I received this from a recruiter representing IBM:

Hello my name is Shannon and I am a technical recruiter for IBM.

Really, no kidding?

How about a more businesslike introduction? I'm not looking to be your best friend.

I received your resume from a job board on the internet.

As opposed to the job board at my local coffee place, I guess.

I am looking for some experienced Siebel Anaytics outlined below.

First, that's "analytics". You would have caught this if you had used a spell-checker, which is the minimum you should do for professional communications. Of course, you're not really looking for "experienced Siebel Analytics" (what's that, used software?), rather you are probably looking for experienced Siebel Analytics professionals. This is simple English. And you might want to note the specific skills required. Programming? Design? End-user? Implementation? I really can't tell.

Your resume matched some of the skills for this position.

Uh, that should be "skills required for this position," but all in all, that's a minor faux pas compared to your other communications blunders.

The big blunder in this sentence is that the only "match" between my resume and the skills required is that both include the word "Siebel."

Excellent Career opportunity to work with one of the a top consultant companies, excellent salary plus benefits for these positions.

That's not a sentence.

Try "This is an excellent opportunity to build your career in a top consulting firm, in a position that offers excellent salary and benefits."

MUST HAVE 3 YEARS SIEBEL EXPERIENCE FOR ONE OF THESE POSITIONS.

Which I don't have, as you would know if you bothered to read my resume in the first place.

This is a permanent position where you can live any where in the U.S. close to a major airport, however 100% travel is required.

"Anywhere." And very poor sentence structure, but again, pretty minor compared to the content blunder.

You see, the terms are unacceptable to me, as you would know if you bothered to read my resume in the first place. It clearly states "not available for more than 25% travel."

If you feel that you have qualifications listed below and have not submitted a resume to IBM for this position please submit your resume to hr_bitch@us.ibm.com. [Address changed to protect the guilty.]

"Think" or "believe" not "feel." Feel is something you do to your girlfriend after drinking too much tequila. Actually, why not simplify? Go with "If you have the qualifications listed below..."

And of course, it's "the qualifications."

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Not bloody likely.

I have always believed you can tell the quality of a company by the selectivity and professionalism they employ when seeking to find new professionals to work for them. By that standard, most businesses -- including more and more large and supposedly respected ones -- clearly have their eye off the ball.

What professional would really want to respond to an email that is so shoddy and lacking in professionalism? Only the ones who don't know the difference, that's who. And if they don't know the difference, don't be surprised when their own lack of knowledge shows up in the workplace.

-btc

[No positions, but considering a short of IBM, for lots of reasons]

Some notes, excerpted from an email exchange with Kevin Wassong of Minyanville:

Sun Microsystems:

When I worked at HP (NYSE:HPQ), we always joked that Sun (NasdaqNM:SUNW) had great technology and that if they were still around in a decade, when the world was finally ready for them, they would do really well with it. That was a decade ago. Despite our snarkiness back then, they're still around. And the world is finally on the verge of being ready. (Long position in SUNW. Rockin' today!)

Media:

Nobody should ever expect the world to unfold without many, many fights along the way and some caution is necessary before you plunk down a large chunk of money betting on the future, because there'll be big bumps in the road.. Already, the "pipe" owners are suggesting that they should be able to pick and choose who gets to distribute broadband content. They're trying to maintain the old cable TV model in which their earnings power was derived from two sources: making content companies pay them for the right to be part of the limited channel lineup, and making consumers pay for whatever lineup they came up with. Ultimately they will fail in being the "filter" of what gets to the consumer, because the sources of broadband connectivity will be too varied, including competing wired providers and various wireless schemes. In the meantime, they'll try to make life miserable for anybody other than their own preferred providers, which in some cases are divisions of the same company.

[Note, this was in response to Kevin's comment that in the future, "there is no internet, there are no cable channels. There are digital networks--input, output. That's it."]

Broadband Fees:

On that note, I do expect that the flat-fee residential broadband connection will become a thing of the past. Most likely, it'll evolve towards some type of pay-for-use scheme, not dissimilar to the pricing scheme for my cellphone, which charges me a flat fee for all "in network" connections and additional fees for the use connecting to other providers, and some discounts if that use is outside of peak hours. I don't get worse service when I go out of network, but I do have to pay by the minute or megabyte. And the rates might be cheaper if I time my downloads to off-peak hours. (Expect a version of iTunes that allows you to program your desired download schedule to match your broadband provider's "off peak" hours.)

Media Device and Computer Convergence:

The battle of the output devices has just started. Microsoft's Windows Media Edition is a disaster from a user perspective. This brief exchange is just a small datapoint. (My comments are posted indirectly by a friend in the business, alias "Workman.") Apple will probably do a better job on this, but it'll still most likely be a device for techies that will require customization and personalization like any other PC before it can really work well as a media center. And when you're done with that, it probably won't be an optimal PC.

A lot of thought and redesign will have to take place before these new devices end up as fixtures in the typical living room. My own belief is that the living room device is going to be much more akin to a souped up, internet and video game-enabled TIVO device than to a current day desktop PC. The one thing we found over and over again in my HP days was that people didn't want PC-style complexity and confusion in their living rooms. And really, they didn't want to do spreadsheets on the sofa anyway. Microsoft didn't get this when I worked with them at HP, and I don't think they get it today.

Sun and Google:

The above favors a Sun/Google (NasdaqNM:GOOG) model of simpler "thin" computing devices. Imagine a cross between an XBox and a Tivo, with built-in Internet browser, mail client and simple controls that even my mother could use without calling me twice a week for help. Probably won't be the place for me to to do high-end Photoshop work or build complex financial models, but that's not what it's for and it'll be priced appropriately.

Advertising in Digital Media:

The ability of consumers to block unwanted advertising streams from this new media world is going to be much greater than it ever has been. The various ad-blockers and sitelists I currently use are just the beginning of this. And they're getting easier and easier to use. To the point where even my mom now has one up and running. The advertising business is going to have to completely rethink how they get through to people. Hollywood has been notoriously anti-consumer when it comes to inserting annoying stuff into their content in a manner that makes it unavoidable. (Don't you love those DVDs where you can't skip or fast-forward through the "coming attractions?") The same is true for some websites -- most commonly by spreading even short articles across multiple pages with dozens of ads on each. They're all going to have to get a lot smarter about this. I think this little Israeli company, whose CEO I met recently, is on the right track. The opportunities go well beyond just video games, which is just one form of digital content.

Received in the mail this afternoon:

• FedEx (NYSE:FDX) Express package and freight rates will increase an average of 5.5% for US, US to Puerto Rico, and US export services. However, the fuel price at which surcharges begin will be adjusted effective January 2, 2006, resulting in a 2% overall fuel surcharge reduction and a net average increase of 3.5%.
• FedEx Ground and FedEx Home Delivery rates will increase an average of 3.9%.
• The residential delivery surcharge... will increase from $2 to $2.10 per package. (5% increase)
• The Saturday delivery surcharge For FedEx Express Freight US shipments will increase from $100 to $150 per shipment. (50% increase!)
• The delivery area surcharge will increase from $1.25 to $1.30 (4%) for commercial locations and from $2 to $2.10 for residential locations.
• The H3 area pickup and delivery surcharge... will increase from $50 to $75 (50%) per shipment.
• International minimum rates will change.

A couple of interesting items:

• They're moving some of their "fuel surcharges" to permanent price increases, meaning they think energy costs are here to stay and the pricing is permanent. This speaks directly to fed and government claims that energy costs are transient and not part of "core" costs. FedEx clearly feels otherwise.
• Interestingly, "permanent" price increases are factored in government indexes. "Surcharges" are not.
• They're obviously retaining more room to pile on those surcharges again in the future as energy prices rise.
• They're clearly suggesting that business is not robust enough to continue certain types of services unless they impose significant fees. The "residential delivery surcharge" is a relatively new one and it's already going up, as is the new set of charges for packages that require a signature on delivery (this used to be standard).

I don't see how any of this relates to the pretty picture being painted from Washington. Of course, that is hardly new.

On the plus side, Capital One (NYSE:COF) offered my "business" a $20,000 credit line on a Visa card. All I need to do is tell them what the business name is and sign. That should be enough to pay for those surcharges for years to come!

I posted this earlier as a comment on Jeff Matthew's blog.

Liked it so much that I thought I'd repeat it here, with a few minor edits.

I had a conversation with a friend who is formerly an entertainment lawyer (with various studios and production companies) and now runs some piece of a women-focused cable network.

When it came down to it, her ultimate justification of the action to shut down downloaders of all kinds, to maintain existing "windows" for movie releases, and to ensure that content had to be aggregated the way the distribution companies wanted (eg: $15 albums from which you want one song), all came down to one statement:

"Look how many jobs this industry has created."

Deep down inside, I know that what wasn't said is as important as what was. A more complete statement would have been:

"Look at how many jobs this industry has created that will be completely irrelevant in an electronic distribution world. Jobs just like mine!"

Why in the world would an IT person want to work for a bank?

Historically, they haven't been great places to work. Generally they substitute fancy titles and other garbage for pay and benefits. And even in the best of worlds, they have always been much more tightly controlled than many other organizations.

In article after article this past week, those of us who weren't paying attention in the first place were informed that tech spending in the new year is going to depend more and more on businesses stepping up to the plate and buying more tech. The idea that businesses are finally "ready" to do so after several years of ho-hum capital spending is quite popular among analysts, particularly those covering big-cap tech. They point out that after many years of limited investment, there are new efficiencies to be found and new productivity to be gained from adopting new technologies.

To all of them I say: Forget it.

Forget it, because efficiency and productivity is no longer what most IT departments are primarily focused on. Because CFOs who used to spend the bulk of their time on questions of best captial allocation no longer can. Because the only new projects IT organizations have the bandwith for are non-productive and non-beneficial, and thus not worthy of large capital investments if they can possibly be avoided.