[dba-Tech] Resume / CV Advice Sought

Walk in, buttonhole the owner, have your elevator speech prepped, and
convince them with the power of your personality that they'd be a fool to
let you walk out and go somewhere else.  

R


P.S.  I have a list of stuff I'm NOT going to do before I die.  I call it my
Fuckit list.



-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 8:32 AM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: [dba-Tech] Resume / CV Advice Sought

As regular listers will know, a while back I declared myself Semi-Retired.
But now I want to try something radically new.

Since I was about 15, I have been a coffee drinker. Since I was about 30, I
slowly matured into a coffee aficionado. I know instantly the difference
between, say, a Guatemalan coffee and a Kenyan -- hell, that's too easy -- I
can discern a Guatemlan from a Salvadorean. And I know some if not most of
the lingo that coffee aficionados employ; it's similar to the vocabulary of
wine lovers. One tiny exception is that in coffee, "acidy" is a good thing
(to most but not all palates).

Anyway, I have decided to realize an ambition on my Bucket List, to wit, to
learn the art of coffee roasting, and to obtain a job performing this magic.
There are several companies in Toronto that perform this art. I'm willing to
go through the motions of learning to become a barista, but that at most
would be a step toward my real goal.

I dug out a few versions of my resume, which list in varying degrees of
detail my 30+ years' experience writing software, mostly database-oriented.
None of this experience is in any way related to my new Bucket List item, to
become a coffee roaster. In this field I have no experience other than the
consumption of vast amounts of coffee from numerous nations, and such
knowledge as "espresso is neither a bean nor a drink, but a roast, which can
be performed upon almost any type of bean."

Even of the back story. My question is, How should I pitch myself to the one
or three companies in Toronto that do their own roasting, and locally?
(In case you wondered, Starbucks is not one of them, since they do their
roasting not even in Canada, and the distance between roasting and selling
is crucial to maintain the highest quality: distance and quality are
inversely proportional.

There's also an event-type called a Cupping, which to my knowledge none of
the quality-coffee sellers in Toronto practice. This is very similar to a
wine-tasting event; the participants do not swallow the coffees offered but
savour them, rolling the mouthful around the tongue to appreciate the
aspects of the taste (different parts of the tongue detect different aspects
of the taste, and hence the need to roll the mouthful); then the mouthful is
spit out as in wine-tasting. Since, to my knowledge, none of the three
vendors to whom I'm considering applying for a gig, I would want to present
Cuppings as a new marketing opportunity.

So. How might I present myself as an aficionado with a serious desire to
learn the art of roasting, and lacking any experience in this aspect of the
business?

Any suggestions shall be gratefully received.

--
Arthur
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