Split Resume Personality

Suppose at your job interview an in-HumanResources department spokesmodel informs you of these facts of reality:

• Well, we are looking for 4 years JavaLanguage experience, but your resume says you have 6.
• We do everything by the book here, and we don't allow any hacking or FortyHourWeeks. I've been ordered to reject any applicant with any of that XP or "Agile" hoopla on their resume.
• We need a programmer for this position, but you also have 8 months experience as a manager.

The solution is not, of course, to engage your personal integrity, and accept the resulting poverty.

The solution is to adopt a SplitResumePersonality. In your tea-boy days, of course, you would type into the "Objectives" field the job listing's title exactly as it appears.

SRP simply takes this a little farther. Instead of hoping the Objective itself thrills HR beyond any need to read further, we simply censor details from the rap sheet and the SkillsAcronymBingo? that we know won't work for a given position. And who says calling 8 years of C++ experience 4 is lying?

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And who says calling 8 years of C++ experience 4 is lying?

Just claim your velocity was 0.5 the whole time!

Or just put "Over four years of C++ experience". People looking at the number will be happy, people looking for more will be happy, and your sense of honesty remains satisfied.

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If they wanted 8 years of C++ experience and you have 10 years, then you could just claim that your years of experience were in octal.

Or, if they want 10 and you only have two, then you can just write all your experience in binary.

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Incorrectly stating 'years of experience' is poor technique.

Look for the monkeys on their backs.

They are worried:

• They will have to pay you more.
• You may get bored and leave sooner.

If you are prepared to take a drop in salary (e.g. if you are currently out of work due to redundancy), say so. If you can do the job standing on your head show them that you will find other more difficult challenges in their workplace too. If a company is hiring you can rest assured that they have more work to do than people to do it - and that there will be things that need doing which they do not think they can afford the manpower for - until you came along.

If you aren't prepared to take a drop in salary, then understating your skills wastes your time and theirs.

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The ideal job is one where you can list everything you've ever done, and every topic you've ever been interested in, and have it all be relevant. Certainly it takes people a long time to find anything remotely like that, but don't forget to keep that in mind as a goal.

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If they really do everything "by the book", and the "book" said office hours is 8 hours per day, then they cannot have any work hours other than FortyHourWeeks....