Fun with Job Search

<div style="text-align: center;">Following the untimely demise of ELXR Health, </div>
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I find myself deep in the job search process for the first time in a long time.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">In theory, it should not be complicated.  Potential employees have a set of skills and experience (A).  Employers have a set of needs (B).  Maximize A intersect B and the employer has their next hire and the employee has their next gig.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Granted, it there are issues of team fit (C),</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">and compensation (D) so the diagram gets a little more complex but the problem of identifying suitable matches (ABCD) remains simple</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: center;">Yet somehow despite social networking and cloud computing and a plethora of data interchange formats, the fundamental element of the job search has remained unchanged for decades.  That fundamental element is spending untold hours fiddling around with bulleted lists in Microsoft Word.</div><div style="text-align: center;">
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Perhaps you laid out your resume in professional page layout software, the kind that costs tens of thousands of dollars and magazine and textbook publishers use and created a beautiful PDF or PSD.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">“Your resume looks great.  Can you send it to me in MS Word format?”  – every recruiter, ever</div><div style="text-align: center;">
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">“Could you go back and add some more bulleted lists?” – every recruiter, ever</div><div style="text-align: center;">
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">This is your Word resume on your computer…</div><div style="text-align: center;">
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">This is your Word resume on the hiring manager’s computer…</div>
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">Any Questions?

MS Word is not a typesetting program.  It is not a data interchange format.  Yet, for some reason industry seems to have standardized on it for both of those purposes.</div><div style="text-align: center;">
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</div><div style="text-align: center;">It might be a fun exercise in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning to read one’s skill set and experience via an API call to LinkedIn, read Company and job info from job postings and auto-generate a custom resume for any given posting.  And of course add a –bullets-everywhere flag to keep the recruiters happy.</div><div style="text-align: center;">
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Hopefully I won’t have time for that.</div>