All posts by dan medeiros

Office Life

5 Resume Dos and Don’ts: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Keep in mind that most people in the hiring process, especially in Human Resources, review somewhere close to a googol of resumes in their career. Hyperbole perhaps, but hopefully you understand the extent of the sheer numbers you are up against when you apply for any position. Needless to say, if your resume does not pass the first review, you are highly unlikely to get that position.

Most HR staff, myself included, look at resumes and quickly put the bits of information contained therein into one of three categories:

  • Things that qualify you for the position
  • Things that tend to neither help nor detract from your candidacy
  • Things that disqualify you for the position or otherwise raise a red flag

Time and time again, the same types of mistakes occur. Since categorization seems to be a sub-theme of this blog, here is my list of the types of mistakes to avoid and the good, the bad and the ugly. Caveat — I’ve participated in many resume critique workshops at colleges helping students perfect a resume — one thing that I have noticed is that each college’s idea of a perfect resume differs. For example, one college insists that you have an “Objective” statement and one college insists that you DO NOT have an ‘Objective” statement.  This segues into #1:

1) Poor or vague objective statement – If you do put an objective statement, make it clear, specific and informative. This is not a place for buzzwords or overly broad statements. Continue reading 5 Resume Dos and Don’ts: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly →

Office Life, UX

Notes from the User Testing Files: The Sheep-Goat Effect

Recently, I referenced  something quite obscure – the “sheep-goat effect”. The reason I say  “quite obscure”  is that no one had any idea what it was. And I spoke to literally scores of people. The “sheep-goat effect” was coined in ESP experiments whereby people who believed in ESP did significantly better than those who did not believe in ESP on ESP-type tests. The believers were called “sheep” and the non-believers, “goats”. The “sheep-goat effect” is therefore used (apparently by only a very small handful of people aside from me, if at all), to illustrate that the belief in something can have a causal effect on that event happening.

So why was I making this reference in the first place? Because the sheep-goat effect goes beyond ESP tests–it can be a very powerful concept in marketing.  This is especially true if your product or service is not widely accepted, is novel or is subject to public skepticism (like ESP).

Marketers love to gather feedback – by way of surveys.  Just Google how to create a good marketing survey and you’ll run across suggestions regarding target groups and sampling. Here are a few you’ll find regarding target group: Continue reading Notes from the User Testing Files: The Sheep-Goat Effect →