Erdos Had The Number First

I know, I already sound like a breathless fanboi. But trust me, this is not just a johny-come-lately to the XML camp expressing praise. What I really love about XML isn’t really XML itself but the applications that can be written with it. Like the XMLResume library.

If you have ever written a resume, you should go now (don’t even both reading the rest of this posting until you See The Glory) to XMLResume on Source forge and check it out.

The biggest thing that has me right now so, so happy is the ability to filter elements of your resume. I’m in the camp that you should always target your resume to each employer. This is because it is up to YOU the job seeker to present yourself as attractive to the potential employer. You should never rely upon the innate brilliance of whoever is reading your resume to translate it for you.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: Way back during the Great Bubble I had an interview. I was then working for a very large Options clearing firm, and we were processing a little more than half of all of the options trades done in the world. I figured that the people who were interviewing me would understand these things. The interview started out with one guy saying “You’re coming from a pretty small environment, what makes you think you can cut it here?” They did, indeed have a largeish environment. I was stunned. In my head I thought “Huh? you don’t get it: my CEO’s bonus last year was more than the gross sales of all the companies you’ve ever worked for combined! What makes me think I can cut it? Are you nuts?” and on and on and on. The problem during this interview wasn’t this guy. He was, after all, interpreting what he read on my resume according to his own experience and world-view. The number of server and admins was not very large comparatively. If I had been coming from a warehouse operation or some other data-center he would have been quite correct. I didn’t offer him the information in a way that he could have understood.  Now I can, and XML made that possible.

What a wonderful world.