Job hopping, especially in and out of surveying.
We also prefer emailed resumes to snail mail resumes.
Remember that typically companies hire too quickly and fire too slowly. If you spend a little more time hiring the right person you will spend less time firing the wrong person.
We ALWAYS have everyone fill out an application and sign it. By signing it they give the company the authority to perform background checks.
It's been a hard slog for a lot of people, I've personally had to move around to keep employed I've been through 3 office closures and an additional redundancy on completion of a project where I was employed as a site engineer, consequently my CV looks terrible and early on I was trying to find my niche having initially left surveying to gain more experience in the rest of the construction world as a designer and ultimately ending up as a project manager, I have since returned to survey and have been doing it again for the last 3 and a half years with a big firm, another thing to note is there are a lot of people out there who cant move as there aren't many jobs about and the way I was treated at my last office where we were forced to work up to 60 hours per week with out any extra pay or time off in fact we all got pay cuts, companies are getting away with treating staff like trash, nowadays its hard to get people to recognise my experience
> I received a resume' several years ago where the individual liked working outside and thought that surveying would be a nice hobby.
>Instant response: Send "Thanks but No Thanks" letter (professionally speaking).
Funny you say that. Some of our best employees have been guys off the street looking for a change of pace or career. If they have the enthusiasm, that is 80% the battle. Most people can be taught to be a rodman in a matter of a few months, and within a year they have likely seen 95% of what they will ever see. The other kicker to these guys is not having to un-learn them of all the crap they picked up at other firms. I swear it takes about a year to break guys of 'bad habits'. Plus I have to listen to them explain to me how 'XYZ Engineering does it' all day long.
Regarding resumes, I don't worry too much about a guy moving around. If he is motivated with a good attitude (very important to us), does the work, and gets along with others than they are golden. It might be that he worked with bad apples and lousy attitudes in other firms. Bigger firms are notorious for poor morale and small firms are notorious for retaining friends/family who spread blame like a shedding dog.
Every immigrant I've worked with has been a solid, well-trained and hard working employee of the outfit. I would hire one in a minute.
What about Correctional Officer as a reference, that would be OK, right? LOL.
It depends on the reason for the job changes. Construction people as a normal course of business move around a lot because it's kind of required if you don't want to starve.
On the other hand I've seen people who are perpetual grass is greener types. I probably should've moved around more, frankly. At this point I've seen enough places that I know there is always something wrong with everywhere; that's perspective, I guess.