It’s such a hoot interviewing people for a position at Zing. The resumes I get are often beyond comprehension. For example:
- Last week I received a resume and cover letter from a guy who professed strong experience in web technologies like ASP, .Net, and SQL Server. While I have no doubt his skills were just fine, they were completely different from what I was asking in my job posting. He didn’t even mention the skills that I listed as “absolutely required”.
- Early this week, someone with graphic design experience asked if I’d be willing to take on an intern. While the idea isn’t a bad one, I’m pretty sure that a job whose description includes heavy-duty programming skills isn’t going to suit someone who studied Art History and spends her time doing graphics work.
- Yesterday I received one from a guy who’s living in Moscow, and whose example projects were all in Russian (making it hard for me to know what the heck he was doing). Apparently he didn’t see the part in my job ad about “local candidates only”.
- Today I received one from a guy who, like the first rock star in this list, doesn’t have even the slightest mention of the programming skills I requested.
Out of curiosity (a morbid curiosity in some cases) I often poke around the web a little bit to see examples of these candidates’ work. Most of the time they’re, well, unimpressive. But today’s made me laugh. The guy’s web site had this at the very top of the page:
“(Company name) provides design and development of software solutions for complex problems. Novel systems are nothing new to (Company name).”
That’s funny, because I’m pretty sure the very definition of “novel” is something that’s never been seen before. How could that be “nothing new”? Novel means new, dude!
Anyway, the search for a good candidate continues.