job-resume.rb

# Hey coops.. 
# 
# Imagine yourself on the other side of the table: two job openings, hundreds of resumes, 
# _all of which_ look friggin' identical. Yeah, the HR departments at your MegaCorp XYZ are using 
# automated tools to scan for keywords, and the coop department at your school is trying to beat 
# you into submission to follow some "predefined template".. But, unless what you're aspiring to
# is to be an automaton at MegaCorp XYZ, relegated to writing test harnesses for code that will
#  never see the light of day.. please do yourself a favor, and _be different_! Be bold, dammit. 
#
# (Frankly, I'm falling asleep while reading your resumes.. Wake me up! Srsly.)
#
# => Stuff we care about 
# 
# Yeah I'll ask you about your strengths and weaknesses, but really, the best indicator of who 
# you are is what you do with your free time. School projects are great, so is work experience. 
# But if you wrote a JQuery lib on the weekend, you know, for fun.. Now that is hot. That says 
# a lot, tell me about it.
# 
# You know what it shows? Passion. You cared enough to do it on your free time - that already 
# puts you in less than 10% of the population of all students (srsly). 
#
# Show me your blog, tell me a story. An interview is your opportunity to show off your stuff. 
# Grab my laptop and show me a code snippet you're proud of, or tell me about a problem you're 
# currently trying to solve.
#
# => Useless stuff 
# 
# Your GPA is possibly the least useful predictor for a good interview - in fact, it appears to 
# have an inverse correllation. That is, of course good grades are good, but they don't tell the
# story, so don't sweat it. Same goes for your high-school hobbies: show me your recent work 
# instead.
#
# Oh, and don't even get me started on keyword stuffing. I'm sure that you're bright, but I doubt
# you managed to grok C/C++/Java & Erlang all at the same time, after taking CS 133. Know your 
# strenghts, advertise them. If you know C++ inside out, that won't stop me from hiring you for 
# a Ruby position. 
#
# => In conclusion... 
#
# Being exceptional requires hard work, but trust me, it's worth the effort. Let the automatons go
# where they ought to go.. to the MegaCorps who filter on keywords and require pre-formatted resumes
# printed on 95% brightness, extra-think, A4 paper. But you my friend, you're different... so be 
# different, dammit.
#
# Kthnx,
#
# Ilya Grigorik - CTO / Founder - postrank.com
# (twitter: @igrigorik, email: ilya@postrank.com, blog: igvita.com, github: github.com/igrigorik)
# 
# 
# P.S. Yeah, we're hiring at PostRank. In fact we're never not hiring, so if you think you got what
#      it takes... then drop me a line, or even better, send me some code. Happy to chat. 
#
# P.P.S. So I took 15 minutes to draft a _different_ kind of resume. You know, one that would guarantee
#        an interview... Fork it, modify it, use it, do whatever you want. Point is, do something different.
#

class Student < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one     :passion,  :conditions => "project.type = 'web'"
  has_many    :skills,   :through => :practice
  has_many    :relevant_courses, :through => :university, :include => :group_work
  has_and_belongs_to_many    :projects, :through => :github, :foreign_key => "github.com/username"

  validates_presence_of :agile_team
  validates_presence_of :innovation
  validates_presence_of :learning_opportinities

  def self.objective
    "Learn & improve my skills in an environment that will push me to learn new things " \
    "while having fun and contributing to projects that will have an impact ot the end user"
  end

  def self.toolkit
    {
      :strong     => %w(Ruby Rails JQuery CSS),
      :familiar   => %w(C++ Java Erlang Flex Flash SQL),
      :want_to_learn  => %w(MacRuby JRuby)
    }
  end

  def self.experience
    past = []
    past.push {:company => "XYZ", :title => "Ruby Wrangler",
               :date => (1.year.ago .. 6.months.ago),
               :description => "Built A because of B, responsible for X",
               :reference => "John Smith <john@smith.com>",
               :url => "http://awesome-rails-app.com"}

    past.push {:company => "CDF", :title => "Server Admin",
               :date => (6.months.ago .. Time.now),
               :description => "Migrated X to cloud platform Y",
               :reference => "Bob Smith <bob@smith.com>",
               :url => "http://more-awesome-rails.com"}

    past
  end

  def self.education
    {
      :university => "Waterloo",
      :level      => "2A",
      :degree     => "Bachelor of Computer Science",
      :grades     => "Available on request, checkout my projects instead"
    }
  end

  def self.contact
    contacts = []
    contacts.push {:email   => "name@me.com"}
    contacts.push {:twitter => "username"}
    contacts.push {:phone   => "519-000-0000", :time => "10am - 6pm"}
    contacts
  end

  def method_missing(method, *args, &block)
    "Happy to answer any questions about #{method} (#{args.join(', ')})" \
    "please contact me for futher discussions." \
  end

end