“Your resume is not about you:” Insights from a journalism hiring manager on how to succeed in applying for internships and jobs

Your resume is not about you. It’s about ME, the hiring manager. If I move your resume through the stack, I am attaching my reputation to yours. I am being judged in large part by my hires. Don’t ever forget that. When I am looking at a resume, cover letter and portfolio, I am not looking at what you’ve done. Frankly, I don’t care. What I care about is how what you have done translates into what you will DO if I hire you. Big difference. I have always tried to encourage job hopefuls to try to view the search…

I’m not a big fan of Disney’s corporate greed.

I’m not a huge fan of Disney, largely because as a grad student in the 1990s, I chose the 1920-1950 time period for my dissertation based on my expectation that the literary works I studied from that time period would fall out of copyright one by one during my career. I planned to mine my dissertation, using what I learned about the literary works in that time period to create free, annotated hypertext editions of those works. I’d schedule them so that they’d appear online as the copyright dates passed, and I could reap the intellectual rewards while wearing my…

Hear That? It’s Your Voice Being Taken for Profit.

Why do tech companies give us these cool free digital voice assistants? (Hint: If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product being sold.) Because of recent major advances in natural language processing and machine learning, individuals will soon be able to speak conversationally not just to their phone assistant or smart speaker but to their dedicated bank assistant, kitchen equipment, restaurant menu, hotel room console, homework assignment, or car. […] It could all seem like a small price to pay until you project out the use of this tech into the near future. An apparel store clerk uses an…

“Link In Bio” is a slow knife

We don’t even notice it anymore — “link in bio”. It’s a pithy phrase, usually found on Instagram, which directs an audience to be aware that a pertinent web link can be found on that user’s profile. […] For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram — meaning Facebook, Instagram’s increasingly-overbearing owner — tightly control commerce on its platform? If Instagram users could post links willy-nilly, they might even be able to connect directly to their users, getting their…

I studied philosophy and engineering at university: Here’s my verdict on ‘job relevant’ education

She double-majored in engineering and philosophy. Fifteen years later, which degree is more relevant to her success? She says that even with an engineering degree, she was criticized for not knowing specific skills that she never actually used (such as drafting by hand) or that she learned quickly on the job (such as the specific CAD software her company used). And after 15 years, most of those specific job-ready skills are out of date and useless. When I introduce students to a software package, my goal is not to make them “job-ready” experts with that tool; instead, I encourage them…

The Internet Is Rotting

I do what I can. It’s disheartening how, in the past three or so years, several of my free instructional web pages that used to be high in the Google search results have been pushed out by predatory services that provide custom term papers (for a fee, of course). Users of social media are trained to use a flashy, well-designed app, but they don’t learn how to curate and maintain their online content; instead, they are giving away their creations to social media giants. One of the best features of the World Wide Web was that webmasters took the time…

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In May, 2001 I was blogging about lanuguage, design and Cliffs Notes

In May 2001, I was blogging about Business and the English language (a humorous rant against business jargon) — Clint Witchalls, Spectator Some features you may need on your computer (like “Extend Deadline” and “Read Bosses’ Minds” The Creator of Cliffs Notes has Died (though I know you won’t read his whole obituary) “Telling the Truth about Damned Lies and Statistics“ The Gist Generation –Jeff Barbian Bad Design Can Be Costly –Jef Raskin, Forbes  

Why Can’t My New Employees Write? | Just Visiting

We’re talking about elite students here landing jobs in highly desirable firms. These are Deresiewicz’s “Excellent Sheep.” We can presume that their educations have been rigorous as they’ve climbed to the top of the meritocratic heap. If these young professionals can’t write well, who can? And if they’re not writing well, why not? My belief is that the experience of these elite students is similar to my very accomplished, but not quite elite students, that they see writing for school not as an occasion to communicate ideas, but instead to perform a kind of intelligence that we associate with being…

How a Supermoon Helped Free the Giant Container Ship From the Suez Canal

Powerful lead to this well-written news story. (Great use of embedded hyperlinks, too.) To get the giant container ship blocking the Suez Canal unstuck, engineers needed the stars to align. Actually, the sun, Earth and moon. After several days trying to dislodge the Ever Given cargo ship, which had veered off course and embedded itself in the side of the canal, the salvage team pinned their hopes on this week’s full moon, when, beginning Sunday, water levels were set to rise a foot-and-a-half higher than normal high tides. That would make it easier to pull the 1,300-foot vessel out from the…

Mars Is a Hellhole: Colonizing the red planet is a ridiculous way to help humanity.

Some of Elon Musk’s stunts have caught my attention. He was involved in founding the company that became PayPal (which I use from time to time, to accept freelance payments and to pay other freelancers), and I can see a lot of people would benefit from the high-speed train systems he has advocated, but I have never been inspired by anything he says. In The Atlantic, Shannon Stirone does a great job using Carl Sagan as a foil, exploring how Musk’s core values (ego and greed) inform his advocacy for the colonization of Mars. Mars will kill you. [Elon] Musk…

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I can’t believe I’m fact-checking a viral story about the gender of a plastic potato with detachable body parts.

  I can’t believe I’m fact-checking a viral story about a plastic potato, but Hasbro is removing the “Mr.” from its “Potato Head” logo, and offering a new mix-and-match package that includes two potato bodies, one baby potato, and a bunch of loose parts that will let kids put them together however they want. That doesn’t mean it’s discarding or re-gendering the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head characters.  (Though the whole ethos of a toy with detachable body parts makes you wonder why any of this is even necessary.) A tweet from Hasbro confirms the characters are still named Mr.…

Most Americans have a high opinion of the humanities, and 81% use at least one humanities-related skill on the job

While some survey respondents were unfamiliar with the term “humanities” (apparently guessing that it had to do with the study of the human body), once they were given the definition “studying or participating in activities related to literature, languages, history, and philosophy,” most respondents had a high opinion of the subject. Predictably, people who were educated at liberal-arts colleges were the most favorable towards the humanities, but science and engineering graduates who had little personal exposure to the humanities “appeared to be among the most likely to use humanistic skills at work.” Of seven skill areas included in the survey…

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People hate reading instructions, and will only glance at them after they are already frustrated and behind schedule.

I already bought the thing, and I’m only looking in the manual because I can’t figure out what’s wrong with the non-working piece of junk, so I don’t really want to read a chipper note congratulating me on my purchase. People hate reading instructions, and will only glance at them after they are already frustrated and behind schedule. Write for busy grouches who want to jump directly to the section that they think will help them solve their specific problem. (Omit the warm and fuzzy introductions.) This document introduces five basic principles about writing instructions. Any professional writing textbook will have…

A Career-Aligned Major Isn’t Enough

I’ve taken over teaching the English department’s relatively new career focus sequence, so I’m more than usually invested in these ideas. It’s time for faculty and administrators to be blunt: postgraduation success, more than ever, requires a demanding curriculum that includes extensive writing, facility with data and statistics, and extensive opportunities for collaboration and critical thinking. What the pandemic should have taught us is that we need to double down on teaching — not teaching defined simply as instruction or content transmission, but as mentoring, scaffolding, intervening, engaging in substantive interaction and providing constructive feedback. It also entails attending to…

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In January 2001, I was blogging about Bill Clinton’s #WhiteHouse security deposit, anachronism in the #Titanic movie, a textual detective, and #email #etiquette

In January 2001, I was blogging about The Onion: Clinton Not Expecting to Collect White House Security Deposit Anachronisms in the movie Titanic A textual detective who helps the FBI solve crimes and says Clement Clark Moore did not write “A Visit from St. Nicholas” A student whose client backed out needed a project, so I asked her to write a handout on email. Writing Effective Email: Top 10 Tips —  Write a meaningful subject line; keep the message short and readable; avoid attachments; identify yourself; don’t flame (and more). First draft submitted by Jessica Bauer Dec 12 2000; I…

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reducing print edition to 2 days a week; cites plan to go all digital

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is scaling back its print edition to two days a week as part of the 235-year-old newspaper’s transition to an all-digital news operation, documents show. The plan is to eliminate its Friday print edition beginning Feb. 27, according to a letter from Post-Gazette’s human resources manager provided by the newsroom’s employee union. Without other changes, that would leave only a Thursday and Sunday edition in print. triblive.com/local/post-gazette-reducing-print-edition-to-2-days-a-week-cites-plan-to-go-all-digital/

Apple threatens to remove Parler social networking service from App Store

Apple Inc has threatened to remove the Parler social networking service from its App Store unless the company changes its content moderation policies, Parler Chief Executive John Matze told Reuters on Friday. Parler is a social network where many supporters of President Donald Trump have migrated after being banned from services such as Twitter Inc. In a letter from Apple’s App Store review team to Parler seen by Reuters, Apple cited instances of the service’s being used to make plans to descend on Washington, D.C., with weapons after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday. Apple declined to…

Amusing Reference to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’

Imagine a scenario in which circumstances outside your control confine you to a single room for an indefinite period of time — and you have basically nothing to do but stare at the walls. Available activities are strictly limited; you aren’t allowed company; you can’t really go outside; time collapses in on itself; and your sense of reality starts fraying at the edges. Does this sound like the plot of 2020 to you? Or does it sound like the plot of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story about a woman pushed slowly into madness by the isolation…