Nobrainer’s Think Tank

I was just reading Ignore These 10 Outdated Pieces of Career Advice, and I reckoned that the author is overstating the outdatedness of some of the items. Snippets of the list, and my comments below:

5. Include an objective at the top of your resume. Let’s ring the death knell for resume objectives. Hiring managers just don’t care about them; they care about what you can do for them. Objectives never help, and can often hurt—if they aren’t tailored enough to the position or even have nothing to do with it (which makes it look like you’re blasting your resume out without enough of a focus). Most objectives, though, simply waste space. The trend now is to include highlights or a skills summary where objective used to go.

I’m not a hiring manager, but I do review resumes. We get plenty of people with adequate skills, but if they can’t show that they’re interested in our kind of work, they’re going to be put behind the people who can. Plus, if you’re really interested in Job A, and you’re applying for Job X, we’re both better off knowing that up front. Sure, if you’re throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks, keep it generic, but admit to yourself that such an approach is suboptimal.

Keep in mind here that people other than hiring managers might looks at your resume. And keep in mind that having a good objective is going to help you when your resume is being reviewed by someone who cares (and I think a lot of people do care).

6. Invest in good resume paper. Don’t invest in any resume paper. You should be submitting your resume electronically. The days of buying heavy stock to print resumes are over.

If you are, by chance, still going to career fairs, (e.g. because you’re in college), I suggest still spending a few dollars on resume paper. To me, nothing says “slacker” like showing up with resume copies fresh from the nearest computer lab printer.

8. When your interviewer asks about your weaknesses, offer up a positive framed as a weakness. This has become such an interview cliché that your interviewer will assume you’re being disingenuous. Interviewers have heard hundreds of people claim they’re perfectionists or that they work too hard; try something new.

I don’t know about this so much, but my reaction is that if an interviewer is going to ask this, they are expecting the cliched response. Or maybe I’m reading this wrong. Maybe the right way to go is with “I can’t do X, but I’m sure I can learn quickly because I can do Y and they are similar.” I think I agree that something like “perfectionist” is BS.

Overall, I think the bigger point is that for any company someone applies to, that someone will be most successful if they know what that company is and what they are looking for. If they want good people, a more specific, targeted approach is probably better. If they need bodies, generic is best.

I don’t know about y’all, but the DC television market is being bombarded with ads from AT&T touting the potential benefits of its merger with T-Mobile. “An Engine for Job Creation” they say. “This will create an estimated 55,000 – 96,000 new jobs from AT&T’s additional infrastructure investment, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI),” they say. It’s funny, because that’s not quite what the EPI says. EPI “projects that AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile could plausibly create an additional 55,000 to 96,000 job-years of work.” Perhaps I’m being picky, but I think there’s a notable difference between what AT&T says the EPI said and what the EPI said.

In the relatively brief period that I have known about World Market, I have found some great values (a particular, very-sturdy kitchen cart that was over 50% off comes to mind), but I know this is no deal.

I happen to consider this wine a great deal; it’s one of my favorites. $7.99 ain’t so bad. However, I know I can regularly pick this up at my friendly, neighborhood Trader Joe’s for $6.99. Thank you, World Market, but no thanks.

Per USA Today, Obama “stressed that ‘no one party will be able to dictate where we go from here.’” That’s good to know, but is he implying that, at least at some times over the last two years, the single party in charge, was dictating? If he is implying that, he is correct, but it still seems like something odd to say.

I also found this paragraph to be cringeworthy:

[Obama] is seeking “the right balance” between new regulations to make sure that companies are treating customers fairly, and “making absolutely clear that the only way America succeeds is if businesses are succeeding.”

I wouldn’t exactly say the business environment is great right now. So it shows the extent of the Great One’s rectal-cranial inversion that he is even worried about this balance at this point. Heaven forbid we end up with lower unemployment at the risk of some of us facing an overdraft fee.

Creative accounting…

Congressional budget scorekeepers say a Medicare fix that Democrats included in earlier versions of their health care bill would push it into the red…

The so-called doc fix was part of the original House bill. Because of its high cost, Democrats decided to pursue it separately. Republicans say the cost should not be ignored. Congress has usually waived the cuts to doctors year by year.

And rosy assumptions:

There has been a lot of talk lately about the CBO scoring of the health bill. Here is one thing people should understand about their numbers: When they estimate the budget impact of a bill like this, they assume the path of GDP is unchanged.

Recall that the bill raises taxes substantially. Some of these tax hikes are the explicit tax increases on capital income to pay for the insurance subsidies. Some of these tax hikes are the implicit marginal rate increases from the phase-out of the insurance subsidies as a person’s income rises. Both of these would be expected to reduce GDP growth.

Indeed, to be very wonkish about it, these tax changes could have especially large GDP effects. Some people like to argue that taxes have small GDP effects because income and substitution effects offset each other. But if you give someone a subsidy and then phase it out, both the income and substitution effects work in the direction of reducing work effort.

While washing my hands in a McDonald’s restroom the other day, it dawned on me why so many places are switching to foamy hand soap. I reckoned it isn’t happening because the foamy soap is generally nicer, it’s that it induces people to use less soap and thus saves companies money. And as a google search revealed, I was correct, but the advantages don’t stop there.

From WiseGeek

For manufacturers, the advantage of foam soap is that they do not need to make as much soap. They argue that foam soap is also easier to lather, encouraging people to use soap properly, and that since many people overuse soap, foam soap dispenses a more appropriate amount of soap for basic hand washing needs. Foam soap is also thinner, making the dispensers less prone to clogging.

From Parrish-Supply

You’ll get significantly more Handwashings out of the Foam Soap System than traditional liquid soap dispensers. Foam Soap combined with the dispenser will create a powerful cleaning system. Air is infused into the soap as it’s dispensed creating a rich, luxurious lather. Just ONE push delivers a generous portion of foam. The volume of lather feels so satisfying in users’ hands that they don’t need a second push.

As the chart shows, you actually get more than two-times as many pushes per unit volume with foam soap. So you not only end up with a product that’s more appealing to the customer, but one that uses less to begin with and encourages still encourages people to be less wasteful. What an invention!