Re: You have to be psychic to get a job



--
Phil Scott
Ideas are bullet proof.
"BMJ" <parametric_equation@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:8XTjg.25807$IK3.22689@xxxxxxxxxxx
Straydog wrote:


On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, BMJ wrote:

Phil Scott wrote:

<snip>

I've had interviews scheduled, only to have them vanish
before I was supposed to attend. Go figure.




I turned down my first submittal 'opportunity' today...

I told the girlie that after a year of total dilligence
and a dozen interviews and noticing the fraud and idiocy.
that my new policy is to leave my resume out, anyone can
submit but they can't interview me first...no more
catering to the battery of completely illiterate
questioning...no phone calls or emails

if a client is interested enough in my skill set to pay
me for an interview I will attend... If they refrain from
being complete jerks at the interview I might accept a
job...otherwise, my plan B works just fine.


I doubt that any of them even care if you turn them down.
They'll probably shrug, say "What can you do?" and find
someone else to chat up.




I am not loosing a days work to cater to this mess, or
putting up with anymore idiot recruiters that pass
through the agencies like toilet paper at a public
toilet.


I might submit an application now and then just to see if
anybody reacts to it. If they want to talk, they know
where to contact me.

<snip>

we have just begun to see the beginning of the train
wreck...brought to us by complete idiots...who screen our
resume's.


Many of them are recent products of our educational system
who can't spell or compose a simple sentence.
Dictionaries and thesauruses are incomprehensible objects
to them.


That is because they are all brain-damaged by playing too
much Nintendo, which induces into the player the disease
Adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I'm
serious.

It isn't just that. Recently, I came across an old
newspaper clipping about "whole math" that I'd saved from a
number of years ago. One of the points raised in it was
that the emphasis on "teamwork" and "defining" problems
means that students aren't being taught basic fundamental
skills, such as multiplication and long division, any more.

Several years ago, I taught a course in basic electrical
circuits. Some of the students whined that I penalized them
for things like incorrect arithmetic. After all, they
contended, they had already been "tested" on it (presumably
in another course), so why were they being held accountable
for it now. My answer was that my course was one in which
they *applied* what they were supposed to have learned. All
I got were blank looks.


I knew it was going south in the school system but not even
faintly to that degree.... these days Ive been falling for
the blank look, and assuming that my remark was
understood...and that the person simply had nothing to add...
not so apparently...the blank look comes from a vacuum between
the ears.



While I was finishing my Ph. D. residency, I was a TA in a
similar course and my job was to grade weekly exercises. I
started taking off marks for incorrect math when I was
politely informed by the supervising prof that it wasn't a
math course, so I shouldn't penalize them. When I was an
undergrad, I was held accountable for such things in courses
where I had to use such methods.

What surprised me was that this prof had been teaching in
the department for nearly thirty years, so he would have
taught students of my generation (thus understanding why I
did it) and should have known better. On the other hand, I
suspect he did, but he was only following the prevailing
educational doctrine and may not have had much choice in the
matter.

By extrapolation, I wouldn't be surprised if subjects such
as English and writing are handled in a similar manner
nowadays. Test 'em once and that'll last 'em for the rest
of their lives. Yeah, right.


Try teaching people like that.

<snip>



.

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