Rob Dolin's space: Career

Microsoftie's address to Okoboji, IA HS graduation

Fri, 25 May 2007 15:23:01 GMT

Kevin Moore gave a very good (IMHO) speech to the class of 2007 at his smaller Iowa high school alma mater: http://j832.com/ohs2007/

Resume advice

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 06:17:14 GMT

Since I spoke at UW yesterday, I have recieved a few resumes by email; some as job submissions and some asking for feedback. For the folks looking for feedback, I have complied some general tips. Like all of the content on this blog, see disclaimer top right.

Know your audience - Research the company you're sending your resume to and make sure it is appropriate for that company.
One page - Unless you have been working full-time for 20+ years, keep it to one page. A resume is skimmed. List your strongest single page of accomplishments
List relevant experiences - Whether it was a job, internship, or project, if you have a relevant experience, list it
Include your GPA - If your GPA is not listed, I would (personally) assume that it was really low. It's all good (IMHO) if you're not a 4.0 student, but I assume the worst if your GPA is not there
Leadership experiences, not clubs - It means very little if you were a member of the IEEE or some other student club, but if you took an active leadership role, you should take about what you did (not just the position you held, but what you did) and what the group accomplished under your leadership.

Live to Work or Work to Live?

Sun, 07 May 2006 04:15:47 GMT

Bubba, recently posted an article from the Financial Times about young professionals finding personal fulfilment through their jobs and postponing career limiting choices; especially in personal relationships. Reading this brought to mind two recent personal events for me.

About a month ago, I attended the celebration of the life of Jim H. I knew Jim and his wife Judith primarily as civic activists in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. When I moved to Seattle about five years ago, they had been extremely hospitable to me and had helped me to get connected in Seattle. What struck me was at Jim's memorial gathering, how no one knew what Jim did professionally. Judith explained that he had been a technical writer, but that it was his profession, not his vocation. Judith was much more proud of thier civic involvement, their cats, and their adventures together including camping in every county in Washington state.

Last weekend, I was between travels to the midwest and east coast so I spent the weekend in Chicago and visited with some of my friends from high school. Eric and Brian are both studying to be doctors. Max just left an options trading job to start trading on his own and he's also going to photography school. David is leaving a civilian job to re-up with the millitary where he will be an IT manager. Then there's Jordan who is working as a beer vendor at Wrigley Field between most recently volunteering for hurricane Katrina victims and natural disaster victims in Pakistan.

I guess it's about finding a balance.