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Comment by LeonM | Hacker News Reader

Oh god, the "Big Data" project recruiters :')

I always like to piss them off by asking why they should get a cut of my hourly rate, since the don't know what they are talking about, how can they possibly add value?

Or another fun thing to do: send them your CV in PDF format, so they can't "improve" your CV for their clients, that usually pisses them off. I once had a "Professional international recruitment bureau" with "more then 40 years of combined experience" that told me they did not know how to open a PDF file...

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These days most of them seem to know how to edit PDFs.

I kind of want to add a PGP signature to my resume, and add an opening line that warns the recipient not to trust the resume unless the signature matches up. Naturally, the recruiters would just nuke any mention of the signature and carry on.

Maybe just include the checksum of the .pdf, without loudly mentioning what it is? The right people will know what to do with that, and the wrong ones won't.

Good idea, but if you're including the checksum in the file, you can't use too good an algorithm and still expect to find a collision. I guess for some positions collision-finding would be impressive?

I mean, shouldn't your CV come off of the LaTeX presses in .pdf format anyway?

Though continuing your line of reasoning, you could output it as .dvi or something more exotic, such that the hiring manager will have no trouble running through his command line to look at, but non-technical peoples' attempts to view/modify it will be wholly stymied.

> you could output it as .dvi or something more exotic, such that the hiring manager will have no trouble running through his command line to look at, but non-technical peoples' attempts to view/modify it will be wholly stymied.

That's more likely to backfire than prove to be a good strategy. Because the non-technical are usually on the frontline weeding out "bad" applicants. If you make it tough for them, you're done.

I speak from experience. (Remarkably similar experience to what we're talking about now actually... I was almost not hired, until I went on to jump over the HR and speak directly to the technical higher-ups (I could do this because my I had contacts within the company)).

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