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Comment by iamdave | Hacker News Reader

Let me flip that around and offer that I've had "technical" recruiters fail their end of this transaction as well.

One experience involved a recruiter who wanted a compete rewrite of a CV portion outlining a SQL project from planning to continuous implementation models I built.

This on top of 8 years of other experience in data design and management.

The recruiter wanted to pass on my resume because I had failed to indicate my experience with flat CSV files and thought I needed more experience with them as a "highly specialized software stack".

I decided not to pursue that company further, maybe it was ego getting in the way but insisting I rewrite a technical resume covering 10 years of database experience over the omission of operating with flat files seemed like refusing to hire a qualified electrical engineer because he didn't list AA Batteries on his resume.

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Had I been the hiring manager (or anyone in management) here, I would have LOVED it if you had gotten in touch directly and told me about this. This likely would have been followed up by an interview with you and said recruiter being dismissed. I think a lot of good companies would do the same.

> refusing to hire a qualified electrical engineer because he didn't list AA Batteries on his resume

LOL! It won't be long before the majority of EEs under 25 won't even know what an AA battery is. In fact, I bet it would be pretty hard today to find someone in their 20s who knows what a 9-volt is.

Uh....every twentysomething who's living alone has to figure out what a 9-volt is eventually. Fire alarms, yo. I totally get the whole "grizzled old EE" act, but really?

I have six young relatives (nephews and a niece) that are all 19 or younger. I'd bet that all of them but maybe the 2-year-old know what a battery (of this type) is and all but the 2-year-old and maybe the 6-year-old can name different types.

Remember, their phones and tablets charge from a cable but their toys and remote controls use 9-volt, AAA, AA, and D batteries.

Edit: I guess you were emphasizing the obscurity of the 9-volt in particular, but I think they probably have several things that use 9-volts.

It's that thing they take out of the smoke detectors in their college apartments...

A 9-volt is the boxy one you put on your tongue to get a little tingle!

I'm 20 and know what an 9 volt is. I have also licked one before.

Now if you said 4.5V flat pack lantern batteries, then yes. I've seen like 1 before, and it was dead.

Let alone experience licking one.

Haha! I'm 28, and my dad and I bonded over, among other things, licking a 9-volt battery.

Are 9-volts not around anymore? I haven't seen one, but I don't use anything they used to be common in like toys and radios.

Many smoke detectors/alarms still use it. In Australia smoke detectors now have to be wired to the house but have a backup battery in case of a power failure.

pedantic but you're off 10+ years. We still needed 9 volts in the 90s.

Some of the low power circuits in older amateur radio books use 9-volts.

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