Rant: Generation Y: Please stop lying on your resumes

[vi edit]

Also...how many 50 and 60 year olds do you see renting a condo or high rise in a major metro area where owning simply isn't possible or financially responsible? There are a lot of lifestyle choices other than money that factor into owning vs. renting for the mid 20 to late 30 somethings. I wouldn't look into home ownership as being an overwhelming statistic...rather those that do own, what percent is it vs. the income? And those that rent, what % is it vs. the income?

 

[Saint Nick]

I rent and am 24. I won't be able to buy a house for at least a couple of years...if I'm lucky.

 

[mcmilljb]

Boomers also don't have daycare costs which are a mortgage in themselves. My daughter cost me $1200 a month when she was an infant.

But boomers/really old x'ers could argue that about paying for their kid's college.

Well boomers refuse to fix medicare and social security so they can enjoy not having it when the country is broke. They refuse to have balanced budgets and trade deals. Lets keep running up inflation too because it'll "solve" the problem. It's all good though when the generation X/Yer's get to pick the baby boomers' nursing homes.

 

[Patranus]

How about following instructions and send me a mother fucking PDF resume when I ask for it instead of *.txt, *.doc, *.docx, *.rtf, *.html, some web URL, *.JPG (yes, I have gotten a JPEG photo of a resume).

 

[zerocool84]

Yep, my generation (I'm 25 so whatever that is) for some reason feels entitled to nice things.

Because their parents generation raised them that way.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Because you become less reliable when new content comes out.

Sports fans around big matches/tournaments too. And those are likely to check scores and stuff online or focus on listening to the radio or so when the game is on. Also the percentage of people calling in ill around big matches is quite high.
If gamers cannot play at work their work will only suffer if they play at night. Which would be no different from someone partying all night.

I've also played games hardcore one or more days after a new release or, with Diablo 2, a ladder reset. But I always just took a few days off from work for it.

It's both a matter of the employee having some feeling of responsibility towards his/her job and having enough brains in the first place not to play 24/7.

 

[TecHNooB]

What's the cutoff for generation X? I'm trying to join the team.

 

[Red Dawn]

Well boomers refuse to fix medicare and social security so they can enjoy not having it when the country is broke. They refuse to have balanced budgets and trade deals. Lets keep running up inflation too because it'll "solve" the problem. It's all good though when the generation X/Yer's get to pick the baby boomers' nursing homes.

You guys can't vote?

 

[Wyndru]

My sister in law has Fortran on her resume, because in one of her programming classes they discussed it, and did 1 hello world project.

I hate to be mean, but I hope she gets called on it at some interview so she realizes how retarded it is.

 

[rh71]

Are these professionals you're hiring or college noobs? If it's the latter, you need to cut them some slack.

We had a career fair and the recruiter, not knowing herself, asked me what PHP stood for. It was a way to validate items on my resume... but come on... that has nothing to do with knowing how to code. I stood there dumbfounded, then told her I never actually looked into it (and I still hadn't up until this post - probably what you guys will be doing now). She told me she'd put my resume on file and I thought well there goes that company. 2 months later I got a call anyway and went for a real interview. This was 1999 and I'm still working for them. They never asked me to code on the spot... it was more about job experiences back then rather than "prove this and that". I even learned my primary coding language from scratch WHILE ON THE JOB. Today's generation has it tougher, none of it their fault.

 

[Cogman]

Are these professionals you're hiring or college noobs? If it's the latter, you need to cut them some slack.

We had a career fair and the recruiter, not knowing herself, asked me what PHP stood for. It was a way to validate items on my resume... but come on... that has nothing to do with knowing how to code. I told her I never actually looked into it (and I still hadn't up until this post - probably what you guys will be doing now). She told me she'd put my resume on file. 2 months later I got a call anyway and went for a real interview. This was 1999 and I'm still working for them.

lol, thats rough. I take it you said something like "I know how to program in php" and so he took it to the extreme of "Oh, if you know about php, you know what php stands for!"

 

[edro]

WTF is a Gen Yer? (1990s born?)

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I've been hearing people bitch about others lying on their resumes since I was 5 (22 years ago) and I'm not even kidding.

 

[rcpratt]

All this "rockstar or failure" talk is interesting to me. I wonder what my management thinks about me

Pretty sure they think I'm doing a good job, but with all the corporate bs of performance evaluations it's hard to tell what's real and what's just talk.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Are these professionals you're hiring or college noobs? If it's the latter, you need to cut them some slack.

I have to agree here. There is a big difference between hiring a guy who has allegedly been in the real world for 20 years vs. a new college grad. If you're hiring college kids, the important thing to look for IMO is work ethic. Look at their work history. Talk to their former employers. You can teach a kid what they need to do to do their job, but you can't teach them a good work ethic.

Now, with that being said, I've interviewed a ton of "experienced" candidates for positions in my day. Some of them were just frightening. One lady was so bad that they STILL refer to her BY NAME at my last company, and we interviewed her probably 5 or 6 years ago! We were interviewing for a help desk position, IIRC. For all IT positions (programmer, systems engineer, help desk, etc), we gave the candidate an assessment test along with an interview with technical questions or scenario-based questions.

This girl was incredibly bad. She was a referral from an employee, so we had to interview her, but her resume didn't look bad so we thought "what the hell." She couldn't answer any of our questions. One question I asked was "Let's say Jane Doe from accounting calls and says she can't print to the network printer. What would you do to troubleshoot?" Her answer? "I'd call the network admin." WTF? We poked and prodded and tried to get her to provide detail on what she would do, but even if she did manage to give us something she'd try, step 2 was always "Call the network admin." She answered that for several questions. We also asked her what her career goals were. She said: "I am working on an A+ certification." We said "Good, do you have any plans to look into Microsoft certifications?" She looked at us like we were speaking a foreign language and said "No." No qualifiers, no explanations, just "No."

Because of her, we instituted mandatory phone screens for ALL candidates before bringing them in for interviews.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

All this "rockstar or failure" talk is interesting to me. I wonder what my management thinks about me

Pretty sure they think I'm doing a good job, but with all the corporate bs of performance evaluations it's hard to tell what's real and what's just talk.

Honestly, don't spend too much time worrying about it. If you're doing something horribly wrong, a manager will say something to you. You're right about the whole performance evaluation system -- most of it is HR fluff. All I care about is 1) What is my overall rating? 2) What do I need to work on next year? 3) What is my raise?

 

[Rage187]

Bad jokes can ruin an interview too.

One person we interviewed and we really perfect handwriting. It could have been a windows font, it was that good.

I commented on its uniqueness and she said "they say I have the handwriting of a sociopath, but that's what the meds are for"

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

I commented on its uniqueness and she said "they say I have the handwriting of a sociopath, but that's what the meds are for"

Any group that would disqualify someone based on that is NOT one I would ever want to work with. Jeez, get a sense of humor.

 

[SP33Demon]

Me, mid 30s.

People I interview are typically 22-28.


Alright, a few more things.

I like resumes on 2 pages. One with all the details and the 2nd page should be used for references.



I interviewed someone who had a BS in international business; specifically, Mandarin Chinese. To drive home the point he spoke mandarin, he staged a call in the middle of the interview and proceeded talk to other person on the phone, in what I suspect was very poor Chinese.

Two things:
1. He embarrassed himself when he stuttered through his fake call
2. He thought taking a call in the middle of his interview was a good idea

I then took pity on him, as this was obviously his first interview after college. I spent the next hour helping him rewrite his resume and giving him tips for any future interviews he might have. He unfortunately, didn't have a chance at this position.

Right now, I have 3 gen Y'ers reporting to me. All 3 of them are rockstars. They do get frustrated easy though, if any of the feedback they get is even remotely negative. Here is the thing, if you are getting feedback, it is a good thing. It means we see something in you and are coaching you through any rough patches. It is when you stop receiving feedback that you should start being concerned.

I see the discouragement factor high with GenY as well. They take it personally and a few even asked me to help them with some MS Word stuff. I promptly sent them a google link lol. I think it's a function of being coddled too much.

 

[Rhezuss]

Bad jokes can ruin an interview too.

One person we interviewed and we really perfect handwriting. It could have been a windows font, it was that good.

I commented on its uniqueness and she said "they say I have the handwriting of a sociopath, but that's what the meds are for"

IMO it's not a bad joke, maybe a high risk one but not deal breaking...

where is generation common sense?

 

[MotF Bane]

Bad jokes can ruin an interview too.

One person we interviewed and we really perfect handwriting. It could have been a windows font, it was that good.

I commented on its uniqueness and she said "they say I have the handwriting of a sociopath, but that's what the meds are for"

:awe:

 

[SP33Demon]

One person we interviewed and we really perfect handwriting. It could have been a windows font, it was that good.

The first sentence makes no sense. I think you meant to say "had"? Are you sure you're a manager? /chuckle

 

[grohl]

Dear Baby Boomer,

Human Resources is a joke. If thats where you ended up in life, be prepared to deal with the consequences.

lololol

owned

 

[PingSpike]

Yeah who would have thought degrees in CS would be a dime a dozen..

Look I know we didn't do a good job of raising you, trying to make you feel that you were special when in reality you weren't and instilling in you the self confidence (or is it entitlement) that makes you believe that when you fail it's someone elses fault.

I guess it's up to you to do something about it..or you can just continue to whine about how you got a raw deal. Your choice.

Did you reply to the wrong post? All I said was that Gen X didn't raise Gen Y for the most part.

Anyway, maybe the boomers should take your advice. I see plenty of whining from them. Gen Y seems to be doing something about their situation, like you suggested...they're lying on their resumes!

 

[Rage187]

Any group that would disqualify someone based on that is NOT one I would ever want to work with. Jeez, get a sense of humor.

We offered her the job but she failed the background check.




Last job we hired someone pending a background check. He had 3 DWIs in as many states, the most recent of which was 30 days prior. When we asked if he was going to go back to that state and take care of it, he said his wife wasn't able to return to that state anymore. Yeah... You are on the run from something.