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Tuesday, July 18, 2006
More hopeless resumes.
I will never, ever understand why so many people who apply for a job with my company are so hopeless with their resumes.Maybe my school was better about hammering life skills into my head than theirs was, but it was made pretty clear to me that a resume was the first and often only way to impress a prospective employer and so it should be wonderful. The resumes that people send to me? Not wonderful.
Some of the issues I have are basic common sense and don't even have any specific relation to resumes or applying to jobs. For instance? You do not send a stranger an email attachment, solicited or otherwise, without some sort of note--any sort of note--in the body of the email. I don't care if the attachment is titled "DeborahsResume." It has nothing to do with making clear what the attachment is and everything to do with the fact that its just not kosher to willy nilly send attachments to strangers and expect them to be opened.
There are also the people who evidently have issues with either reading comprehension or following directions. Poor reading comprehension and/or inability to follow directions are not two qualities I look for in an employee. So, if you want to be considered for a job, and the ad says, "Email a resume with a cover letter," for god's sake, send a cover letter. Also? Google the term cover letter so that you know what it means. Because, "My resume is attached," does not a cover letter make. And if the ad asks for references, you might maybe want to include a few.
Then there are just the issues of what a resume should look like and what it should contain. Point the first: If you are honestly interested in a job, and your resume lists experience totally unrelated to the field that you're applying to work in, you really should consider explaining somewhere why you think you're qualified. Point the second: If your resume is composed in some wacky format or program, you might consider copying it into the body of am email because its awfully annoying to have to chase you down and ask how to open it. Point the third: If you're using a very simple resume, make it easy for me to read. Bold the important bits. Indent some lines. Add in an extra space between sections here and there. Don't make me have to use a highliter to make sense of it. And point the fifth: Do not, under any circumstances, create a section of your resume called "Strengths" and then list strengths that you clearly do not possess. For instance, do not tell me that you have "Excellent written communication skills in English, Spanish and Portugese" if your entire cover letter is one big run on sentence with totally random comma and semi-colon use and no capitalized proper nouns. Oy.
Posted at 1:01 PM ::