Friday, February 08, 2008

Deceive Inveigle and Obfuscate

The wife of one of the gents who works with my dad is looking for an administrative assistant. She works in some kind of office retail business (in my understanding from my dad's limited description). While I've never been in such a position, I can learn most anything. At my dad's urging, and willing to take any decent opportunity, I gave him my resume to pass on to his coworker to pass on to his wife.

Except, they (that is, the coworker and dad) would like me to change a few things. They'd like me to put that I have experience with Microsoft Office, as opposed to just Word and Outlook like I have on there already, so that it implies I have experience with Excel as well. I deplore Excel, I don't work spreadsheets very well, and it hurts my eyes and gives me a headache to look at them for any length of time. I don't have much experience with them, and I don't really want any more, because they're so hard for me to even look at. So, it's really false to say that I have experience with them when I really don't, and I don't want to encourage someone to consider me based on skills I don't actually have with a program that I actually hate.

They also want me to add hobby experience in graphic design. I don't do any graphic designing; I plug things into a program and hit render and hope it comes out in a way that I like. My websites, while I'm very proud of them, are built with the templates within a website-building program. There's really no from-scratch designing that I do, and since it's all for fun, I feel I'd be falsely representing my skills if I proclaim experience that I really don't have on my resume. This is really the kind of thing that would be coming out in the interview, if I make it that far. If graphic design experience is necessary for the position, then I don't have the qualifications.

I don't understand why this is so hard for my dad to get. He was really pressing me to make these false changes. I know he's trying to help me out, but just because OBC is a lot like a bank in many ways, that doesn't mean I have bank-related experience. This is the same thing. I'll sell myself with anything I can use if given the chance, but I don't think my resume is the correct place to put hobbies that I just do because I find them neat and am entirely self-taught, leaning heavily on what a program can do for me. The skills that my dad wants me to claim, I simply don't have. And, it's not right if I get a job based on what I can't actually do.

As far as I know, he still has my resume, so she may give me a chance and she may not. It's worth a try, and if nothing comes of it, no big deal. I'm not going to lie to get my foot in the door because I'll only have to own up later. I don't think that would reflect very well on me at all.

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