Things your CV should NOT have

Your CV is your marketing brochure through which you try to sell a commodity, ie your skills to the potential buyer ie the prospective employer. The sole purpose of your CV is to fetch you an interview call. Nothing more, nothing less.

However, creating a CV isn't as simple as just using flowery language and pretty fonts. There are certain things that put recruiters off and if you want to make a good impression, make sure you do not commit these mistakes in what is arguably the most valuable document of your job hunt.

While the rules listed are well-founded, they are not carved in stone. At times you will need to break the rules. If you want to add these things knowingly and purposefully to your CV we advise you to do that.

The points mentioned here are not listed in the order of priority; instead they are listed in the sequence in which they usually appear on a CV.

~ Colorful or glossy paper and flashy fonts
Your CV is a formal, official document. Keep it simple.

~ Resume or CV at the top
Many people tend to add headings to their CV. The usual are CV, Curriculum Vitae and Resume. Do not do this.

~ Photographs until asked
Do not add your photo to the CV until you have been asked for it. Photographs are required only for certain types of positions like models, actors etc.

~ Usage of 'I', 'My', 'He', 'She'
Do not use these in your CV. Many candidates write, 'I worked as Team Leader for XYZ Company' or 'He was awarded Best Employee for the year 2007'. Instead use bullet points to list out your qualifications/ experience like: Team leader for XYZ Company from 2006-2007.

~ Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors
Proofread your CV until you are confident that it doesn't have any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. These are big put-offs for the recruiters. Moreover, sometimes these mistakes might land you in an embarrassing situation.

A candidate who submitted his CV without proofreading it committed the mistake of wrongly spelling 'ask' as 'ass'. Now you can imagine the type of embarrassment he must have faced during the interview, when the interviewer pointed it out. These mistakes tend to convey a lazy and careless attitude to the interviewer.

~ Lies about your candidature
Do not lie about your past jobs or qualifications or anything which might have an impact on the job. You may be able to secure a job with these lies today but tomorrow you may lose it as well.

~ Abbreviations or jargon that is difficult to understand
People screening your resume usually belong to the HR department. If they do not understand what the abbreviations and jargon mean, they will simply dump your CV in the trash can. Avoid over-using such terms as far as possible.

~ Reasons for leaving last job
Leave these reasons to be discussed during the personal interview. For example, some candidates write: Reason for leaving the last job: Made redundant. Avoid making such statements in your CV, they add no value. Besides, if you do get an interview call, chances are the interviewer will address the issue.

~ Past failures or health problems
Mentioning these immediately slash your chances of getting an interview call.

For instance, you have a gap in your employment because you started your own business which did not do well. Some candidates might write -- Reason for gap in employment: Started own business which failed. Do not do this type of injustice with your job hunt at this stage of writing the CV.

~ Current or expected salary
Leave it to be discussed while negotiating the salary.

~ Irrelevant details
Leave out the details like marital status, sex, passport number, number of kids, age of kids. These are usually irrelevant for most interviewers but at times could be used as a basis for discrimination.

~ References
Do not include them until asked. In fact, it is not even required to mention the line 'Reference available on request'. If the recruiter requires a reference, he/she will ask you to bring it along for the interview.

Now that you have run through the list, take a fresh look at your CV and prune away unnecessary details and unaffordable blunders that could have cost you your dream job.

I have baught a new Kodak M883 digital camera..!

It was planned to buy a digicam since last one year but wasn't happening. There was concerns of which model to buy, where to buy, price is more and so on.... I was watching only Sony,Cannon & Nikkon models, never thought of buying a Kodak. But..things happen as they have to, and finally I bought the KODAK only....What happened was, we went to Big Bazar to buy a TV and there was a offer on Kodak camera saying buy one 14K camera & get 13K camera free. Firstly I wasn't ready to get Kodak but my mate malaya said he would take one and we should buy it. And thats it we got Kodak M883 and M873 both 8MP/3X cameras for 14K.. The quality is not very good but it is ok, and I would not recommend the Kodak..


(snap taken from the Kodak M883 & some what edited with Kodak EasyShare software)

iSCSI and Qlogic tips....

env: RHEL4 U5
Equallogic SAN
Qlogic HBA 4050/4060

To add/remove/manage LUNS on Qlogic HBA the iscli command line tool is used. When you remove the LUNs using iscli utility, the disks related to these LUNs will be removed from the system. When you add new LUNs, you would need to reset the HBA to get the disks added to system. Sometimes you may not get the disks added even you reset the HBA with iscli utility, you might reboot the server.

To avoid the system reboot and get the disks added to system you can do the following:

1. Unload the qla4xxx module, which is used as driver for HBA.
# rmmod qla4xxx

2. Reload the qla4xxx module.
# modprobe qla4xxx

Note: Before doing this you should unmount all the mounted SAN filesystems cleanly. If you haven't unmounted the filesystems or filesystem is not unmounted cleanly, you will get error "qla4xxxx: module in use", when you try to unload the module.

# When you have multipathing configured, you would receive error "qla4xxxx: module in use", even you unmount the filesystems cleanly. This is because the multipath device mapper doesn't release the disk devices. In this case you need to flush the multipath configuration and then unload/load the qla4xxx module.
To flush the multipath maps use command below:
# multipath -f [map name]

Hot plugging of hard disk in Linux...

How to add/remove a Hot Plug Disk avoiding a reboot

1.#cat /proc/scsi/scsi
This will list all the SCSI devices known to the kernel.

Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST39204LC Rev: 0005
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 01 Lun: 00
Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST3146807LC Rev: 0007
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00
Vendor: DELL Model: 1x4 U2W SCSI BP Rev: 1.16
Type: Processor ANSI SCSI revision: 02

2. In order to add a new hot plugged disk to the list of above known devices, run:

# echo scsi add-single-device 1 0 3 2 > /proc/scsi/scsi
This will cause the host scsi1 to scan on CHANNEL 0 for device ID 3 LUN 2

3. fdisk -l should list the device

4. In order to remove a known device

#echo scsi remove-single-device 0 0 6 0 > /proc/scsi/scsi

This will remove the disk from the list on scsi 0 CHANNEL 0 for device ID 6 LUN 0