| > Answering these answers will probably help you understand where you're going wrong and how to better sell yourself. Good feedback. Thanks. No, not entitled at all. Also, not arrogant (you didn't say or imply that, just adding this myself). I know what I know and can do and where I might be out of my depth. I have no problem at all admitting this in the course of my work. That's how you learn. I feel I have to repeat what I have posted a couple of times now: My original post isn't intended to be a resume. No attempt whatsoever was made to make it sound good or be the kind of thing I would submit to anyone for a job application. It's just a raw brain dump of skills and knowledge I acquired over four decades. To your point, yes, I can see that even a well-written version of these skills could be very confusing for what I am going to call single-discipline jobs. You are right, if someone is looking for a web developer or embedded software guy, the fact that I own an industrial CNC machine and can run it is a ridiculous thing to add. I don't think I've done that in applications, yet, I have to admit that I have sent off many cloned applications out of frustration without filtering in/out what relevant bits should and should not be there. What you are saying is correct. If the skills presented in a resume turn out to be orthogonal to the job, they might as well be excluded or left as material for a conversation in answer to the question "What else have you done?". I should say I have applied to a range of jobs where the position entails managing multidisciplinary engineering teams. In that case the skills should not be orthogonal at all. Maybe I have to think through the presentation or avoid listing skills and focus on management "stories", again, leaving the details for a conversation. I can see how more can be confusing and detrimental to getting past the first proverbial filters. That much makes sense. I guess the question is: Where do you draw the line or lines. The first are easy: Job-relevant skills. And, perhaps, from there, and being very selective, add skills that might add context yet not look/feel irrelevant. Something to think about. A problem with having been an entrepreneur for decades is that you are not used to applying for jobs. I have hired people for roles from sales, web dev, marketing, hardware and software engineering, etc. In all cases I always had the patience to fully evaluate every person who put a resume in front of me. I guess I am saying I never really learned to apply for jobs. I know that sounds stupid. Really stupid. 60 years old, and you are realizing you might not know how to apply for a job? Well, my reality is that I never had to apply for jobs when I was in my 20's and 30's. I could (and did) walk out of one job and land another in the same industry the same day without having to apply for it. Small industry. People knew key players. By my mid-30's I launched into entrepreneurship. Didn't have to apply for that job. And that was that. I didn't have to consider applying for a job until about ten years ago. I've been busy with consulting contracts, some as long as two years. So, yeah, maybe the one thing I am getting out of this is that I might not have that skill. Interesting. Something to work on. Thanks. |