It's late, I'm listening to some sweet early-90s rock and roll, and a thought I had way back in October has just come back to me. One time I was wandering around in Staples, more or less lost, looking for the box of envelopes I needed to mail my application packages, when I got stuck looking at a huge shelf displaying resume paper. Do you have any idea how many different kinds of resume paper there are? Some of it's some nice fucking paper, too. Taupe, with little brown flecks and shit, a tasteful light blue, whatever.
I started wondering about getting some to print my CV on. But that lasted for about two seconds before I realized how stupid that would be. Philosophers aren't going to get fooled by that shit, are they? "Oo! This guy's CV feels so heavy! He must be doing good work." That would be idiotic. I ended up going with the crappy light-weight paper we get from the department secretary.
But standing there in Staples, I thought about the people who do get fooled by the nice paper. They must be out there, right? Out there in the non-academic world I keep hearing so much about? So, when Buck McBuckson, the John Deere Southwestern regional sales co-ordinator, gets resumes from fresh-faced, young tractor salesmen, does he say to himself, "Fuck, those are some nice little brown flecks. They make me want to a buy tractor from this guy." It's got to happen some of the time, right? Or people wouldn't buy that crap and Staples wouldn't sell it.
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2 comments:
I think it does work for "resumes" in the work-world. It could conceivably work given how crazy profs tend to be.
The reason it doesn't work for academics, I suspect, is that the committee simply all get photocopies of the 1 original that you send in, and in some cases maybe only the secretary or hr person saw the thoughtfulness or personal touch that says "hire me"...
New Scotland
A comment from a frequent hirer in the work-world: I have way too freaking much paper in my life and frankly get annoyed at anything other than electronic resume submissions. So fancy paper isn't likely to impress me. *Fonts,* on the other hand...
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