70% Of Workers Lie On Resumes, New Study Shows
It's pretty much a given if you want to even get through the automatic HR software many companies use. They don't care about your experience or how it could translate to a new situation, all they want is a match on a list of keywords.
Our team consists of a few internal employees like myself and a larger group of individual contractors hired for a year or two at a time. Due to procurement laws, we have to start a new tender when one of the contracts end, we can't extend a contract indefinitely. Which sucks because the contractors really are part of our team and have built up a wealth of domain knowledge. So we formulate the tender to make sure our current contractor is a perfect match and gets a chance at an interview (our work is specialized enough that it would require a miracle if a second candidate is just as knowledgeable and available).
Anyway, we had a situation wherein our own contractor did not get through the HR selection process for a resume that was specifically written for him. Turns out he used a slightly different description than what HR was looking for and got denied even though he was a literal perfect match.
HR and similar organizations don't look beyond the limited list of keywords they know. If being less than perfectly honest on your resume gets you through the first round of selections, then I'd say go for it. There's always more nuance to a resume than just the list of skills you can tick off.
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Oh and before I forget, recruitment agencies do this all the time but for exactly the wrong reasons. The amount of lousy resumes I've seen come by where they try to squeeze in an applicant who's clearly unsuitable for the position but who happens to have the right keywords is depressing. I hate having to tell a hopeful applicant that they're not suitable, my time is hugely wasted going through all these resumes and a possibly suitable applicant is ignored because they don't play the game as well.
Sorry, I had to add this little rant. The hiring process is one of those moments I really dread and I wish it could go smoother.
I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for about a year now. Eating only between 12.00 and 20.00.
It’s been working so far, but I really need to fight the urge to have an oversized lunch when noon comes around.
Together with trying to walk or cycle wherever I go, and a weekly gym visit (pilates mostly), I have been slowly losing weight. I thankfully was only several kg overweight to begin with, but it was getting worse.
I could still do with cutting down on snacks though, but that has been a challenge. I subconsciously reach for things around the house that I shouldn’t be eating.
Started playing Space Wreck which has been fun so far. It's like playing the old Fallout and Arcanum games, or at least as how I remember them. The first act I basically talked my way through without fighting a single fight or passing any other skill checks. I really love these kinds of role-playing games so I'm a happy.. err.. person :)
I'm already thinking about how to replay this for my second and third run (it's supposed to be a short game)
I’m just glad Daggerfall got some appreciation. It is horribly outdated now, but back then it was the first game that really let me explore an open world and role-play as whoever I wanted to be (within the limitation of the game of course). I could do anything I wanted, go anywhere I pleased.
I don’t think I ever got far in the plot, but I spend months exploring every other nook and cranny. I still remember the vibrant online community it created in the form of webrings where people shared tips or showed off their screenshots in self-made geocities websites.
It's cold and wet here in NL, but so far it hasn't bothered me that much. It's always cold and wet around here and I kind of like it. But that's just me.
Our house uses district heating which basically places us under a government controlled monopoly. Prices are not locked into gas prizes. On top of that the government mandated a price ceiling for energy costs. The price of electricity can not be more expensive than €0,40 kw/h for 2023. Not sure how things will turn out when 2024 comes around though.
Best thing for staying warm are warm clothes, of course. A thick cozy sweater is great, maybe together with some fingerless gloves if you get cold hands easily. Oh, and during dark days taking extra vitamin D might help as well. And of course, make your living space as cozy as possible: warm blankets, nice music, maybe some flowers to brighten the place a bit.
Oh and a personal favorite of mine when things get cold, Korean Citrus and Honey tea (Yuja Cha). I buy it premade in a jar. It's basically a thick marmalade you mix with boiled water. It's sweet but tastes so nice and warms me up when I'm feeling cold.
The only problem is that fighting games are relatively niche so the weight of that decision isn’t too high.
Really? I thought fighting games got quite a bit of press attention, at least whenever a new game releases. Specifically because there aren't a lot of them around but the interest is still pretty big.
I always saw them as kind of like a prestige thing. It might not be everyone's favorite genre, but having the best fighting game looks good on your platform as a whole. There's a certain.. pedigree to them because of their arcade roots.
Anyway, I hope you'll get your wish. It's always a shame when these kind of titles are just languishing away because some company bought the rights but decides to sit on them.
From a completely selfish standpoint, I hope they’ll do something with the neglected IP. Would love to see a new Sierra game, though that might just be the nostalgia speaking :)
Other than that, I recall Microsoft not going to interfere with any unionization attempts due to a neutrality agreement?
Sorry to hear about your truck, I hope it'll be easy to fix. I can definitely understand the attachment you have to it.
And of course, an obligatory awwwww to your new employee. It did indeed brighten my day :)
Quite an uneventful week for a change. Got painfully reminded that I've got a lactose intolerance last weekend, but thankfully that has cleared up.
On the plus side, I got a little basket for all my tea things at work so I can easily carry everything to my desk. I'm disproportionately happy about it for some reason, I guess it's because everything just fits so perfectly :)
So yes, it's a week of small pleasures (and one painful torture).
It really depends on where I play. Behind the PC it's definitely mouse and keyboard, it just doesn't feel comfortable to play with a controller while sitting in my office chair.
Everything else is controller, but it's not like you have much choice in those situations :)
Baldur's Gate 3 - It's my second run. Part of what I love about these games is that you'll find new things and different approaches with every play-through. And with every run you get a little more daring and in-character with how you react to situations.
First time round I can't help but play little miss goody two-shoes, just staying true to my own nature. Second time I feel a bit more daring and actually try to act like the self-centered anti-hero I had in mind for this character. Who knows, maybe some day I'll even dare to play a villain :)
The thing I hated most with social media is that no one really wanted to email anymore.
I used to have several pen pals around the world. We would exchange long mails every couple of days telling each other about our lives. But the moment social media popped up, the one-on-one conversations started to shift to posts with something everybody got to comment on. And on top of that, they didn’t seem very personal anymore. Not like the friends I used to know.
Didn’t take long for those friendships to fizzle out. I’m still quite sad about it.
So sorry to hear you have to go through this. It's OK to complain and vent, it doesn't solve your problems but I feel it definitely helps to get it off your chest.
I wish I'd knew how to help you. But unless you live in my home country, I'm afraid I have no real knowledge about any financial assistance plans or anything like that. All I can do is offer you my sympathies and the advice to kick your mother's son of his butt and put him to work.
But I'm sure you would've done that already if it were that easy :)
Ah, now I see. Sorry, I read three and my head automatically only saw the overpasses.
Sorry you have to deal with these kinds of situations. I'd ask if you could address these problems with the town council, but I'm guessing the answer will be very predictable.
Wait, do you go over or under the freeway ramps? The map makes me think it’s under, but from your description it sounds like you’re going over?
Either way it looks like a very dangerous walk.
My week is ok. We celebrated our 14th anniversary last weekend, which was nice. The kids got to stay with grandma and we had a whole weekend to go out and enjoy ourselves. I love my kids but it's really nice to get away from being a parent once in a while and just enjoy an extended period of couple time.
I experimented with the voxel software and tried to recreate some buildings from the old Dune 2 game. I always liked the designs and figured the pixelated look would make it a nice match.
It's quite a challenge to make anything round though :) I'm not sure if I want to keep going with this or take my lessons learned and apply them to a different design.
I doubt we'll ever end up with a future wherein all of humanity is fully united and working towards a unified society. But that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Divergence in beliefs and attitudes can be a healthy thing as long as it doesn't hurt the individual.
Maybe, in hundreds of years, we might unified enough that we can tolerate and accept each other's differences. I have no idea what that future would look like, but I'd be happy if we manage to achieve that much.
I loved Wuppo, but the clearly Dutch names for all the creatures threw me off a little. Their names are sometimes a little bit too literal for my taste (for example, a blusser literally means extinguisher).
Anyway, I've stopped my first play-through of Baldur's Gate 3 and started over as The Dark Urge. It has been... interesting :)
Other than that, I've tried to get back into my play-through of Lost Judgment, but I've completely lost the plot.
Oh yes, that's how I got my current job. I used to be an external contractor myself, said I was interested at working full-time for my employer (it's a very stable and fun job) and had to go through an entire circus. It was guaranteed I would get the job but I still had to:
All because their HR software requires certain steps to be followed or it'll refuse to process the application.
For our last contractor recruitment (new position, not a rehire) we got rid of our external selection agency (responsible for the first stage of resume scanning) and decided to do it ourselves, specifically for the reason in my last little rant. We didn't trust them to select the right candidates because they had no experience with our line of work and just blindly searched for keywords.
It was nice to get to see all incoming resumes but I had to pick through 40+ of them manually. And because of procurement laws, I had to grade all of them on a 20 point list of criteria we got to decide. On top of that, an applicant (or their recruitment agency) can challenge the fairness of the process if they feel we rated them unfairly on a specific criteria. So it was important to have a proper substantiation for every single judged criteria. That was over 800 times I had to check for proof if what a applicant claimed lined up with what their resume said.
And again, it was the recruitment agencies that really ruined my days (yes, plural). You could see that the recruiter altered resumes, wrote nonsense cover letters and did whatever they could to get past the criteria. At least half of the people who applied were clearly not suitable, but I still had to explicitly say why they weren't suitable for every single criteria.
Sorry, this is really something I can go on and on about.
It's definitely a nightmare, but that's what you get when you work in the public sector I guess.