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Subject:RE: New TECHWR-L Poll Question From:"Hannah Bissell" <to -dot- hannah -at- usa -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 2 Oct 2001 09:42:23 -0400
> Tom Murrell wrote:
>snip<
> The more
> information
> you routinely give out, the greater the chance that you will give
> a potential
> employer what they are looking for to reject you. My objective in
> a job hunt is
> to be included in. Frankly, I want to be the one to tell them
> whether their
> position is acceptable to me. The more information you give out, the more
> chance there is that someone will find something objectionable about you.
>
and in another message Tom Murrell wrote:
>snip<
>
>I would suggest in a similar vein, that some
>potential employers (not me, by the way) might not want a belly dancer in
their
>organization and might rule you out on that basis. (It may be stupid, but
it
>does happen.)
Two thoughts on this.......
In a sea of resumes, I'm looking to stand out. I think hobbies show you
don't just do 9-5. You live your life and don't just sit in front of a TV
each night. I want to stand out so chances are my hobbies will plant a seed
in the memory of the interviewer. The interviewer then thinks of me more as
a person than an applicant. The more they "know" you, the more likely they
are to trust you on the rest of what your resume says (unless your hobby is
an officer in the Society for Perpetual Liars or something like that).
My second thought is that if an employer isn't going to accept me because of
a hobby, I don't want to work there. I don't work for fun, I work so I have
the time and money to have fun after work hours. That's who I really am. It
also avoids problems afterwards. Although they couldn't fire me for a belly
dancing hobby they find out about after the fact, it will still mean someone
somewhere will either be giving me a hard time for it or looking for some
other slip up to serve as the reason for firing me - all because they had a
bad belly dancing experience as a child (or whatever).
And I have been told by former employers that my listing of hobbies did make
me stand out in their memory (for one place) and were specifically why I
recieved the position (at another place). At the second place, the company
wrote repair guides for household items. Not known to me, they wanted to
expand to other personally owned items, such as boats. When they saw I was a
sailor they went with me instead of another similarly qualified applicant.
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