Capability

Ask A Progeek – Desperation Gyrations

by

We’re always churning resumes and burning time as we try to find jobs.  Well a question that came up from the depths of geekdom relates to that, as someone asks:

How many times can you apply to the same company without looking desperate?

I hear this one every now and then, and it makes sense.  Who wants to look desperate in front of a hopeful future employer?  It simply looks bad, or can hit that there’s something wrong with you.  If you look like you’ve got something wrong with you, you might not get hired . . .

However it’s not quite what it seems . . .

Read more

Ask A Progeek: Cover Letters And Formality

by

Ah, cover letters.  So important, so often forgotten.  So let’s see what one of our pro geeks out there wants to know about them:

How casual are you allowed to be in your cover letters?  I want to sound like a person, not a term paper, but I don’t want to seem like I don’t care about formality.

Cover letters are the first thing most people see in my experience – resumes are second – so it’s natural to worry about them.  A cover letter is often the “first impression.”  So the real question is what kind of first impression do you want to make.

There’s where you start.

Read more

The Recruiting Nightmare #1 – The System is Broken

by

Let’s get this out of the way now – the entire system of recruiting, hiring, and placing people is terribly, terribly broken.  You probably noticed this, but I’m just going to confirm you’re right.

There’s specific ways that its broken – indeed I’ll be covering them – but it’s important to understand right now it does not work right.  People need work, there is at least some work out there, and a lot goes unfilled, goes wrongly filled, and good jobs and good people vanish into the either.

I base this on the fact that pretty much everyone I talk to about recruiting tells me this, often followed by a litany of reasons why.  There’s a weird, almost pathological consensus out there that things aren’t working in getting people into jobs.  What makes it weird is that by now we’re terribly used to it, despite it being a rather large social/economic malfunction.

Read more