• joe (unregistered)

    This should be all about a "shoo-in" not a "shoe-in" - unless there was some kind of pun that I missed?

  • (cs)

    "I tweaked your resumé a bit to make it look a little more professional"

    How to tell you've been to TDWTF before: You guessed the entire article from this sentence.

  • Qualified (unregistered)

    Sounds like my first interview!

  • (cs) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    "I tweaked your resumé a bit to make it look a little more professional"

    How to tell you've been to TDWTF before: You guessed the entire article from this sentence.

    When a recruiter tells you they tweaked your resume, Warning flags should go off.

  • Jan (unregistered)

    After I read this:

    I tweaked your resumé a bit to make it look a little more professional

    I knew I was in for some never before seen story that would blow my mind of

  • Kelly (unregistered)

    This is why recruiters should go to hell.

  • Drew (unregistered)

    The correct response to "I tweaked your resumé a bit to make it look a little more professional" would be "Great! Could you send me a copy?"

  • RogerWilco (unregistered)

    Gah!

    Recruiters. Never again. I sometimes think they get money for any warm body they manage to get to the point of an interview.

    Next time I'm looking for a job, I'll turn down any call from one of them, I have nothing but bad experience. Fortunately I'm happily employed right now, doing a job I love at one of the coolest places I know. no WTFs here, unlike my previous jobs. I hope to stick around for a while. :-)

  • DemonWasp (unregistered) in reply to joe

    I believe "shoe-in" refers to "shoe-in-the-door", perhaps more commonly stated as "having a foot in the door".

    Then again, the main article decided to spell it "recuriter", so it could just be further silliness.

  • (cs) in reply to Jan
    Jan:
    After I read this:
    I tweaked your resumé a bit to make it look a little more professional

    I knew I was in for some never before seen story that would blow my mind of

    I think you something.

  • John (unregistered)

    CV available only as PDF... With URL to "original" on board...

  • Andy (unregistered) in reply to Drew

    I've had the same thing happen although not to this extent. It was the adding of years to my experience... At 27 There is only 6 years I could have (after university) so how the hell I ended up with 11+ years I don't know.

  • AH (unregistered)

    Sounds like a case of libel to me. Make up your train ticket that way.

  • Michael (unregistered) in reply to RogerWilco
    RogerWilco:
    Recruiters. Never again. I sometimes think they get money for any warm body they manage to get to the point of an interview.
    Actually I know one shop where the recruiters are judged on how many CVs they add to the DB. I must have been added/updated at least five times already.
  • Michael (unregistered)

    Those agents are incompetent to the max. Best term in a recruiter's job spec I have seen was "required experience with the Linux Colonel". And those guys take the liberty to decide whether I'm fit for a job or not. I have come to the point where I tell the agents off that I can't work with them if I think they don't have a clue. There are enough of them anyway.

  • jordanwb (unregistered) in reply to galgorah
    galgorah:
    DOA:
    "I tweaked your resumé a bit to make it look a little more professional"

    How to tell you've been to TDWTF before: You guessed the entire article from this sentence.

    When a recruiter tells you they tweaked your resume, Warning flags should go off.

    That's why I send my resumes in PDF format. Although I don't know if it's possible to edit them.

  • markm (unregistered) in reply to joe

    No pun - just a common error.

  • (cs) in reply to Andy
    Andy:
    ... At 27 There is only 6 years I could have (after university) so how the hell I ended up with 11+ years I don't know.

    Some people do work on internships and the like while in college, or in highschool. How would we find stuff like 'return ofTheJedi' otherwise?

  • me too (unregistered)

    I find if I send my CV in in PDF I get requests to send it in in word format.

    I once sent in a CV in ODF. Didn't work, they had no idea how to open it. Nevermind. I expected as much, just hoped that the version of word they had supported ODF.

  • (cs) in reply to Michael
    Michael:
    Those agents are incompetent to the max. Best term in a recruiter's job spec I have seen was "required experience with the Linux Colonel".
    You mean they didn't pad it to "Linux General"?
  • SR (unregistered) in reply to DemonWasp
    DemonWasp:
    I believe "shoe-in" refers to "shoe-in-the-door", perhaps more commonly stated as "having a foot in the door".

    Then again, the main article decided to spell it "recuriter", so it could just be further silliness.

    Nope. It's definitely "shoo in" - as in a dead cert. Having a shoe/foot in the door is completely different.

  • Matt J (unregistered)

    I very much doubt that the recruiter tweaked his resumé. He probably tweaked his CV, this being set in Britain and all.

  • JohnB (unregistered)

    To all those who send in a PDF resume ... why?

    It takes 5 minutes to retype the stuff the recruiter wants to keep and 10 minutes to type in the stuff the recruiter was going to "tweak" anyway.

    I've dealt with a bunch of recruiters and have had positive and negative experiences (in fairness: the negative significantly outweighed the positive) but sometimes there's an ad for a position that looks genuinely interesting and there's no choice but to go through the recruiter.

    How appropriate! My captcha is "odio" -- two letters short of odious.

  • Boneist (unregistered) in reply to DemonWasp
    DemonWasp:
    I believe "shoe-in" refers to "shoe-in-the-door", perhaps more commonly stated as "having a foot in the door".
    It should be "shoo-in", which m-w.com has as "one that is a certain and easy winner" </pedant>
  • James (unregistered)

    Nice that he thought to take along a copy of the job description in his manilla envelope, even if he hadn't read it. Perhaps it was too hideously formatted and hideous to read.

    There again this sounds about par for the course. The number of times I've had to explain to a recruiter that no, just because it says "javascript" on my CV you cannot put me down as a Java developer with ten years' experience...

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Oh wow, the incessant pain of recruitment agencies - that sure takes me back. They change your CV, they put you forward for jobs you're not qualified for, they contact you about jobs you're not even interested in... then, after you've found a job without them, they continue to bug you for years after you've removed your name from their books (literally years, I can vouch). Worst of all, they have minimal technical knowledge and generally don't know a single thing about the jobs they put people up for. Thank God that's all in the past. I wouldn't even consider using an agency these days.

    [Post #3]

  • James (unregistered) in reply to JohnB

    Any time I've submitted a CV as PDF to a recruiter it's been sent back with an angry note that I should submit something "compatible with Microsoft Word" because "not every client is using a MAC."

  • Kef Schecter (unregistered) in reply to DemonWasp
    DemonWasp:
    I believe "shoe-in" refers to "shoe-in-the-door", perhaps more commonly stated as "having a foot in the door".

    It's "shoo-in". Shoe-in is an eggcorn: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/47/shoe/

  • squaregoldfish (unregistered) in reply to Boneist

    There's only one way to solve this: FIGHT!

    http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=%22shoe+in%22&word2=%22shoo+in%22

  • Swa (unregistered)

    I've actually worked with recruiters, managing the local infrastructure (network, servers, etc). All in all, they're not bad people, just very odd, badly adjusted and usually professional liars. As far as I can tell, the firm I worked with didn't pad resumes like that, but they did their fair share of sugarcoating.

    However, the headhunters and IDers were the real pathologic liars. If I hear another phrase like "I'm calling from the ministry of ***", "I'm calling from the university of ***" and "I'm calling from the european commission and I'm looking for people in the position of ***, because we are hosting a seminar about *** and we'd like to invite them", my head is going to explode. With the results, they'd compile lists of people they could hunt away from their position to another job. My advice to you my friends: always make them send you an email from their domain they supposedly work for before answering any questions (hunters will always make up lame excuses why they can't). Unless you want to get rid of the colleague(s) in question, of course. Just never give them the names of good colleagues that you depend on. :)

  • @Deprecated (unregistered) in reply to JohnB
    JohnB:
    To all those who send in a PDF resume ... why?

    It takes 5 minutes to retype the stuff the recruiter wants to keep and 10 minutes to type in the stuff the recruiter was going to "tweak" anyway.

    I've dealt with a bunch of recruiters and have had positive and negative experiences (in fairness: the negative significantly outweighed the positive) but sometimes there's an ad for a position that looks genuinely interesting and there's no choice but to go through the recruiter.

    How appropriate! My captcha is "odio" -- two letters short of odious.

    Well, when I am sending a resume directly to a company, I would prefer the recipient not see red/green squigglies all over it... But yeah, Reader has that neat 'text selection' tool.

  • (cs) in reply to jordanwb
    jordanwb:
    That's why I send my resumes in PDF format. Although I don't know if it's possible to edit them.
    It is, but it requires the ability to use software other than Outlook, IE, or Word, so no recruiter is capable of it.

    A handy tip I picked up for when recruiters ask for a Word doc and you don't have Word is to write your CV in HTML and then save it with a .doc extension.

  • haxor elitist fanclub (unregistered)

    I was just

    function isComment(String $val){
    if (eval($val)!=isTrueOrNotVeryNull(eval($val))||preg_match("//",$val)>=1 && idexof("//", $val)==0) {
    return true;
    }
    return false;
}
  • (cs) in reply to Swa
    Swa:
    My advice to you my friends: always make them send you an email from their domain they supposedly work for before answering any questions (hunters will always make up lame excuses why they can't). Unless you want to get rid of the colleague(s) in question, of course. Just never give them the names of good colleagues that you depend on. :)
    Giving them the name of the office deadbeat is a good idea. After all, they'll get a good reference because even HR will be thoroughly glad to get rid of them...
  • (cs)

    Wow. Jon Kipper keeps his resumes in Mark Bowytz's manila envelope?

    What a weird arrangement.

  • bw (unregistered)

    I got both my "real" out of college jobs through recruiters. Neither changed my resume. One typed a cover letter for me. Both were super nice and helpful and dealt with pay negotiation for me.

    Maybe most recruiters are bad, but I am 2/2. All the places I interviewed in my most recent job hunt that did not use recruiters could not afford me, so maybe the filtering there helps as well.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to jordanwb
    jordanwb:
    That's why I send my resumes in PDF format. Although I don't know if it's possible to edit them.
    Of course you can edit them, what do you think Adobe Acrobat is for? But still, the vast majority of recruiters won't have this around and even if they do they probably won't know how to use it. If it's not Word they can't figure it out.
  • morry (unregistered)

    So'd you go back in for a second interview? I would have gone in just for sh*ts and giggles.

  • EatenByAGrue (unregistered) in reply to bw
    bw:
    Maybe most recruiters are bad, but I am 2/2.

    Basically, the personality type for a recruiter is a sociable sociopath. They will seem perfectly nice and friendly, but would quite happily feed their mother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal if they would earn $5 for doing so.

  • SR (unregistered) in reply to squaregoldfish
    squaregoldfish:
    There's only one way to solve this: FIGHT!

    http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=%22shoe+in%22&word2=%22shoo+in%22

    I don't care, it's still a "shoo in". There are more hits because it can appear in other sentences e.g. "I'd like to put my shoe in the ass of these recruiters that insist on changing my bloody CV!"

  • Keith (unregistered)

    I thought maybe it was a pun, like "shoehorn in" - get it?

    But no, the author is just mildly illiterate.

  • (cs) in reply to James
    James:
    Any time I've submitted a CV as PDF to a recruiter it's been sent back with an angry note that I should submit something "compatible with Microsoft Word" because "not every client is using a MAC."

    I think if an agency or potential employer becomes confused by a PDF, it's a fairly good sign that you should run away now.

  • JohnB (unregistered) in reply to @Deprecated
    @Deprecated:

    Well, when I am sending a resume directly to a company, I would prefer the recipient not see red/green squigglies all over it... But yeah, Reader has that neat 'text selection' tool.

    Tools > Options > Spelling&Grammar tab Check the box labelled "Hide spelling errors in this document" Check the box labelled "Hide grammatical errors in this document"
  • Bluffer McCoy (unregistered) in reply to galgorah
    galgorah:
    DOA:
    "I tweaked your resumé a bit to make it look a little more professional"

    How to tell you've been to TDWTF before: You guessed the entire article from this sentence.

    When a recruiter tells you they tweaked your resume, Warning flags should go off.

    I had a recruiter "tweak" my resume somewhat before an interview once, and when I got an updated job-spec the day before the interview, phoned up the interviewer and told him the recruiter has sexed things up somewhat, and I didn't have <list of skills specific to them>. After a bit of "so you just don't want the interview?" and "Not that, I just don't want to waste your time" I was asked in and got the job anyway. Take that, recruiters! No, wait.

  • bored (unregistered)

    I have mixed feelings regarding recruiters. Good experiences and bad experiences with them. The worst was when I got placed in a job after a 6month contract position and updated my resume on a certain career board, they saw it was updated and immediately called my employer to find out if they could fill the position I was still in! Talk about embarrassing!

  • Bluffer McCoy (unregistered) in reply to AH
    AH:
    Sounds like a case of libel to me. Make up your train ticket that way.

    If anything, it's the exact opposite of libel.

  • Anonymously Yours (unregistered) in reply to bw

    I'm pretty sure this story was posted here once before.

    bw:
    I got both my "real" out of college jobs through recruiters. Neither changed my resume. One typed a cover letter for me. Both were super nice and helpful and dealt with pay negotiation for me.

    Maybe most recruiters are bad, but I am 2/2. All the places I interviewed in my most recent job hunt that did not use recruiters could not afford me, so maybe the filtering there helps as well.

    STOP HOGGING BOTH OF THE GOOD RECRUITERS!!11one!

  • monkeyPushButton (unregistered) in reply to SR
    SR:
    squaregoldfish:
    There's only one way to solve this: FIGHT!

    http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=%22shoe+in%22&word2=%22shoo+in%22

    I don't care, it's still a "shoo in". There are more hits because it can appear in other sentences e.g. "I'd like to put my shoe in the ass of these recruiters that insist on changing my bloody CV!"
    But when I went to Google Fight, shoe in got 146000 and shoo in got 44000 yet shoo in had a block 4x as high and was listed as the winner.

    Maybe they weight it for pedantic-ness?

    Or it's TRWTF.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to JohnB
    JohnB:
    @Deprecated:
    Well, when I am sending a resume directly to a company, I would prefer the recipient not see red/green squigglies all over it... But yeah, Reader has that neat 'text selection' tool.
    Tools > Options > Spelling&Grammar tab Check the box labelled "Hide spelling errors in this document" Check the box labelled "Hide grammatical errors in this document"
    And how exactly are you going to do this on their copy of Adobe Reader?
  • (cs)

    Sometimes, the extra job requirements HR adds to the job description cancels out the padding the recruiter adds to the resume, and you end up with a good fit.

    It's only when an unpadded resume meets a padded job description, or a padded resume meets an unpadded job description, that you have these problems.

    I owe my current position to recruiters like this. I used to only apply for jobs that I thought I met the minimal requirements for. Now I ignore the job description and hash things out in the first technical interview, hopefully over the phone.

    When HR refuses to post the salary of a position, and jobs that are actually part time repair guy at a local computer store and chief network architect for a mid-sized company can have about the same job description once HR is done with it... Technical Interviews seem to be the only way of figuring out what the job actually is.

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