More dumb job hunting tricks

Every day, I open one or two posts from the LinkedIn advice-to-the-jobless lists. From the perspective of someone who has done all this before, few have anything constructive to offer, mainly because they serve up opinion as fact, and the opinions conflict.

But they are an endless source of unintended comedy. For instance, take this nugget from the latest post on the "new" resume: if your name isn't gender-specific, or it's hard to pronounce, use your nickname in your resume. HR people shy away from names that are either, we are seriously told.

Well, that must be one hell of a diverse workplace! Here's a little rocket for the pundits. The world of Anglo-Saxon names as the gold standard is d-e-a-d. A great many of us who possess diverse names don't have nicknames, don't want nicknames or, if we do, the nicknames are as unpronouceable as the given name.

Not to mention that many people with ethnically acceptable names don't like their nicknames either and don't like people assuming that they do. This isn't advice: it's the sort of smarmy bonhomie that makes so much of American business a joke. Nope, sorry: the burden is on HR people to ask the courteous question "How do you pronounce your name?" or let the candidate pronounce it. In a diverse world, discomfort is a pathetic excuse.

It makes me wish my first name was Gruffydd (Griffith, to English-speakers, and so pronounced) so I could follow this idiotic advice and use the nickname that goes with it: Guto (GEE-toe). Wouldn't that help in HR?

Deliver us from experts.