Being a curious fellow about the growth of the Linux market, I occasionally browse job lists looking to see what companies are seeking related to Linux skills. More often than not there are several job listings seeking people with “strong Linux administration” and other skills that are specific to or most often found with Linux and Unix “guru” types. Then at the bottom of the employer’s list of requirements one will often see something like, “Qualified candidates should forward their Word formatted resume …” What?! Word? As in Microsoft Word? Are they looking for Linux experts or not?
When are human resources (HR) people going to realize that most Linux folk are not Microsoft fanatics nor Microsoft serfs? The true Linux guru will most likely be able to use Word just fine, if he has it at all. Sure, he can pull up his resume’ written with LaTeX or OpenOffice.org and Save as Word format. I know this. But is it not showing foul ignorance and grotesque insensitivity on the part of these HR people to insist on Word format? There are so many open and pseudo-open standards to use, why ask for a closed, moving target like Microsoft Word format? It can be seen as, and has been seen as, an insult to the person with hard earned GNU/Linux skills.
What I see when I read these requests for Word format documents is ignorance. Gigantic, pimple on the nose of HR, ignorance. Which I find tragic in this day of a growing Linux job market. HR people, here is a clue for you. With the “free” OpenOffice.org Writer, LaTeX or many other open source document creation tools on a GNU/Linux system the GNU/Linux guru you seek can create a PDF for you. At this point PDF is a well understood, fairly static, document format that has “free” viewers across almost all operating systems. All one need do to get a viewer for this format on the typical HR Microsoft desktop is go to Adobe’s web site and click on the button seen below:
Click it now!
Why not ask for plain ASCII text? That is a file format that will not change at Microsoft’s whim with the next release of Microsoft Word. After all, a resume’ has a fairly standard layout that can easily be duplicated with a plain text document. Any decent word processor, or even Microsoft Word, can open plain text documents.
For all you decision makers that are choosing Microsoft Word I will leave you with these thoughts. Using open standards or relatively unchanging formats for documents helps future proof one’s documents. There is no guarantee that Microsoft’s next release of Microsoft Word will be backward compatible with your documents written with an older version of Microsoft Word. The next release of Microsoft Word will certainly not create documents by default that are backward compatible with an older Microsoft Word. Adopt open standard file formats that are not under the control of a single entity. Then ask your Linux guru candidate for her resume’ in that open format. You will be seen more favorably as a place that “gets it” about GNU/Linux and as a good place to work if you do.
Edit Wed Mar 4 17:13:23 UTC 2009: Make counter visible.
Edit Wed Mar? 4 20:35:53 UTC 2009: Add URL for Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols blog article at ComputerWorld Blogs.
Edit Thu Mar 5 01:11:55 UTC 2009: The gist of this article is “closed file format = bad in the long term, open file format = good in the long term”. The HR illustration is merely an amusing attention grabber.
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Lame. I nominate your article for a “wasted bandwidth of the day award”.
Paul (comment #31), thank you for such an insightful and thought provoking comment. Oh, wait, you just “wasted bandwidth” too did you not? Were you being ironic? No? Well, I am being sarcastic.
[...] Linux System Administrator Wanted – Send Word Resume? ? The ERACC Web Log When are human resources (HR) people going to realize that most Linux folk are not Microsoft fanatics nor Microsoft serfs? The true Linux guru will most likely be able to use Word just fine, if he has it at all. Sure, he can pull up his resume? written with LaTeX or OpenOffice.org and Save as Word format. I know this. But is it not showing foul ignorance and grotesque insensitivity on the part of these HR people to insist on Word format? There are so many open and pseudo-open standards to use, why ask for a closed, moving target like Microsoft Word format? It can be seen as, and has been seen as, an insult to the person with hard earned GNU/Linux skills. (tags: linux windows openoffice.org word) [...]
[...] Linux System Administrator Wanted – Send Word Resume? Being a curious fellow about the growth of the Linux market, I occasionally browse job lists looking to see what companies are seeking related to Linux skills. More often than not there are several job listings seeking people with ?strong Linux administration? and other skills that are specific to or most often found with Linux and Unix ?guru? types. Then at the bottom of the employer?s list of requirements one will often see something like, ?Qualified candidates should forward their Word formatted resume ?? What?! Word? As in Microsoft Word? Are they looking for Linux experts or not? [...]
I also find the insistence by HR and headhunters to supply resumes in Word format very irritating. However if you want to apply for jobs in Australia either supply in Word format or miss out. Its that simple.
HR people have no clue about anything outside of MS Office, and often their front-end systems can only cater for Word or rtf files for getting your resume into their database. They cannot even accept PDFs or plain text!
99% of the business world here is stuck in Microsoft desktops: sad and stupid, but true. As much as I hate it I have to accept it, as fighting it has only sent me broke.
Getnikar (comment #35), thanks for your comment. I am not advocating that GNU/Linux IT people refuse to create a Microsoft .doc file for the people that ask for it. I am advocating for a change in all of industry that relies on Microsoft Office to move away from Microsoft Office. Including the HR people I see asking for “Word” format. Vendor lock-in seen with products like Microsoft Office is very bad for business.
As for the HR front-end file parsers, if the parsing tools for HR only parse .doc and .rtf format then the tools are broken and need repair or replacement. I imagine one could create an FOSS parser that could handle much more than .doc and .rtf, don’t you? Just make it work with the known back-ends used for HR data storage. I would think at least .txt and .pdf should be able to be parsed for this as long as the parsed document used a known layout, like a typical resume’.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Joannah
Joannah (comment #37), thank you for the compliment.
For the record, if you want to advertise on ERA Computers & Consulting’s web property you can find a better way than stroking ego and posting a URL to your Google advertisement laden site.
problem with HR people regarding linux is as follows
a) HR people don’t know that any linux person who had worked in RedHat enterprise ,fedora , can adopt suse ,debian on the fly ,they keep searching for a specific distribution expert
b) the HR people can’t judge the Linux skills ,majority of managers and HR people think that working in linux is same as working in windows servers etc
the fact is linux is not for everyone and linux need special type of skills which also required a flexible environment ,if any of the manager expect a linux person to configure and deploy apache ,mysql without doing his/her homework ,sorry guyz then you are wrong , linux needs googling , documentation , books etc , but who to tell this to your manager
its always a problem
the job posted on dice ,monster etc are types which there are hardly any qualified persons becoz they are asking too much .