Given the state of the economy and the fact that there are several million people unemployed right now, this seems like a good opportunity to pose a question for the employers rather than job seekers.
We’ve all been told to never lie on our resume. This can include the term ?Padding? which means that I could say I have 10 years experience in something when I’ve only had 5 years, etc.
Having been unemployed since October 2008, I have a great deal of exposure to job descriptions and employers seeking to fill positions via the Internet and I am appalled at what I see to the point I would love to grab both the hiring manager and HR by the shoulders and give them ?shaken baby syndrome?. It is absolutely unforgivable the amount of padding I’ve seen slathered in a job description. When I read them, I know at least one of three things. ? One, the job was simply posted perfunctorily just to keep the company within the law and is intended for an internal candidate. Two, the hiring manager and HR did not effectively review the description before posting it. Three, assuming that number two is incorrect, I would guess that the description was a hodge-podge of experiences collated from the existing managers’ portfolio or a combination of several employee skill sets and it was just convenient to just throw it all together and chuck it over the fence.
The first item is pretty much a given. The third is a bit more obscure but it doesn’t take much searching to realize that you could live to be older than Moses and still not accumulate the combined skill sets necessary….. Which brings me to the second item which is the most glaring. If you will look as some of the job descriptions with a critical (black hat kind of thinking), eventually things will start to stand out and I will just mention one here which should make every tech out there snort their Mt. Dew! ? So here is a job requirement that I’ve seen recently and it’s becoming more and more prevalent.
?Must have 5 years experience in Windows Server 2008?
It will be interesting to hear of other faux-pas.
