right now is more than enough reason to keep spreading my resume to other companies."

    Last summer I worked as a summer intern together with some other dude. First day at lunch, sitting with our project group (6 other full-time employees) someone askes how we got internships here. Mr. Idiot replies: "I actually didn't want to work here, but no better company offered me a job"!

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Is there any other type of a .NET developer than the "fresh out of school" one?
    Yes.
  • JD (unregistered) in reply to Patrick
    Patrick:
    Written test, isn't that a little bit over the top? I'd be weary of any place that forces a written test.
    Agreed. I had one place that wanted to administer a coding test. They wanted me to develop a solution to a non-trivial task using syntax for a visual programming language, without using a computer - just write it down. Sorry, not interested in doing a song and dance people! I did end up recruiting 2 of their people to come work for my company though ;)
  • Ron (unregistered) in reply to Trawn
    Trawn:
    The editorial WTF here is the 9 digit zip code which likely corresponds to one address. Google for it, probably someone's dad...
    http://listings.allpages.com/pa-0122935199-milton.html
  • (cs)

    At least he alphabetized the list of city names (although he probably could not spell or pronounce "alphabetize")

  • (cs) in reply to vt_mruhlin
    vt_mruhlin:
    Back in college, I made a few attempts to tailor the "objective" section of my resume to the specific job I was applying for. After a few "attaching the wrong file" mishaps, I ended up sending IBM a resume saying that I wanted a job with Microsoft.... Needless to say, I didn't get that job (or one with IBM).

    Now I just don't include an objective.

    Isn't the real objective always the same? To be employed!

  • el jaybird (unregistered) in reply to JiP
    JiP:
    By mistake, he ended up (unaware) at the company (although there was a name similarity, it was nevertheless not the company he applied at) I was working for then and said to the receptionist that he was to have an interview. As things weren't organized that well at the time, the manager just believed there had been a miscommunication and told the guy that he could have the interview. He got hired after the interview (I can tell you that he was very good indeed), leaving the company he originally applied wondering ever since what happened to their applicant...

    Wow. How long did it take him to figure that out?

  • Christophe (unregistered) in reply to pitchingchris
    pitchingchris:
    It must get cold working in PA out of an RV all the time. Nice for a camping trip, not so nice to be in for working hours. The guy either has family there or is in trouble with the law.

    I know! He's 'Harry Tuttle, Renegade Software Engineer'!

  • (cs) in reply to vt_mruhlin
    Patrick:
    I'd be weary of any place that forces a written test.
    vt_mruhlin:
    Having been told to take BrainBench tests before, I tend to be a little weary of them myself.
    You guys might want to be even wearier of spelling checkers. Or if not weary, then at least wary. Or leery.
  • Ilyak (unregistered)

    Which is understandable but isn't that smart. I've met people with excellent resumes who just couldn't write non-wtf code, and also I've met smart guys with whiny/desperate-looking resumes.

    Also, English might not be his primary language. The only really creepy thing on his resume is that he attained those MS Office courses :)

  • (cs) in reply to Stupidumb

    Well, I hate web-sites, I despise java, and my absolute worst hatred is computers. Which is why I am working as a java software developer making a website! (though I really do dislike java, Ruby is the way :) )

  • duckyd (unregistered)

    If you can't think outside the box, build a bigger box!

  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:
    At least he alphabetized the list of city names (although he probably could not spell or pronounce "alphabetize")

    Except for the fact that he doesn't seem to be entirely sure where the letter W falls in the alphabet.

  • immibis (unregistered)

    Is that PDF a resume that has been printed out and scanned back in? You should have put a picture of a wooden table behind it when you scanned it.

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to SuperousOxide
    SuperousOxide:
    yet another Matt:
    Please tell me King of Prussia is a real place, somewhere. I want to work there too.

    Sure, it's real. It's near Philadelphia (which didn't make this guy's list for some reason). There are a couple of big malls there.

    edit: Looking at the other comments here, it seems the mall is the only point of interest about King of Prussia :)

    Why should he work in Philadelphia? Can you imagine parking an RV in Center City? I learned to parallel park my mother's 1980 Buick there, and it bareley fit.

  • Stupidumb (unregistered) in reply to duckyd
    duckyd:
    If you can't think outside the box, build a bigger box!

    Now that's thinking outside the box.

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