From times of recruiting people for the career fair. Part 1: Curriculum Vitae
Today I stumbled upon a long forgotten pile of CV’s from last year’s interviewing gig. Each year a new team for Days of Opportunities is elected by the previous team. As an earnest member of the old team, I took a chance to participate in virtually all interviews. It was the best fun in weeks. Ultimately, interviewing for a project you care about is a win-win situation. If some candidates for whatever position are outstanding, you take them. And if someone does not live up to expectations for the position, you can proudly say “I didn’t let that (adjective) person to ruin the project!”
This time I would like to share some thoughts from the pre-interview part of recruiting – CV’s. Without going into a detailed description of what people write in their cv’s, here is a juicy compilation based on what some candidates wrote (actual facts are changed). Some things are taken from my own resume :) Think of what is wrong while you read.
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CURRICULUM VITAE
Personal Details
Surname, Name
Nationality: German citizen
Email: name.surname@gmail.com, namy777@one.de, no_homos@inbox.ru
Education
1)John Schweinsteiger High School (exam average 9,5/10)
Mathematics – 8,5 ; English – 7; Spanish – 10; Biology – 9,8; Geography – 10
2) Some School of Something in Johannesburg
(in a separate line) : Expected year of graduation 2012
Work experience
(two months) – Babysitting
(three months) – “Large Bank”, assistant.
Team work in international teams.
Extracurricular activities
Member of School Council
Participating in a school student exchange, 2007.
ZDF challenge winner, 2004.
2006 “Perfect marketing”
Personal Qualities
Internet Explorer, proficient in Microsoft Office,
Good communication skills
Not afraid of hard work
Interests
Travelling, reading, sports, music
Languages
English – mother tongue, Spanish – basics.
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Here are my comments:
- Three e-mails, two of them obscure.
- Should we care about nationality? We are legally obliged not to.
- Mentioning good exam result might be of value if there is much empty space, but other grades are irrelevant.
- We are very hungry for facts, especially when it comes to work experience. And how can that experience help here.
- Same for extracurricular activities. For what we know, the person participated somewhere and won some (marketing?) challenge. So what?
- Team work in international teams. I would guess that 80% of SSER students have this line in their resumes.
- Proficiency in MS Office and having at least average communication skills are commodities. Sadly for exactly half of all people, anything below average doesn’t exist in most places.
- Generic interests leave an impression of a generic person.
- Always, and I mean each time you make a CV, write that you know basic Spanish. Porque no?
More to follow.
After our apocalyptic performance in otherwise fun Cambridge IV Aurimas and me put together a list of jobs that would not demand much analysis or (public) speaking. Please note that this list is not prescriptive and should be treated as a joke.
The Grand List
- Duomenų įvedimas programoje “Scala” (data input in “Scala” software package)
- Inkasatorius/skaičiuoklis (money collector)
- Dokumentų formatuotojas pagal APA (APA style document formatter)
- Durininkas, bet ne viešbutyje (Porter, but not in a hotel)
- Tas žmogus, kuris pakeičia tualetinį popierių (that man who changes toilet paper)
- Medicininių bandymų dalyviai (participant of medical experiments)
- Grybų ir uogų surinkėjai, bet ne rūšiuotojai (berry and mushroom picking, but not sorting)
- Verslo etikos konsultantai (business ethics consultants)
- Kultūros namų galvos (heads of Culture Houses)
- Žmogus, kuris užpildo administracinių teisės pažeidimų laukelius (form filler for administrative files)
- Emigrantas iš Lenkijos (emigrant from Poland)
- Vesti rubriką-komiksą vietiniame laikraštyje (writer of comics column in a local newspaper)
- Žmogus-stendas arba žmogus-stulpas (a person carrying huge advertisement)
- Statistas mažo biudžeto filme (supernumerary in a low budget film)
- Statistas didelio biudžeto filme (supernumerary in a high budget film)
- Nykštukas/medis kalėdiniame vaidinime vaikų darželyje (Dwarf/tree in a Christmas play in a kindergarden)
- Vegetarų konvertuotojas (converter of vegetarians)
- Sėdėti ant bedarbio pašalpos (to receive unemployment benefit)
This has been concealed from the general public, but now the veil of ignorance is finally lifted. Last academic year we had an Economic Anthropology course in SSE Riga, quite refreshing after the Fin Economics torment. As a part of this course, students are required to do some field research. In teams of two, people usually behave silly somewhere in public and record responses from other people. Some pretend to be stealing wallets, some investigate lifestyle of the homeless, and some walk their dogs in random places. Me and Mārtiņš set out to explore attitudes towards homosexuality in Rīga.
How did we do that? Very simple. We took two same sex couples, one male and one female, and let them be intimately friendly in the public. We also carefully recorded responses from people who saw them holding hands, hugging and kissing each other. It was absolutely hilarious! Behaviour of the male couple evoked disgust, resentment, and overt outrage. You would not find your life easy in Riga if you were a homosexual, and here is why:
The Maxima Episode
The male couple entered Maxima and started their shopping. They were soon noticed by one salesperson who was chatting with a security guard. They both started laughing and did not hide that they were very entertained. It two minutes the management of the shop to came from their offices to look at our couple and spy on, if we translate it from Russian, „those gays“. In three minutes all the people already knew that our participants were in the shop, even strangers shared the information. What is strange, our couple did not suspect being in the centre of attention even though the observer could hear open laughter in the background. The efficiency of spreading the information was striking - people wanted to reassure themselves that homosexuality is still totally inacceptable – which they did through pointing fingers and chatting about how odd and inapropriate their behaviour was. The guys bought a pack of condoms and some dog food.
Girls did better though. It was more or less acceptable to walk holding hands or to hug another female, although most other women correctly recognized the homosexual behaviour. Men had to see the girls kissing to get the idea, and generally were very happy to see a female couple making out (well, the researchers were not upset either).
The research has little validity, can hardly be generalized, and definitely has the worst Cronbach alphas ever, but:
Major Findings
- Male homosexuality is perceived as far more evil than female homosexuality.
- Women are better in spotting homosexual behaviour, especially female couples.
- In order to conceal the fact that they are staring at our couples, men constantly looked sideways (so that they would get short glimpses at our couples) and women focused their sight slightly aside (so that they could use their peripheral vision).
- Individual people were puzzled and disoriented when they saw our couples. Groups, however, quickly formed their (negative) opinion about the couples.
- Mildly speaking, service quality is not the best if you happen to go shopping with your same sex partner.
- We had a very entertaining day, huge thanks to all involved in this research!
And it seems that Latvian society is not the only homophobic society there is:
This is the first blog post celebrating fact that I learned something interesting in Microeconomics and Financial Markets lecture! Previously it was all about Neuman, Morgenstein, Arrow, and Debrew. Now the behavioural economics part has started, which instantly moved the subject to far more entertaining land. Even more, the lecture offered some public relations insights.
To start with, you would be happier if two people of your preferred gender kissed you than one person did it twice. In the same spirit, losing your keys and later your wallet would feel worse than losing both things in one “attempt”. More, people are risk averse with respect to gains – riskless greenbacks are perceived as better deal than risky (although expectedly higher) sum of money. Fair enough, most people like to cash-in fast. However, if we face losses, suddenly the risk appetite rises. In gambling “I will double the stakes and take back my money” behaviour is more often than not.
Implications for PR? Here you go:
- Publish good news in a small pieces to maximise the impact;
- Consolidate news about losses;
- Do not say how much better it could have been in good situations;
- But do say how much worse it could have been if you’ve screwed up.
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Try your best average, and everything will be fine. Counterintuitive, right? I’ve come across the idea while reading a book about theatre sports. The main point there is that trying “hard” gets you anxious and tense. Couldn’t agree more – my juggling performance drops massively when I try to do the best tricks I possibly can. I guess it shifts mental resources from the actual activity to the abstract ‘trying hard’ part.
Richard Wiseman (cool family name) made an experiment connected with “trying hard”. He gave a newspaper to two groups: people who felt that they were consistently lucky and people who thought their lives were series of unfortunate events. Both groups needed to count the number of photographs in the newspaper. On the second page Mr. Wiseman put a huge text telling how many photos were in that newspaper. Not surprisingly, the “unlucky” people tried hard to count the photos and missed the huge message. The focus on doing your best limits your opportunities for achieving spectacular results.
Pushing yourself to the limit, giving as much mental effort as possible will not work, partly because “the best” is more or less a random thing. For a given level of preparation, expected level of performance is average and “best” outcomes are pretty much random. The non-random part is preparation for a competition/performance/exam. Better preparation leads to better results ;). The best example is Usain Bolt, who broke world record in the distance that is not his speciality; he celebrated his victory long before the finish line, and crossed it with his shoelace undone.
Let’s do average!
This is not a very accurate measure, but I scored 21 points out of 40 which is above the average of 15.3. Yesterday I took the Pinsky test, which measures how much are you absorbed into yourself. The areas covered include Self-sufficiency, Vanity, and Exhibicionism. The questions made me reflect where I position myself among other people. If you have time for another episode of Family Guy, do this test instead.
Question of the day: Suppose you are a blogger. Choose one option:
- The opinion posted in your blog is better than most people could produce.
- The opinion posted in your blog is rather average and most people could produce this or better.
- Your internet space is designed to put funny pictures.
Yes, we are the winners! Huge thanks to Rapolas, Aurimas, Aurimas, and Arvydas. It was a pleasure to be in a team with you all :) Very briefly about the competition:
The competition. It was hosted by debatewise.com. There were teams from all over the world. The judging panel was impressive. It extended from middle August to the beginning of October.
The format. Two teams compete in a round. After the motion is announced, the proposition has 24 hours to write their arguments, afterwards, opposition has its 24 hours. As if it was not enough, same procedure is repeated once more and afterwards teams write their summaries.
The motions. We had five debates, most of them very challenging.
R1 against Latvia (these cool guys are also from SSE Debate Society) ==>
- Democracies should ban the display of communist and Nazi symbols (link). We tried hard not to use arguments from Euros’08. Freedom of expression and all the public discourse arguments bought the judges’ vote.
R2 against Canada on somewhat economic motion ==>
- All taxes on inherited wealth should be abolished (link). Dont redistribute that wealth!!
QF against South Africa on economic motion ==>
- Interest rates on personal lending should be capped at 20% (link).Extensive arguments about how banks set interest rates. Easy.
SF against South Korea on somewhat law’ish motion ==>
- All evidence gathered by intelligence agencies should be admissible in courts of law (link). After extensive research and killer introductory arguments we found out that Koreans forfeited.
Final against England, hardcore as it should have been ==>
- We should prize freedom over security and abolish anti-terrorism laws (link). Defending personal liberties for some reason is a natural thing in our debate society. This was a very hard debate: worthy opponents and even more research than in SF. To mix things up, due to IT problems we whote the summary in the last 35 minutes.
The conclusion. It was a good experience. At least now I know massive amounts of random trivia.
There will also be a post describing how we coordinated ourselves from three different countries and managed to produce reasonable arguments.
Keep it real.
The ideas are piling up, but time to write is extremely limited. Will update as soon as I can. Meanwhile, have a nice evening!
As I was getting things done this morning, one existential question crossed my mind: what do I want from the courses I’ve subscribed to here in my exchange semester. Lets take Economics of European integration. It will give some understanding about how the EU works (the course is generally far deeper than Morten’s @SSER). It will also give some historical background and a fair share of random trivia.
In any course, I want to learn things that would a) be of some value in the future b) stay in my head long enough to benefit from this value. Hm, the course catalogue might outline what I can expect from the lectures. This appears to be true. The “discuss aspects of economic integration” part looks especially promising. To benefit more from the time spent in lecture, I will now focus on my ability to explain (as opposed to understand) the process of integration. Here we have a point of reference and a clue of what to keep attention to in the lectures. The expected output therefore is ability to talk about integration with a reasonable degree of confidence.
The mantra of the day: What output do I expect to achieve?.
I quess that willingness to ask (and answer) questions is the valuable part of (tertiary) education.
