The #Coronavirus chronicles, part 23: Learning songs in a new language #COVID19

Before I get into this article, I need to direct you to a few other articles that I wrote, all of which are directly relevant to what I'm about to write. You will likely not understand some of the references in this article unless you read these other ones first (or are friends with me …

You didn’t ask questions at your interview? You just blew the interview #JobHunt

This afternoon, I saw a tweet from James Phillips, who posted this: https://twitter.com/JPhillips_Data/status/1321230392742084609?s=20 It reminded me of what I think is an important point when you're interviewing for a position. I responded with this: https://twitter.com/PianoRayK/status/1321530305409417218?s=20 This is a point that I emphasize in my job hunt presentation; in fact, I made mention of this in …

Is it live, or is it Memorex? #PASSSummit #PASSVirtualSummit #PASSSummit2020

First things first -- for the benefit of those who aren't old enough to remember the old Memorex ads (and don't understand the reference to this article's title), here's a YouTube link to a couple of their old ads. Back in those days (and yes, I am old enough to remember these ads), "is it …

The #Coronavirus chronicles, part 22: How TV could make this world a better place #COVID19

TRANSPLANT -- Season: 1 -- Pictured: (l-r) Torri Higginson as Claire Malone, John Hannah as Jed Bishop, Hamza Haq as Bashir Hamed, Jim Watson as Theo Hunter, Laurence Leboeuf as Magalie Leblanc, Ayiah Issa as June Curtis -- (Photo by: Fabrice Gaetan/Sphere Media/NBC) When I was in high school, my friends and I were into …

October CASSUG Monthly Meeting

Our October meeting will again be online. NOTE: you MUST RSVP on Meetup at https://www.meetup.com/Capital-Area-SQL-Server-User-Group/events/273734124/ to view the Zoom URL! Our October guest speaker is Elizabeth Noble! Topic: Streamline Database Deployments Our online meeting schedule is as follows: 6:00: General chat, discussion, and announcements 6:30: Presentation We usually wrap up between 7:30 PM and 8:00 …

Your job application was rejected by a human, not a computer.

Last Saturday, at Virtual SQL Saturday #1003 (Memphis), I sat in on Christine Assaf‘s presentation about Organizational Trauma: Mental Health in a Crisis (or something like that — I don’t remember the exact title). I found her presentation interesting and relevant to my own; so much so, in fact, that I invited her to sit in on my presentation and offer any of her insights.

After this weekend, Christine wrote this ‘blog article. I haven’t yet had a chance to fully process it (as I’m writing this, I haven’t had my coffee yet, and my brain is still in a fog), but what little I did process, I found interesting.

I intend to scrutinize this more when I’m a little more awake. And I suspect I’ll be making some adjustments to my presentation.

HRTact

INTRO:
Recently I attended a presentation where a commonly held belief was repeated and I feel the need de-bunk this. The speaker stated “75% of applications are rejected by an ATS (applicant tracking system) and a human never sees them…”

First, I want to point out that recruiters will tell you this is false. As the main users of ATSs, recruiters have extensive experience and years in talent acquisition, and will tell you they hear this all the time and they cringe upon it’s utterance. But if you want to know my opinion on why this “myth” has infiltrated the job seeking world, scroll past all the research and jump to the end.

MY RESEARCH:
Secondly, let’s track down the origin of this false statistic. The speaker I heard it from cited topresume.com. So I did some digging:

From topresume.com

That topresume.com article (which includes the same false stat…

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I am a professional grant recipient!

This is a piece of news that I actually received back in August, but I wanted to make sure it was publicly announced before I said anything about it! (And now that it's been made public...) Back in June, I came across a professional grant program sponsored by my fraternity alumni association. Having just started …

Bad web forms — how to drive people away from your site

I've come across my share of bad design, and I'm sure you have as well. I've especially come across some egregious examples as a job applicant. I came across one that particularly set me off. While poking around Indeed, I found a technical writer position for GitLab that interested me. Of course, most people who …