When applying for a job, I think a CV should be targeted to the role being advertised. In the role I recently advertised I wrote that the applicant must have a keen interest in manufacturing. There wasn't a single applicant who mentioned manufacturing in their application.

Now you might argue that saying they were interested in manufacturing is pretty meaningless unless they can prove it. Without proof it's just words. But I used the job requirements as a signal to see if they are able to read my instructions and follow my commands. I effectively asked them to mention manufacturing and they didn't bother. So in a work situation, I can't trust them to follow my e-mail request and perform a job exactly as I requested. They're sloppy. They only do 80% of what I ask. However good they are at IT, I won't be happy with them failing to listen to my request fully.

Old man rant:

When I first graduated it was pre-internet. When applying for a job I would cycle to the public library in order to look up the company I was applying for in various business directories to get as much background as I could. It took ages. Now you can look up our company in 30 seconds, but still it's clear that most applicants can't be bothered. Most people just seem to just upload their CV to Monster.com and sit back and relax.

OK, now it may be that the role I'm offering isn't very attractive. So maybe applicants aren't really bothered about getting an interview. But in that case, why bother applying in the first place? It's just waiting my time and theirs.

True story:

A recent applicant at my place was called for interview and e-mailed the HR Manager and asked her for directions in text speak. Something like "Can u tell my how to get to your office". Failed on two counts:

1. Use of text speak to the HR Manager
2. Inability to Google directions.

Kids today, huh?

@Dashrender said:

so what should you do?

My ten:

Run one lap around the meeting room at top speed.

When someone hands you a piece of paper, finger it, and whisper huskily, "Mmmmmmm, that feels soooooo good!"

Leave your zipper open. If anyone points it out, say, "Sorry,I really prefer it this way".

Say to someone in the meeting, "I like your style" and shoot them with double-barrelled fingers.

Babble incoherently at someone then ask "Did you get all that, I don't want to have to repeat it"

At the end of a meeting, suggest that, for once, it would be nice to conclude with the singing of the national anthem

Refer to everyone in the meeting as 'Bob'.

Announce to everyone in a meeting that you "really have to go do number two".

After every sentence, say 'mon' in a really bad Jamacian accent.

Slap your forehead repeatedly and mutter, "Shut up, damm it, all of you just shut up!"

Speak with an accent (French, German, Porky Pig, etc)

Hang a two-foot long piece of toilet roll from the back of your trousers/skirt and act genuinely surprised when someone points it out.

Rollerblade around the floor throwing sweets.

@ajstringham said:

Also, any feedback on the article is welcome!

Don't take this the wrong way, but what makes you qualified to give advice on this subject? Do you do much recruitment?

For me, there are two types of people who will read your CV in the SMB world. A professional recruitment consultant/agent and a company manager. The two types operate in completely different ways. A recruitment consultant spends his whole life reading CVs and will scan them quickly and be pretty bored by them all - there will be nothing written he hasn't read a million times before.

The company manager is usually entirely different. It will be someone like me. I'm a complete amateur when it comes to recruitment. I don't do it very often and I take my time. What I'm looking for is likely to be completely different to what a recruitment consultant is looking for. For example, I like a highly technical CV as I understand technology. Whereas your average recruitment agent is normally fairly clueless on technology. I quite like personal statements, whereas recruitment agencies simply ignore them.

Creating a single CV that will work for two different types of recruiter is tricky.

The best advice I could give is to ask for feedback from as many recruiters as possible.

Also, make sure there are no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. I can't believe the number of CVs I get that contain basic errors. Some don't appear to have even gone through a Word spell-check which is the very least anyone could do.

@scottalanmiller said:

And even with the delivery fee it was probably cheaper than the grocery store and far less effort.

Really? How is it cheaper? I haven't heard of anything similar in the UK. Here, farmers markets tend to be more expensive than supermarkets, even before the cost of the middle-man and delivery. But the quality is usually (but not always) better.

I used to get fruit and veg delivered by an online company called Abel and Cole who are pretty big here. They get their produce direct from the farmers and it's all organic. Good, but pricey.

Now I just get the supermarket to make a delivery every few days. I could never go back to pushing a trolley around a supermarket once a week and don't know why so many people still persist with it when online ordering is so cheap and convenient. I use a supermarket app on my phone and a weekly order takes about 5 minutes.

I think moving away from your family, friends and general comfort of your hometown to "see the world" is a really great idea. And there are awesome experiences you get from actually living and working somewhere that you can never get from just travelling. I lived abroad for a few years and wouldn't have changed it for the world. As Tom Waits wrote "I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long. I never saw the east coast until I moved to the west"

Sometimes I wished I'd stay abroad for longer. But after I moved back to my hometown I started hanging out with my dad a lot more and developed a great relationship with him that I never had as a child. A couple of years later he died. I could never regret those 2 years I had with him. The older I get, the more I appreciate family ties.

The travelling bug hits me from time to time and I wonder about moving again. I've lived in my current town for 12 years now. But it gets so much more complicated when you have children who are settled at school and have some great friends. I also find it harder to make new friends as I get older, so no longer assume I could just make a bunch of new friends in a new area.

Moving within the US is obviously easier, because of a shared language and culture in different states. France is only 20 miles from England, but at times it can feel like a completely different planet. On the other hand, is there really much difference between living in Boston and Chicago? They seemed pretty similar when I went there. I could see the attraction of moving somewhere like San Francisco from the east coast. Mainly for the weather as I'm not sure I could survive Chicago winters.

I can barely tell the difference between 7 and 8.1, so am perfectly happy using either. I'd pick 8.1 for the faster boot time. Other than that, I find them near identical (once you change a few settings to get rid of the annoying new features, like the charms bar)

You mean reset them to something and logon using that new password? Yeah, I could have done, but I'm not sure what benefit that would have. I'm still logging on as them with all the security concerns that that implies.

I'm not sure how the OP's POP3 system is configured. When we were using a POP3 server it didn't integrate with AD, so I knew everyone's POP3 passwords.

Even when I migrated to Exchange, I wrote down most users AD passwords so that I could logon as them and create new profiles in Outlook. This may have been a dumb move, but I didn't know how to create Outlook profiles for a user without logging on as that user and I still don't! So if I the OP doesn't know any user passwords, I don't know how he'll create new Outlook profiles on a Friday night. I'd be interested to know how I should have done it.

If you change your MX records last thing on a Friday, how much e-mail is likely to go to the old POP3 server during the weekend? It wouldn't be much at our place, so I'd pickup the stray e-mail myself using a POP3 client and then forward the e-mail to the users, assuming you know their passwords.

It's quality not quantity that counts. J. D. Salinger and Harper Lee only wrote one novel each.

The employer might not expect the employee to work at home, but the employee might choose to do so. For example, I often prefer to go home at 5pm, hang out with my kids, then work from 8pm to 10pm. My employer might prefer me to work through until 7pm. They're not obliged to meet my desire to work from home from time to time, but I like the convenience.

A lot of people take work home with them, and so need Office, and their employer won't always pay for a licence for them.

Yeah Google docs. It only really makes sense if you go all in with Google, in my opinion. Although I don't see why O365 wouldn't work pretty well.

5 years! Its a bit early to be planning. I did go to a talk at Google a while ago by a large London local government who had given all their staff one and largely ditched Windows - several thousand employees. So it can be done.

If I ever find myself with no access to the real world, no access to television, no access to radio, no access to newspapers and no access to the internet other than ML, then these posts will be a useful way of me finding out what is happening in the world.

Google Maps Coordinate is now included with Maps Engine Pro, which is $5 per month. So they obviously listened to your complaints that it was expensive and have slashed the price dramatically.

@Carnival-Boy said:

2X is pretty good.

Actually, not so good. It doesn't support NLA. I understand why, but it's not ideal is it? Or are you happy with disabling NLA on clients?

2X is pretty good. It takes a while to remember to use Alt-Click instead of right-click.

I've just noticed the mousepad on my HP Chromebook doesn't quite fit properly, so I'm not impressed with the build quality. I'm assuming its not supposed to be like that.

The first problem was that we were running GFI Cloud web protection on the client, which was blocking access to the apps.pertino.com login script. I resolved that, but it took a while. Then I couldn't install it on one of our 2008R2 servers (but could install it ok on a different 2008 server). I can't remember why exactly. Then I kind of run out of time. Will pick this up again soon.

I tried it and failed, so I'm not sure it's super easy. Will try again after some tips on this thread.