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My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

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Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to say never put a picture on a US resume (common in some countries). But a picture is considered essential on LinkedIn to increase the search status. Go figure.

Used to? It's still completely unacceptable to put a photo on a resume in the US.

As little as 5 years ago I was being asked to do many skype interviews. For one such interview, I was out of town visiting my mother (who was fading away from Alzheimers). I wanted to present a professional appearance, and my step-father always wore white collared shirts to work. I borrowed one of his shirts, and ties, and while I was speaking to the interviewer, he made a comment about how he appreciated that I "dressed professionally" for the interview, even noted that he hadn't (he was in a t-shirt). He said that most people didn't dress up. I am quite certain that the skype style interview was used for the same reason as expecting a photograph attached to the resume back in the day. I.e. to screen for age, and other factors like ethnicity.

Further, not more than 20 years ago, when I went to many interviews in person in Salt Lake (a very conservative town) I was asked about religion, at a car dealership where I was trying to get a job as a car salesman. I had a second interview at a bank, and when the interviewer saw a tiny diamond chip in my ear, told me to turn around, that he wasn't interested, and I was on my way. I was told that at a high-class tourist restaurant downtown that they didn't hire waiters, as they only had waitress uniforms, I was told at a grocery store in Ogden, that I couldn't be a cashier, as they only had women's uniforms for the cashiers, men/boys would only work as box boys.

As little as 8 years ago, I was told I was a bit old to keep up with walking around a college campus to perform the work on desktop PC's in a timely manner. (I was 48 at the time). I have been kept out of many positions due to my current age at this point, regardless of my mental abilities, and the fact that I had most definitely kept up with the current levels of technology as verified by my current Microsoft, and other certifications.

So yeah, discrimination is alive and well in the greater U.S. and we are screened via a multitude of forms using technology, or personal interviews, or whatever is at hand.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this should be voted down, the SSN was originally designed as a sort of username for tracking earnings, before anyone realized how important it would be to have a password. An SSN was not designed to be a unique secret identifier held by every individual. But we have used it that way, and built a house of cards on it. "In 1938, a leather factory in Lockport, New York attempted to capitalize on the excit…

For a long time, the last 4 digits of a SSN were the only ones with any entropy. The first 5 were determined by when and where you were issued an SSN (usually at the hospital when you were born). Suppose your number is 123-45-6789. If an attacker can uncover that you were born in Springfield in December 1989, they can deduce that the first 5 digits are likely 123-45. Now, there are only 9999 possibilities for what yo…

That's true, also at this point a pretty substantial percentage of social security numbers have been leaked (perhaps all of them, not every hacking victim goes public).

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#333
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are companies that will check a resume for employment and education details. You also can and should do reference checks. In my experience outright lying is rare, there's definitely some embellishment. The person who sent in the MS word doc was a CS/Engineering graduate with significant experience in respectable companies? Hard to believe. Any software development job requires training. Every project is differe…

> The person who sent in the MS word doc was a CS/Engineering graduate with significant experience in respectable companies? Hard to believe. This is a bit of a fun story to tell in person; this was the same person who claimed to be the second coming of Christ, and tried suing us for religious discrimination when we didn't hire him. Fortunately for us, the people in the interview didn't respond to his claims at all,…

Companies who treat potential candidates unfairly eventually tarnish their reputation. You don't design your process for the single outlier crazy person and then treat everyone like they are potentially crazy or liars. You treat everyone with respect, that's how you build a reputation. Respect includes respect for their time amongst other aspects.

Presumably this is partly why hiring is expensive. Not that I'm sure it's really that expensive in the big scheme of things. The problem isn't the process being difficult per se, it's the process having poor predictive power.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean writing it out on coding sheets before sending it to the "girls" to be punched onto card's

That was so early 1960s. In the mid 60s to the mid 70s, you had to mostly do it yourself unless you were really senior and still programming.

Well in the early 80's I entered fortran code that an Engineer had written onto coding sheets for our two phase flow simulator

And I suspect that this went on longer in traditional big iron shops.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to say never put a picture on a US resume (common in some countries). But a picture is considered essential on LinkedIn to increase the search status. Go figure.

Used to? It's still completely unacceptable to put a photo on a resume in the US.

The LinkedIn profile is that photo now.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monospaced fonts, especially: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courier_(typeface)

It's not Courier, though. Similar, but the g and numerals are different.

I'm going to guess it was an IBM selectric using the pica72 font typeball.

http://munk.org/typecast/2013/11/03/gp-ibm-selectric-typebal...

Bitstream has a $$ font called Pica 10 Pitch if you're interested.

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/pica-10-pitch/

n.b - the typist used lower-case L instead of the number 1.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#337

If I lived through 3 wars and had a strong career alignment with major defense contractors, I suppose I'd be inclined to disclose health and height out of habit...but was this generally expected on a resume back in the 80s?

Here's the resume of Bill Gates from 1973 (lists height and weight) - https://i.imgur.com/btFE99N.jpg And Paul Allen's - https://i.imgur.com/0pDSVBS.jpg

Bill Gates, first year at harvard, course taken: operating systems structure, database management, compiler construction and computer graphics.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#339
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was 16 in 1986 when I started programming C. Replacing all the old fogeys with their Fortrans and Cobols and .. shudder .. A/PL .. This is not a new thing, this teenage thing. Tomorrow I guide some teenage punk through the wasteland of mobile development. Undoubtedly he's gonna throw some new shit at me. Hah!

Do you mean APL? I know there was PL/I. I was 14 in 1978 when I bought a used Commodore PET with tape drive built in. I had purchased a book on DEC assembly and read it before purchasing the PET, and of course it wasn't applicable, however, books back then were written to be able to learn by reading rather than copy/paste. BYTE magazine would list the programs for you to type in. Ah, nostalgia in the morning!

I did indeed mean APL ..

http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/the-apl-programming-lan...

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#340
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to? It's still completely unacceptable to put a photo on a resume in the US.

The LinkedIn profile is that photo now.

A LinkedIn profile is not the same thing as a resume.

I don't look at someone's LinkedIn profile before interviewing them...

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