On software and job-hunting.

I recently received a call from a recruiter, responding to a job application I made. I had been jobhunting for over a year with very little success - creative work via The Merch Girl and other courses is sporadic and unpredictable, and I needed a regular source of income that wasn't parental - so any response beyond "Sorry, no", especially over the telephone, would be greeted with excitement.

She asked me if I've typed up tenders. I haven't, specifically, but I am excellent at typing and have worked with all sorts of official documents.

"What kinds?" Almost everything - strategy plans, reports, employee handbooks, student databases, contracts, articles, marketing, the whole gamut. My typing speeds are phenomenal (78 wpm, 21900 ksph) and I knew that I could deal with tenders very easily.

"And this is all in Word?" I recall a conversation I had with another recruiter, this one more focused on getting me a job and helping me apply to more entry-level non-specific work. She had given me a link to a test on Word 2007 (most of it being "find this function hidden in a really inane spot on the toolbar and don't rely on F1"), and told me to list out all the software I was proficient in.

I was incredulous. I had enough experience with all sorts of office software, starting from Lotus 1-2-3 and Harvard Graphics in my childhood (I was a bit of a dork...) through to MS Works and Wordperfect, to the MS Office Suites, and now predominantly working with OpenOffice and Google Docs. Most office suites run the same way; if you know one, you know them all. Any hitches can easily be resolved with Help pages and Google searches. Even if I wasn't familiar with them, I could look it up easily and learn it on the spot. Listing every possible software brand would take up a whole PAGE!

Surely I could just categorise them? Office software, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, desktop publishing, accounts? According to my recruiter, no - most other recruiters and HR people are after specific keywords and won't take the time to decipher what "word processing" means, let alone work out that I am pretty flexible and can deal with any sort of software.

So I said "Yes", even though I haven't really worked with Word for at least a year now. Her next question proved my regular recruiter's point:

"Do you know Adobe?"

Well, Adobe what? I know of the company, sure, but which software do you mean? Image editing like Photoshop or Illustrator? PDF managers like Acrobat? The Macromedia suite - Dreamweaver, Flash, Shockwave - that they bought over? AIR? Film editing, sound editing, 3D? Why do you need to know?

She flustered for a bit. Stumbled. Then she asked: "Do you know Adobe Writer?"

There's no such thing as Adobe Writer!

There's Adobe Acrobat, which deals with editing and writing PDFs. But were they wanting me to edit PDFs, read PDFs, create PDFs from other documents, or just fill out PDF forms? But you don't even need anything Adobe, let alone Acrobat, to do all that. (Examples: Foxit and CutePDF.) A Google search for "adobe writer" brings you information about Acrobat.

But what does your client need? What do they hope to achieve with Adobe software? Who came up with the ad to look for "Word and Adobe Writer experts" - your client, or you?

She couldn't quite answer. She just said that she didn't feel I'm quite right, but she'll keep screen, and she'll keep me on file for something else. Which is fair enough, I guess.

What doesn't seem fair is penalising people who grew up around computers and technology because they have the ability to switch and you don't have the ability to think laterally. Do recruiters even know what they're looking for? Do they understand the software they ned? What about the companies - what do they know? Do they only ask because it seems like they need to ask?

If you're a digital native, like I am, you're probably very familiar with switching between OSes and computers and working out how to run a program through context and visual clues. Yet apparently, for some reason, people with the power to hire you can't seem to give you enough trust that you do know what you are doing.

How many others have lost jobs because they said OpenOffice instead of Word? How often do computerised resume scanners catch context?

Comments

1. A year is an long time to be job hunting. It does grind you down, doesn’t it? But don’t despair. Keep trying; keep hammering away. All you need is to get your foot into one door, and everything else follows from there.

   However, if it helps you with your job applications, you should go ahead with using Tiara Gill. That story of mine has long been out of print, and it doesn’t show up at all on online searches.

   Cheers.

   — JL · Mar 18, 04:36 AM · #

2. Well.. Adobe does make a word processor, it’s called InCopy. It’s part of the InDesign package.

   — Nicholas.C · Mar 22, 08:36 PM · #

3. After applying for many jobs in Chicago, I’ve learned a simple rule when speaking to HR: “The answer is always Yes!”

   If you can figure out that the person your talking to isn’t technical, or is a recruiter, or an HR worker, then say yes to all the questions and move on. Don’t give long answers, and be direct and affirmative because the person just wants to put checks down on a piece of paper. If they talk about a technology that doesn’t exist forgive them and say yes anyway. Assume they are mistaken and don’t ask.

   If you get into an interview and there is some magical rare piece of software called “writer” that you’ve never had experience with, and the employer really wants someone with some arcane skill set, then at worst you’ve wasted an hour of your time turning down the job.

   P.S. your comment box is WAY to small, I can’t read what I’m writing very well.

   — greg · Apr 11, 02:55 AM · #