Phrases that kill resumes.

Spotted on Yahoo!, but I'm more interested in whatever you can come up with :O

http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-experts-10_boilerplate_phrases_that_kill_resumes-97

that told me of the applicant's attention to detail. All well and good, except the document was loaded with misspellings.

I liked this one -
Experience: “Stalking, shipping & receiving”

:rofl:

IF a situation comes up where the word fits, just don't bring up that situation.

:shrug:

Chatty resumes seem egotistical to me.

What ever happened to facts? "Results-oriented professional"? What the hell does that mean? Give me your results: improved sales by x% over 2 years...

"Strong work ethic" - yeah, like some lazy slob is going to say "I'm a lazy slob"...

When I look at a resume, I'm thinking "Prove it".

Like the time the applicant handed me his file, glaring at me as though daring me to comment on the 'FUCK YOU!' tatooed across the front of his neck.

actually, i really don't care about novice computer skills, WHAT can you do to generate revenue? what contacts are you bringing? do you have a stable of clients?

if not, do you have absolutely no fear to go out there and get them?

i can tell within five minutes whether someone gets coffee. because coffee is for closers. i can't deal with overhead staff.

I do my best to avoid that term. I mean aren't we all 'people person' in our own way? Not like someone would say "I really can't stand people and do my best to avoid all of humanity at all costs"

It was a shitty job while I was in college. I was wearing a tie which apparently was unusual for applicants there. He said that there were different reasons by people wanted to work at a grocery store deli, like being a people-person. I think he thought I was kidding. I got hired and hated it.

I have absolutely zero skills or added value. But I'll manipulate like crazy, take credit for other people's work, annoy the hell out of *everybody*...and I expect to be paid top dollar for my contribution.

At least, that's been my experience of everybody who has every called themselves a "people person." :shrug:

No shit, that was on a resume I received. The clip art graphic of a computer taking up the top third of the paper didn't help either.

self-employment will frost the HR person's pumpkin.

Most times, any references to any artistic/creative endeavor (art, creative writing, even music) will cause suspicion.

This of course applies to "real" jobs like corporate horseshit or similar.
mark

Although I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Most of the country is pretty fearful of anyone with artistic inclinations.

I remember foolishly thinking that an employer might *want* someone who'd won awards for non-fiction writing and had had a number of things published to be working for them, but I barely got any response to my initial resumes. Things picked up a bit once I removed those items from the Awards/Accomplishments section of my resume.

Most employers, it seems, don't want staff who can communicate effectively.

called back for a special talk with the HR top man. He warned me that I would be fired ("Terminated") if I were to write stories based on events or persons in the workplace - a mental hospital. I also found very active anti-intellectualism and intollerance of my non-religious beliefs.

I am saddened by it myself, but I have found this to be the case for most of the jobs I have ever had.

mark

". . . My purpose is to wedge myself into someone’s door to absorb as much as possible."

:wtf:

but yesterday I was e-mailed a resume from my ex-boyfriend's new wife.

What do you think I did with it???

Nope, I just hit the delete key. ;-)

Cause we're not hiring anyway.

delete.

I kid you not - she misspelled the name of her own college. I used to screen people for a marketing promotions job, and saw some doozies. In addition to being sure you can spell the name of your own college, some advice I gleaned from that job:

- If you put a phone number on there, don't imply on your message that you're a stoner "Hi, leave a message - Steve and I are probably out getting high"

- If you put a phone number on there, don't let a drunken relative answer the phone. Or an addled relative who might embarrass you. Or a trashy idiot: "Who you want? Who? Shit! Darlene! DAR-LENE! Get your ass down here - call fer you"

- If you provide a phone number, make sure it has all its digits. The number 610-834-886 is not going to make me say "oh, too bad, I guess I'll just email him instead"

- If you have a stupid email address, get a new one from yahoo or gmail. I am NOT calling sexykitty6969 for an interview. No. Way.

- Don't put political groups on your resume, liberal or conservative. Not fair, but the screener might toss it just because it says "Pro-Life Students Association" (or Young Democrats). Religious or ethnic groups are okay.

- If you're applying for a job in the US, and you have a name that anyone in the US has ever struggled with, put the pronunciation in parentheses. There were people I didn't call because I was embarrassed to mispronounce their name, or use their last name as a first name. Yes, it's unfair. But if people were helpful enough to help me out with that, then I DID call.

I applied for a gov't relations position for a lobbying firm and got an interview, which was big considering they said they got over 300 resumes and were only interviewing 14. The interview was going well until they brought up the fact that I had I was an officer for my college democrats and then they mentioned they were all republicans. x(
Needless to say, I didn't make it to the second round of interviews.

But really, I'm the exception to your rule as all I apply for are political jobs where your affiliation is important. Nearly my entire resume is political, lol.

I have an Indian name that is pretty easy to pronounce by Indian standards, but it's not exactly "Bob Smith," either.

When people screw up my name, it doesn't offend me -- in fact, I'm shocked when they get it right the first time.

But to not contact an applicant because you think you might screw up their foreign-sounding name is -- no offense -- ludicrous.

Only that it happens, so why not head it off at the pass?

I was in my 20's at the time, and pretty insecure. I'm fairly certain that the people who are given the task of winnowing resumes are sometimes (but not always) the same kind of low level, low self-confidence, young/inexperienced people.

So if the first name was easy, I could just go with that ("is Deepa there?") even if the last name had 25 letters. Or if the last name was easy, and I could tell which sex they were, then I could ask for "Ms. Milosovich" or "Mr. Patel" even if I coldn't twist my tongue around the first name. But if I couldn't handle either, I'd bypass.

Not fair, not right, not something I'd do now, but just something I thought I'd warn folks about. Probably not as much of a problem now that most of the initial contact is done by email, but if you're expecting a phone call, it doesn't HURT to help the caller out.

By requiring a phonetic pronunciation for foreign-sounding names (without even letting them know it's a requirement), you are not only depriving them of a job opportunity, but you're also depriving yourself and your company of a potentially good worker.

The trade-off between that and possibly screwing up their name the first time is a very small price to pay.

This was about 20 years ago - so I haven't deprived anyone of a job opportunity in two decades.

What I am doing, however, is warning anyone who reads this that there are stupid, inexperienced young people out there who might toss your resume if they can't pronounce your name and the first contact is by phone.

We had PILES of resumes (75-100) from each school, and I was told to select 4-5 people to call and schedule for interviews, all college kids with little to no marketing experience. Things like grades and honors didn't tell me if he or she were someone outgoing who we would want for an on-campus marketing job. It was almost random - I looked for people with acceptable grades, "clean" resumes (nothing stupid or mis-spelled) and involvement in campus activities or something lese to indicate they were good with people (RAs were usaully a good choice). It was shocking how many resumes were eliminated for spelling, grammer, or stupidity.

But the point is still that there are people in this country who, faced with a resume from Deepa Patel and one from Sucianty Tanuwidjaja, I might call Deepa first, all else being pretty much equal (and college resumes are depressingly equal). So if you're Sucianty, why not let the idiot winnower know 1) that you're female and 2) how to pronounce your name? It can't hurt, and it may get you past the screener and in front of someone smart enough to have hiring authority and smart enough not to worry about tripping over your name.

But the inexperienced winnower in this case -- whether of his own accord or of some superior's -- shouldn't have to expect a pronunciation guide. We're an increasingly diverse country with a president with a self-proclaimed "funny name," so the days of resumes only from "Bob Jones" or "Kate Smith" (or "Deepa Patel" for that matter) are behind us.

I think a lot of people are overly paranoid about mispronouncing someone's name, but speaking as someone with an uncommon name (one a little harder to pronounce than "Deepa Patel"), it never bothers me that people rarely get my name right the first time.

And there's no clear-cut test to determine if a name is unpronounceable. "Deepa Patel" would confuse a few people not used to that kind of a name.

responsible for winnowing resumes, except maybe at McDonald's or something. Other than taking out the obvious losers (filled with typos), wtf does any 20-something know? Oh, to drop somebody brilliant because their name is too hard to pronounce. omggih. No wonder I can't get hired any more :shrug:

saying the person's name.

"Hi, this is Bob Smith from Smith's Consulting. We got your resume and we're very interested in bringing you in for an interview..."

But I was doing this back when people had landlines, and you had to call a house or apartment and track the person down. So you had be able to say at least a first OR last name.

Nowadays, I guess you could just skip the name and assume you got the right person....

Thank God I interview doctors for a living now, so no matter what the person's name is, I can just say "Thank you so much, doctor" or "well, doctor, what do you think about this data?".

I only have to worry about pronouncing atherosclerosis and otolaryngology.

Applicant for a receptionist position at my last organization. We all had a good laugh over that one.

If only she'd gotten it right - St. Olaf College is a very highly regarded school in our neck of the woods. She probably would have gotten the job.

and no one can get the pronounciation correct, so it made sense to just make it easier for all concerned, my family still uses it, but even my wife cant pronounce it correctly.

As a recruiter and HR and Ops manager for many years and, currently, an in-house recruiter for a national health care company, I have seen what I thought was all the crazy resumes but some these were new to me. I sent a few out to my recruiter friends...they have enjoyed them as well. One of my favorites was a posting on CareerBuilder for a nurse..instead of her name showing up to id the resume, she had the line, " Nurse, will be off probation in 8 months". Didn't call her; wonder why???

I have no idea why I included that in my resume.

if you are going to sleep with the boss's daughter, at least do it right. :eyes:

tell me that he would "sweat blood" for me. I ended up hiring someone wee bit less, um, intense.

but I could barely understand a word he said.

Uh, what?

I love reading 'tech' tidbits from people who have no idea what they're talking about. :rofl:

as long as I'm not required to be within two hundred feet of a school...

My SO was trying to get a day job aside from his acting, and NO ONE would hire him for ANYTHING.

We finally took his 2-year gig as a guide at a CLOSED penitentiary, and he was hired the next place he applied.

I think people just skim, and don't actually READ that he was a tour guide, not an ex-con.

depends on the job I suppose

Under education I mentioned being able to sleep in class while looking like I'm paying attention. I talked about video game scores and pirated software under computer skills. Prior jobs included different ways of scaring customers and driving the supervisor crazy until he quit. Stuff like that.

...wore the exact same suit as you if that person's response to noticing it was, "I called ahead to see what you were wearing?" I still didn't get the job. This was back in the '90s after I passed the bar but before I found my first job. Humorless asshole.

that they could offer me all the money on Earth but I still would turn down working for that insane asylum.

So I was as obnoxious as I could be without directly personally insulting the weird HR guy doing the interview.

When he asked me where I would see myself after working for them in ten years, I said "Institutionalized."

They wield so much power over peoples' lives it's disgusting. Seriously, basically this asshole's complaint is, "These resumes aren't using the right buzz words that I've been trained to want to hear". Maybe, if the HR fucks hadn't changed applying for a job into a "who can throw enough bullshit buzz words and jargon into their resume" contest they wouldn't have to read resumes like this.

He thinks they are terrified of making a mistake, scared someone will come back to them and say "who hired that idiot?" so they stick only to the tried and true. I don't think he's far from wrong.

One of my good friends was HR director for a large ASPCA/Humane Society, and she's actually a pretty good soul, but very conservative (personally - not politically). Very freaked out by anything that she considers outside her own norms. It's pretty funny - her best guy friend is gay, and she smokes dope, so THAT'S okay and 'normal', but straight people with multiple partners? Shocking!

I was telling her about one of my widowed girlfriends who juggled several boyfriends, and she got visibly upset:

"Don't you have any normal friends who are happily married?"

"I have lots of 'normal' friends who are happily married, but I don't know any good stories about them..."

...the average H.R. employee sits there with a look of "concern," practicing their "active listening skills," and five minutes after you leave their office they have repeated every single word you've said to every single person who will stand still long enough to listen.

I worked in H.R. for a year and a half as an assistant manager.

Also, while attending San Jose State at night to finish my B.A. Degree, I took a lot of contract assignments during the day to pay the bills. One of these was at a fairly large company in San Jose, in the H.R. department. I was there for a week and there was literally no work, and I kept asking myself "why am I here?" I kept asking for something to do and they kept coming up with the most ridiculous, piddling little filing projects and such.

Then, about a week and half in, I knew exactly why I was there.

They had orchestrated a mass layoff and executed it Pentagon-style. People were escorted out of the building by security. It was an assembly line process. They had to have me there, familiar with the company, and familiar with the players in order for me to participate.

Human Resources "professionals" are among the worst people on the planet. And yeah, Hitler loved his fucking dogs, so if an H.R. person reads this and wants to reply with righteous indignation, all I can say is "Hitler loved his dogs."

:patriot:

It's like they have a playbook that they go by. They probably waited until a Friday to make the layoffs, because fired employees "seem to take it better on a Friday". I've never been able to stand them and I never will.

Yes, you guessed that one right...it was one on a Friday and everyone in the "chain" had the list. The person got the initial news, then were escorted to an H.R. "benefits specialist" who told them about their severance and COBRA info, then security took them back to their cubicle / office to gather their personal belongings (and make sure that they didn't TOUCH their computer), then they surrendered their badges, pagers, etc to security and were escorted out of the building...I mean OUT. Security closed the badge-access door behind them.

bwah...haw..haw.. that's funny!:rofl:

She didn't show me the guy's name & contact info, but she did show me one resume where a guy had applied for a job at her company and enclosed a picture of himself wrapped in an American flag. I think he was of Middle-Eastern descent, so maybe wanted to make sure he was seen as a patriotic American. But, it was humorous anyhow.

.

helpful in getting the job:

"Willing to kiss ass big time to get ahead."

That would be a huge red flag for me.

and all the interviews were done with engineers. No HR people at all, which was not only different, but refreshing. They asked me what my greatest weakness was, and I replied that I didn't suffer fools well. The response from the head guy was "We understand. That's not a problem here." Got the job, too.