How to reply to a Craigslist job posting.

With most job-seekers using at least some sort of online resource these days, one would expect that many of the simple ’sins of omission’ from the good ‘ole typewriter days would be gone.

Nope.

I am in the process of hiring some additional IT staff and have posted a very simple job requirement to Craigslist. Why? A) The company I work at is cheap, and 2) Craigslist is FAST when it comes to applicants.

I want to hire people that can read, write, and comprehend written instructions, so I always include a couple of reply requirements in my online job postings that can tell me a great deal about the applicant.

Simple things, such as ‘don’t include web/tracking bugs in attachments.‘ A tracking bug (a logo, invisible pixel, or other artwork) creates a log, somewhere, that can show when I read a resume, opened an email message, or passed the document along to a colleague. I don’t play that, and I let people know, in simple english, in my job postings.

“Include salary history and/or requirements” isn’t too difficult to do, is it? I’m not going to pay person $80k/year if their last job was $40k/year (unless they are REALLY good, in which case I would). The salary requirement shows me an applicant’s skill progression.

Since I am writing this, you can imagine what did not happen. The job posting was put online yesterday, and today I checked all of the applications:

30 Applicants (typical after one day)
25 applicants did not include their salary history/requirements
3 applicants simply wrote “See Attached” in their email response to the job posting
1 applicant did not include his name in his resume. Anywhere in it.

I’d pull my hair out, but I don’t want to go bald.

PEOPLE! READ THE DAMN JOB POSTING! If you do not feel comfortable including your salary history, previous employers, blood type, tell me why, don’t just leave it off.

Did someone tell you to just ‘robo-reply’ to jobs? If they did, don’t take their advice anymore. Make a great first impression: understand what you are applying for, and at least LOOK LIKE YOU CARE.

Want some more common sense resume tips? Sure ya do! Click HERE

The KGB Wheel (KGB San Diego, 101.5FM)

From: KGB Program Director
To: All Jocks
Subj: Music Rotation

You are to play songs by the following groups, with the quantities listed each hour. I don’t care when, I don’t care how, I don’t care if the songs clash.

Rolling Stones (ONLY from their top-10 hit list, Sympathy for the Devil MUST be played once per shift) (2)
Aerosmith (’dream on’ MUST be played once per shift) (2)
Supertramp (ONLY from ‘Breakfast in America’, ‘long way home’ MUST BE PLAYED on each shift) (1)
Beatles (1 or 2)
Anything from the 1969 ‘metal library’ (2)
Anything from the ‘pop-rock’ library (KISS, BOC (top 5 ONLY), Ozzy (top 5 only), etc..) (2)
Anything from the ‘hair pop band’ library (Scorpions, Def Leppard, etc..) (2)
Any ONE throwback song that is not on the top 150 rotation (1)

Promos:
Dave, Shelley, Chainsaw:
2 Minute Clip: 1
1 minute Clip: 2
Coe’s cafe: 1

Don’t forget to ‘cackle’ as much as possible during the morning show, we need some annoying filler for the post-drive time block.

———————-
And this, folks, is why KGB sucks.

Kyle, the Nut, and Envy

What do these words have in common? They are the result of a real, spontaneously created, Burning Man virtual Theme Camp based around a live video presentation of the Burning Man festival in September 2009.

Hosted by Ustream, the live video link displayed a pole-mounted camera near the center camp location. During the week that was Burning Man, this camera was run, at times, in an automatic 360′ pan. When the camera panned across the support tower, users noticed that one of the support bolts was missing it’s nut. From that point forward, people in the chat section of the stream began to make comments about the missing nut, to the point where the unofficial symbol for the group WAS the nut. Talk about spontaneous performance art!

But that’s not all…. Apparently someone named Kyle went missing on the playa, and his mother dropped by the official radio station, Burning Man Information Radio (BMIR), which also happened to be playing on the video stream, and put out a request for Kyle. Voila! We now have the second meme for the stream, “Kyle.”

Combine these two together and you wind up with stories of Kyle stealing the missing nut, Kyle missing one of HIS nuts, the nut kidnapping Kyle, etc…. much fun was had by all.

The last great meme of the stream may be the long-term creation of a REAL theme camp, Camp Envy, named after the folks watching the stream, envious of the other folks in the desert. This ‘camp’ grew over the week and now has its own Facebook page, it’s own dedicated web page (still looking for a web designer, btw), and probably a real on-playa presence in 2010.

The video stream brought together thousands of people from around the world, many who wanted to be at the event but could not; this is technology at its finest.

Next year, in Black Rock!

Links:
FACEBOOK CAMP ENVY
USTREAM chat room
campenvy.com
-greg
(sdmedia on the ustream system)

Troubles? Let me tell you about troubles….

This is a reply to Brian Stephen’s blog entry “What is an E-Rate Approved Vendor’ at Funds for Learning

Troubled? Let me tell you about troubled….

While you may be troubled by the ‘E-Rate Approved’ vendors posting their laundry lists of so-called eligible services/devices, it is even more troubling when these items actually get funded. I have lost track of how many times bandwidth shaping devices from Packeteer get listed on 470s as ’switches’ (funded), and CA schools that issue laundry lists (everything on the left side of the ESL for ‘all sites’) and get funded.

Each year we see about 40% of our requests for biddable information (quantity, type, sizing, hardware/service details) ignored by applicants after three contact attempts (voice and email). We just chalk it up to applicants having pre-selected a vendor before bidding ends. Of course, some of the vendors don’t make it hard to ’select’ them during the bidding process, just look at their websites (if you want our services, just put ’service x’ on your 470, wait 28 days, and then write our name on your 471).

The SLD has a ‘waste, fraud, and abuse hotline,’ also known as the ‘code 9′ line. You can ‘code 9′ an applicant or vendor you suspect of waste, fraud, or abuse of the E-rate program, anonymously. Of course, during the investigation of your call, you name will probably get out. This CAN be used to stop some abusive practices, but in reality, any SMB would be insane to use it. Since I started working with the E-Rate program in 1998 (year 0), my companies have seen many, MANY abuses of the rules. Sometimes the abuses cost us big ($millions) contracts. Did we ever ‘code 9′ an applicant? Nope. Never; and none of the vendors I have spoken to will admit using it; the potential backlash is too great. Everyone talks to everyone else in the K12 market, and all it takes is a SUGGESTION that a company did a ‘code 9′ on an applicant or another vendor.

So we just sit back; we complain, we bitch, and we moan, hoping that someday, someone (but not us) will do something to fix these problems.

I suppose that this is the most troubling of all.

CILF

Amy Wong
Leela
Lois Griffin
The Crushinator