Would you hire me? Resume from 1994

In going through old boxes I found this resume from 1994. And a wave of bad memories returned. I had a miserable time finding a job after graduation.

Most of my friends had offers months earlier, but I ended up stuck for a summer in the 2nd level of hell known as Pittsburgh in July, staying alone in my girlfriends apartment (while she was in Australia). I desperately did not want to return home to my parents. I had dozens of interviews, from at the career center, to on the phone, to fly outs to various companies. It was a benefit of graduating from a good school like CMU that I had so many, but there were no offers.

I didn’t want to be a programmer (and wasn’t strong enough anyway) and job openings for anything else entry level in the tech sector in 1994 was hard to find, as it was still climbing out of a recession. In 1994 there was no web and no startup community. No Facebook and no Twitter. Unlike today, there were no mobile platforms or web apps to try and make to prove my own worth by building something myself.

After months of struggling I lowered my expectations and made customized resumes for each job I applied for, bending my little pile of experience in whatever way best fit the job I was applying for. This one must have been one for a usability engineering position, which did in fact turn out to be the first job offer I got (from Microsoft, Sept 1994).

I’m posting for posterity and recent graduates having a hard time. Everyone starts somewhere. Applying for jobs is an absurd and unfair process, then and now.