The Military Contractor Hiring Process

[120mm]

Any time .
Typical, freakin' typical - sigh . What they don't realize is that the process of getting a PhD tends to canalize one's thinking. Well, if they end up offering it to you, stick them for a 20% salary hike.

The real ironic thing is, the position doesn't require any special skills and knowledge, except the ability to make a campaign plan to achieve an objective.

I'm surprised at that. Most resume forms nowadays are based around elements described by the HR-XML Consortium, although the print version (placement, font, typeface, etc.) change radically. Don't they have an online submission tool that reformats it to meet their own template?

Yes they do. And the company has an official "no resumes" policy. Which they violate with the resume requirement. Welcome to Wonderland, Alice. But it is fun to toy with them, while being frustrated in other venues.

[marct]

Yes they do. And the company has an official "no resumes" policy. Which they violate with the resume requirement. Welcome to Wonderland, Alice. But it is fun to toy with them, while being frustrated in other venues.

(respondeth he after a 3 hour rehearsal....)

"Wonderland"? The allusion is correct, but "Hell" might be a better description . I'll admit, having fun with them can be enjoyable.... Still, one has to wonder about the disengagement from reality they deal with. Humpty-Dumpty comes to mind...

[sandbag]

I have had little success in hiring contractors based on the "keyword search" method employed by some of our support companies. It's even worse when applicants don't fully read the position description. There's a huge difference between, say, acquisition logistics and tactical logistics, and success and proficiency in one does not imply success and proficiency in the other.

[Schmedlap]

There's a huge difference between, say, acquisition logistics and tactical logistics, and success and proficiency in one does not imply success and proficiency in the other.

Reminds me of when I spoke to head hunters as I was getting out of the Army. I was sure that I could learn just about any job fairly quickly, but I also wanted to make sure that a potential employer did not overestimate anything on my resume and assume that I could hit the ground running in something heavy with jargon and technical stuff - there would need to be a brief adjustment period. The head hunters insisted that I oversell myself (that was how I saw it, anyway). They would take a general skill set of mine and overlay that into a myriad of more specialized skills in various jobs and tried to convince me that I was a good fit. The process gave me a bad feeling - like I was helping the head hunter to misrepresent a product (me) to a customer (my potential future employer), so I just stopped working with them and went to school. In light of the current economy, maybe that wasn't such a bad move.