Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Experience which cannot be bought

An acquaintance of mine is, at present, in the happy position of being able to recruit into his little team at work. Of course in these days of political correctness and rules on what you can and cannot put in a job advert he is a little restricted in what he can say.

For example, a lawyerly friend of mine was recently successfully prosecuted for discriminatory behaviour by a Vampire on the basis that, having read what he was not allowed to ask for, he simply stated "Individual required for busy law practice. Must have pulse."[1]

Anyway, there's always a silver lining, and in this case, the restrictions on what can be said prevent the employer from detailing the full horrors awaiting the successful applicant for this position. So the little white card with the job description was taped inside the global news-agent's window of the internet and, being rather vague, it has elicited several diverse resumes (or Curriculum Vitae as we like to call them in the old country).

One such CV from a fellow who we shall call Fred proudly announces that, in his current position, he has experience of bugger 3.2.

Version 3.2??? One can only imagine the press releases:

Bugger version 2.0 - sixteen new levels of difficulty!

Bugger version 3.0 - internet enabled - choose to play with the computer, your friends, or yourself!

Bugger version 3.2 - multi-player is here!

The problem here, of course, for all the (admittedly puerile) amusement this causes, the context of the resume clearly indicates that this is a software package of some sort. Now, I don't know about you, but when someone refers to a software package I've not heard of before, I look it up.

I wonder what will happen if I type 'bugger 3.2' into Google...


[1] This is not strictly true. If one was to bar entry to the legal profession on the basis that the applicant is 'undead' there wouldn't be any lawyers. But as an illustration, I'm sure you get my point.