Clueless or Stupid.....

[patgund.livejournal.com]

Got this from a headhunter yesterday:

"Sr. Mac Technician
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Job: Full Time
Start: ASAP
Salary: $63K plus full benefits and annual bonus

NOTE: Our client is looking for a candidate with very strong and recent MAC experience.

The Senior Mac Support Technician will work as a member of the Information Technology (IT) Department, Desktop Services Group. Daily duties will be to provide on-site MAC support for desktops and laptops. The primary responsibilities will be:

MAC system support, which includes software and hardware installations, problems resolution, and requests.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills in support of MAC issues
Technical expertise with operating systems, program applications and third party utilities
Education: B.S. in Computer Science
Minimum five years of applicable support experience in a distributed network environment
Excellent oral communication skills, essential
Knowledge of MAC OS Panther 10.4 and Leopard 10.49 hardware and software, Microsoft technologies (XP, Office, Outlook, Visio, Project), TCP/IP, VPN, Compaq/HP desktops laptops, printers PDA and blackberry

Essential Physical Requirements: Ability to lift equipment up to 50 lbs.

Microsoft Certification (MCSE) or A+ certification is a plus.

Regards,
(name of headhunter firm)

My reply:

"Dear (headhunter)

Thank you for your interest. May I offer a couple suggestions?

1) An Apple Macintosh computer is called a "Mac", not a MAC. MAC is an acronym for "Media Access Control", and is a networking term used for the hardware address in a networkable item.

2) The listing says "Knowledge of MAC OS Panther 10.4 and Leopard 10.49 hardware and software". This makes no sense. There's no such thing as "Panther 10.4" or "Leopard 10.49", or "Panther 10.4 and Leopard 10.49 hardware".

The 10.x refers to the version of Mac OS X that is being discussed. The "cat name" is the version of that operating system.

Mac OS X "Panther" is 10.3.x
Mac OS X "Tiger" is 10.4.x
Mac OS X "Leopard" is 10.5.x

As for hardware, the older Macintoshes were based on the PowerPC chip. The newer ones are Intel-based. There's no "Panther hardware" or "Leopard hardware". The closest to this is that older Macintoshes may not be able to run 10.4 or 10.5, and newer ones may require 10.4 and above.

3) For Apple certification, you may want to look for either the older Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist or the newer Apple Certified Support Professional for software support. Hardware support is the Apple Certified Macintosh Technician, or older Apple Certified Portable and Apple Certified Desktop Technician. System Admin duties are Apple Certified Technical Coordinator and Apple Certified System Administrator. MCSE or A+ certification wouldn't be very useful for an Apple Technician.

4) The job title states "Sr. Mac Technician". The description then goes on to request "Microsoft technologies (XP, Office, Outlook, Visio, Project)" Unless you're thinking of using a Virtualization system like Parallels or VMWare, or plan to have the Leopard Macs as a dual-boot system, then XP, Outlook, Visio, and Project experience wouldn't be useful at all.

As it stands now, this job description doesn't make sense.

I hope this helps you with your search"

Comments

Clueless or Stupid?

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

Most head hunters are both.

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

maybe it is for one of this jobs where you have to use a PC / Windows and support Mac.

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

That was my thought. Sounds like it could be a shop that is primarily windows architecture with enough Macs to justify dedicated support for them. Could also be stupidity/carelessness.

[pne.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought, too -- your personal desktop is XP with MS Office and Outlook, you're expected to churn out PowerPoint presentations regularly, track things in Project, produce pretty diagrams in Visio, and accept and produce documents and spreadsheets in Word and Excel formats.

But you're supporting Macs. Yet not using one yourself for your work.

Not uncommon, I would imagine.

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

it is symptomatic of non-cross platform IT choice. short sighted, no less.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

I'm the Mac administrator for a biggish company and my desktop machine is an HP.

I do have an old "desk lamp" iMac to diagnose stuff on.

[azurelunatic]

My workplace has, IIRC, one Mac, at a dedicated desk. Not sure if it's across all locations or each location has its own.

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

MAC is an acronym for "Media Access Control"

... or a popular brand of make-up.

[hangar.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought too. :\

[kageneko.livejournal.com]

I'm not ashamed to say that was my first thought.

Sometimes, I am such a girl.

[fsk8ing-judge.livejournal.com]

Agree. :/

[misfit4leaf.livejournal.com]

I'm a huge tomboy and never wear make up, and it was actually my first thought too.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the counter in the more upscale department stores where the really weird-looking women with the even weirder makeup hang out and give makeup tips.

[azurelunatic]

My head just crossed Mac and MAC counters, and I fear I am traumatized.

[ckd]

Someone goes to the Genius Bar in the combined Apple/MAC store:

"My iPod clashes with my lip gloss; can you help me?"

[the-reda.livejournal.com]

Considering how much a Hippster brand i(insert stuff) has become.. I would not be surprised if that actually made money.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Picturing the local Genius in extra-heavy teal-over-black eyeshadow and about 10 pounds of eyeliner pencil.

Yeah, "traumatized" is a good word.

[azurelunatic]

Hahahahahaahaha. (Though I've cross-dressed my fair share of geeks who really shouldn't do that.)

[orchidaceous.livejournal.com]

I went there, too. I wish it was Sunday so I could spend my Christmas gift card on delicious cosmetics. :-P

[cailleanlarkin.livejournal.com]

Number one is absolutely my biggest pet peeve on the planet. I heart you a bit for the whole response, but especially for that tidbit.

[kageneko.livejournal.com]

Hey, at least they sent you a listing for a technical job. I've lost count how many seem to not read past the name on my resume, see I'm female, and send me administrative assistant job listings.

My resume is NOT that of an admin.

[patgund.livejournal.com]

Oh I've gotten those too, but usually what I get is the sales -type jobs. Which I loathe.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

Job agents on Monster for "Network Administrator" return so many hits for admin assistants that Monster is effectively useless to me now.

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

I used to have a complex filter for such purposes, though mine was to find Unix system admin positions among the programing ones. I don't know what kind of filtering they have now though.

[fsk8ing-judge.livejournal.com]

Doesn't it just make you shake your head in disbelief?

[bitterfun.livejournal.com]

I've been getting a flurry of hits from India Outsourced recruiters with similar discourse...

"Dear sir, we are the needful for position with skills..."

Please don't feed the trolls.

[wignersfriend.livejournal.com]

Headhunters just get encouraged if they get any sort of responses.

Christ, if I wrote a letter complaining about badly written job descriptions for every one I saw - I wouldn't have time to actually look for a job.

Re: Please don't feed the trolls.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

In a previous job, when I was hiring programmers in a very technical field, it was obvious which resumes had be rewritten by headhunters: they didn't understand the words they used.

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

must be TekSystems 1D10Ts

[sethb.livejournal.com]

"Congratulations! You passed the test we use to weed out buzzword-compliant know-nothings."

[ckd]

There was the resume a while back listing "POP4" experience. When we asked the candidate "don't you mean IMAP4?" the response was "no, POP4!".

That one didn't get called back.

[zzyzx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, my POP server goes to 11!

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

BWAHAAHAAHAA!!!!!

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Wait, you want someone who knows all that Mac stuff **AND** has a Bachelor's degree **AND** an MCSE? And the job's in LA and only pays sixty-two? Lots of fricking luck!!

Re: Please don't feed the trolls.

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

there are places in north america (like Canada) where you barely get that salary for an experienced C++ developer.

Re: Please don't feed the trolls.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Trolls? Huh? Blorg?

Oh I know about salary; I'm probably a little underpaid for where I live and what I do, but I *love* my job and the company, so it balances out. I'm just saying for that much knowledge, experience AND level of education, it's a little slim. Probably enough to survive on in LA though I guess.

[jecook]

Hells yes.

I'll get emails from recruiters who apparently stopped at the words "cisco certified" on my resume, completely missed the "former" that sits in front of it (my CCNA expired some 3 years ago, but I never bothered to totally remove it) and expect me to have a CCNP and VoIp and a huge amount of experience on some obscure system that I've only heard about in wispered rumors.

Those get ignored.

At least no one calls my cell anymore for most stuff. I think me bar-b-queing that last one who was looking for someone with "HP Mainframe" experience (which I know existed at one point, but never worked with directly as an operator) got them to stop.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think it might be fun to let the recruiters make all the assumptions they want, and then when meeting with the client for the first time, give them a complete rundown on exactly why they should never, ever hire that recruiter ever again.

[azurelunatic]

I wonder if that wouldn't be a viable business.