[geeks] RHCE advice

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006, Lionel Peterson wrote:

>> I don't send my resumes to gigs requiring a degree in the field, it's
>> bad enough that they want my resume in Microsoft Word format.  But
>> that's another rant, for another thread, on another day. =)
>
> You know, if you make a plain text file and end the filename with
> .doc, it will most likely "count" as a Word format file, and load
> properly (though it will be in the default font for the PC -
> obviously)...

There are more...creative solutions to that problem:

   1) Take PostScript copy of risumi.
   2) Use pstops to break each page into individual files.
   3) Use ImageMagick to rotate each page in an arbitrary direction by
      less than a degree and convert to JPEG at low quality so that it
      looks like it's been faxed a few times.  You can use ImageMagick to
      introduce noise at this step, but there's no sense in going
      overboard.
   4) Insert JPEG images into .doc file using TextEdit.app or WordPad or
      OpenOffice.

I provide my risumi in HTML, PDF, PostScript, and ASCI text.  If their
computer systems are too retarded to open that in Word, or their
operators are too lazy to do so, so am I.  For the sake of perversity, I
use Microsoft Word for step #4 and then "protect" the document so that
nothing can be selected or copied without typing a password.

It seems that they only want a Microsoft Word[0] edition of the file so
that they can feed it into some luserware that does keyword searches.
At least, it's patently obvious that the headhunters don't -read- what I
send them, or I wouldn't get offers to move to Michigan for a 3-month
contract doing Microsoft sExchange admin work.


[0] They get miffed when you ask "which format is that"?  I mean, do they
     want the old pre-OLE format from Word 2 for Windows?  The simple
     marked-up format from Word for DOS and OS/2 and Unix?  What about
     the nearly-ubiquitous (in its day) Word for Macintosh format?  Maybe
     they're cutting-edge and want the new XML-laden document format?
--
Jonathan Patschke    )   "A man who never dreams goes slowly mad."
Elgin, TX           (      --Thomas Dolby, "Valley of the Mind's Eye"