[uf-discuss] Employment end dates in hResume - outstanding issue

[Zachary Carter]

+1 for this as something that should be resolved. A standard procedure
for this would be needed for interoperability.

I could see this being useful for hCalendar also, though the most
common occurrence of events with indefinite end dates do happen to be
within hResume. Another usecase could be a historical timeline marking
the current age as the "Information Age," which would be ongoing.

I like a solution (such as yours) where the parser can take the burden
of including the current date if necessary, as the publisher might not
be able to generate the current date dynamically. When the parser sees
the 'ongoing' class it could insert the current date as dtend if
appropriate when exported to a static format.

Best,

Zach Carter
http://zachcarter.info



On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Ciaran McNulty <mail at ciaranmcnulty.com> wrote:
> As there's been some discussion about moving drafts into specification
> status lately, I'd like to address one of the outstanding issues in
> hResume.
>
> The problem that has arisen quite a few times, is that a lot of people
> with a resume are currently employed and don't know what to provide as
> the DTEND in their markup for their current job.  The problem is not
> as apparent with educational events, as they tend to have a defined
> end point even if it's in the future (PhD students may argue, mind
> you).
>
> The solutions in the wild tend to be either:
>
> 1. Set the DTEND to the date the resume was generated.
> The problem with this approach is that if I save your resume and come
> back and look at it in a year's time, I might think your employment
> period ended on that date.
>
> 2. Set the DTEND to some far-future date.
> This could be confusing and could be taken to indicate that your
> contract ends at some specified date in the future.
>
> 3. Set the DTEND to the same as DTSTART.
> This makes the event be either instantaneous or 1 day long in
> hCalendar, which could be confusing.
>
> 4. Omit the DTEND.
> This is actually equivalent to option 3 (see
> http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006-October/006477.html)
>
> Personally I don't think this problem is going to be solvable within
> hCalendar, and 'ongoing' events may be somewhat out of spec for that
> particular format.  I would lean towards choosing one of the above
> approaches and defining some optional additional semantic within
> hResume that indicates that an experience event is 'ongoing'.
>
> My particular preference would be to recommend option 4 and add a
> @class="ongoing" that can be added to an event in hResume:
>
> <!-- an event with a definite end point -->
> <div class="vevent experience">
>  <span class="summary">Managing Director</span>
>  <span class="location">Example PLC</span>
>  <abbr class="dtstart" title="2002-12-02">2002</abbr>
>  to
>  <abbr class="dtend" title="2005-01-23">2005</abbr>
> </div>
>
> <!-- an event that is ongoing -->
> <div class="vevent experience">
>  <span class="summary">CEO</span>
>  <span class="location">Another PLC</span>
>  <abbr class="dtstart" title="2005-01-23">2005</abbr>
>  to
>  <span class="ongoing">Present</span>
> </div>
>
> When viewed by an hCalendar parser, the second event would be
> considered to be an all-day event occuring on 23rd Jan 2005.  An
> hResume parser would however note the presence of @class="ongoing"
> within the event and be able to
>
> I'd welcome any feedback about:
>
> A. Whether this is a problem that needs solving, or if there's an
> obvious way of representing these events in hCalendar that we've all
> missed.
> B. Whether it needs to be solved by adding a concept of 'now' to
> hCalendar or whether it needs to be solved in hResume as I've
> suggested.
> C. What people think of my example markup.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Ciaran McNulty
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