All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Job Hunting

davorg on 2001-12-04T09:39:47

Of course, finding a job would be far easier if the recruitment industry wasn't completely populated by clueless f*ckwits who don't know what they're doing.

An example.

On Friday I see this job advertised. Sounds pretty perfect for me so I call the agency and ask to speak to the agent mentioned in the ad. I'm told he's away for a long weekend. No problem, I'll just send him an email over the weekend and get back to him on Monday. On Friday evening I send him an email telling him that I'm a good match for the role, giving him my mobile phone number and pointing him at my CV on my website.

Monday morning comes round and I've had no response, so I call him again. This time he's in a meeting, but I'm asked what I want to speak to him about. When I tell them, I'm told that it's actually Anna that I need to speak to as she's dealing with that role. But she won't be in until 1pm. So I leave my name an number for Anna to call me when she gets in. I point out that I'll be training in the afternoon, but that if she leaves a message for me I'll call her back during a break.

Of course I didn't hear a thing. So it's now Tuesday and I have to chase them again. Don't these people want to recruit people?

And I mentioned above that my CV is available on the web for agents to download. This seems to confuse them completely as I have it there in a PDF file. This is for two reasons. Firstly, I don't use Word and secondly most agents don't have Acrobat, so they can't edit the details. In my experience, whenever an agent edits a CV they usually make it worse.

But, of course, most agents don't understand what a PDF file is. If a CV isn't in Word format then they can't deal with it. They are concerned that their clients won't be able to read it. I've had agents who have retyped my CV from scratch, because they were so keen to have it in Word!

On a different subject, I finally got to see Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone over the weekend. I thought it was pretty good. A bit to long, tho'. There was plenty there that could have been removed without affecting the plot. At least I enjoyed it more than the reviewer from Capalert who declared it "evil".

Incidently, why was the name of the book and file changed in the US? I've heard people say that Americans wouldn't go for something that mentioned philosphy in the title, but that can't be true - can it?

Of course it's not the first time that film titles have been changed. Alan Bennet's play The Madness of George III became The Madness of King George. Apparently people would be less likely to go and see a film called The Madness of George III because they would think they had missed the first two films in the series. Are people really that stupid?

Leon

acme on 2001-12-04T10:14:35

Leon was renamed The Professional in America, which seems pretty silly to me. It's terribly annoying, 'cos Americans don't get it when I stop shaving, wear a silly hat, carry a plant around with me, and call myself a cleaner. Oh well.

Re:Leon

davorg on 2001-12-04T15:15:22

And also, presumably, hanging around with under age girls :)

Stupid, stupid recruitment creatures

pdcawley on 2001-12-04T12:36:18

I once sent my cv to a pimp as a plain text attachment.

He refused to open it because 'it might have a virus'

There was a Part 1 (& 2)?

Purdy on 2001-12-04T13:09:37

I musta missed it... that may help explain the madness - *laugh*

Jason

I haven't seen the movie

Home

pudge on 2001-12-04T13:31:14

One night a headhunter called me *at home*. I never gave anyone my home number. He said he got it off my resume, which was a lie; he must have looked it up in the phone book (it is listed). I never even gave anyone my resume, since I was not looking for work at the time; it was on my web site, a few links off the home page. So I said don't call me at home; *he* got mad at *me*, saying I should not put my resume online if I didn't want to be contacted about a job (at home around dinnertime, presumably).

Then I realized he had called my work number several times (which was on my resume, and was only ever answered by voicemail), and I said that if someone did not return repeated unsolicited calls, he should take the hint that he's not wanted, and that he should never call anyone unsolicited at home. I doubt I made a dent in his already broken psyche, but one can hope.

Movies

pudge on 2001-12-04T13:38:28

"Philosopher" is a word that a lot of people don't use, and when they do, they envision either an old guy with suede patches on his elbows sitting in a musty university office, surrounded by books, smoking a pipe, and talking about Aristotle, or they envision a young man not yet graduated from university, wearing beat-up t-shirts and long hair in a ponytail, sitting with his legs crossed on the lawn, talking about "the system."

As to Madness of George III, well, many people go to movies without really knowing what they are about. So yeah, the title makes a difference. Coppola wanted to call The Godfather Part III something else, because he did not see it as a traditional sequel; but the studio would have none of it. They figured, and probably rightly so, that more people would see it if it were called The Godfather Part III. It's not so much about people being stupid, but about people scanning the newspaper for a movie to see, and skipping over unfamiliar titles that don't immediately jump out at them. "The Godfather Part III" will jump out at you. "Madness of George III", especially in a country where we don't really know much of British royalty outside of Di and DoDi, is not immediately revealing to many people.

Re:Movies

ziggy on 2001-12-04T14:06:04

PBS had a documentary about Harry Potter last night, and mentioned that in the states they used the term "Sorcerer's Stone" instead of "Philosopher's Stone". They didn't go into details, just mentioned the difference in the states, and proceded to tell the story of the Philosopher's Stone. From what I can gather, most 'Mericans have never heard of the legend of the Philosopher's stone, so the reference would have been lost on us.

As for "The Madness of King George", it is because whenever we see a III at the end of a title, we presume that it's something like "Rocky XVII". We're not used to parsing things like "George III" as single tokens. If we did, then we'd have Rocky XVII -- a thought to horrid to imagine. :-)

Re:Movies

pudge on 2001-12-04T14:18:54

See, I don't even know anything about "the Philosopher's Stone." Stupid American.

Re:Movies

davorg on 2001-12-04T15:17:56

Another reason that has mentioned to me on occasion is that most Americans don't know that George III was the full title of the king who fought the war of independence. Apparently you mostly just refer to him as King George (ignoring the other five Georges).

Re:Movies

ziggy on 2001-12-04T15:57:05

You mean there was more than that one? :-)

Here's an American view of the British Monarchy, from the post-roman era to the present:

  • Arthur, King of the Britons
  • King John
  • King Richard the Lionhearted
  • King Henry VIII
  • Queen Elizabeth
  • Queen Victoria
  • King George (III, presumably)
  • King someone (the King who became a Duke, married that American woman and ate at Maxim's a lot)
  • King someone (QEII's father, brother of Someone I)
  • Queen Elizabeth II
  • Diana, Prince of Whales

  • I think one or two monarchs are missing... :-)

Re:Movies

pudge on 2001-12-04T16:06:47

You say that as though it's a bad thing ... that is, I consider it a *virtue* that I know little about British royalty. :-) We have a long history here of disrespecting royalty, especially the British kind, don't make us stop now.

Re:Movies

davorg on 2001-12-04T17:37:03

Don't worry, I have no intention of stopping you. I can disrespect the British Monarchy as well as any of you :)

Re:Movies

pudge on 2001-12-04T17:45:12

Yeah, but at least you do them the courtesy of not being completely ignorant about them. :-)

Re:Movies

chaoticset on 2001-12-04T17:23:18

Yeah, you forgot King Ralph. :P

It's not like most of us Americans can remember our own "royalty" all that well, either -- I'd bet money less than 50% of the population can correctly order the Presidents. (Myself included...history used to irritate me because it was so lackadaisically bounded.)

Re:Movies

ziggy on 2001-12-04T17:41:08

OK, here it goes:

George Washington, Monroe Doctrine, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Andrew Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt, Mr. Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Henry Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Al Haig, Ronald Reagan, Charles Philip Arthur George Bush, William George Clinton, George W. Bush

:-P

Re:Movies

chromatic on 2001-12-04T19:45:20

You left out Benjamin Franklin!

(New poll: is chromatic fiendishly clever, too literal, possessing an awful sense of humour, or quite obviously stupid? :)

Re:Movies

salvadors on 2001-12-05T21:21:54

All TMBG fans know that there was a James K Polk, as well...

Re:Movies

pudge on 2001-12-04T16:03:32

That's probably true. I would have guessed George III, but would not have been absolutely sure, because I have no real context: I don't know anything about the other Georges. So the "III" is, to me, just a number. And I was not a math major.

Confusion

ct on 2001-12-05T15:00:23

My wife bought "Sorceror's Stone" and the next two books and enjoyed them. Ended up on amazon.co.uk and saw "Philosopher's Stone" and bought it, thinking it was a different book, as it had been some time since she'd read the first.

When it came time for me to read them, we had moved and books had been boxed and lost. Couldnt find Sorceror's Stone, so I read the UK version.

I, for one, knew the legend of the philosopher's stone as a method to transmute lead to gold, though I'd never heard of the immortality angle. I couldn't grasp why they would change it.

While I can understand changing a book for US release with things like replacing the UK colour with the US color and the like, and changing some very british terms like Sellotape (Which I had never heard before I read the book, but deduced what it was. Of course I'm 32 and not 12 and ignorant.) to the American "Scotch Tape", I just can't see a change like the name of the central object in the book.

For the record, I'd also not heard the term "bogey" before the book. To me a bogey is an incoming plane intent on bombing you. It wasn't hard to grasp the meaning from the book, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it used in the movie.

NBC TV did an hour long special before Potter was released. They sent Katie Couric to the set to interview Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint (Harry and Ron), in discussing "Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans" the discussion went like this.

[Rupert Grint] They really are every flavor. There's even Bogey Flavored ones.

[Katie Couric] Umm, What's a Bogey?

[RG] Oh, sorry. Booger.

[KC] Oh, ewww.

dumb americans

ask on 2001-12-10T02:04:33

from ebert's movie answer man:


Q. It's said no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'' is an excellent film up here in Canada, as was ''The Madness of George III.'' I wonder if the same can be said for the U.S. releases ''Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'' and ''The Madness of King George.'' The point of course, is that these minor title details were changed for American audiences on the assumption they are too stupid to handle the concept of the philosopher's stone of alchemical fame, or to realize seeing George III doesn't mean you've missed parts I and II. Are these decisions made because the suits think I'm really dumb, or is it because they are?


A. Let's say they think you're as dumb as they are when they make the decisions. The Harry Potter title change was made not by Warner Brothers but by the book publishers, Scholastic, who feared American readers might be scared off by the word ''philosopher.''