10 dumbest resume blunders

I’m amused by how some of the people who posted comments (and obviously in a position of power to review resumes) don’t use correct grammar, spelling, or sentence structure. How about proofreading YOUR comment for errors before posting? I sure as heck don’t want to work for you.

I’m an in-house attorney for a computer firm. I always receive unsolicited resumes. Several years back, I received one that started out with:

I am a recent graduate of Rutgers Law School who has set my sites on a career in computer law.

At first, I didn’t read any further. I just tossed it into the trash. A few hours later, I picked it out and read the rest of it. There were so many other errors, I just had to have some fun. So, I took out my red pen, corrected all of the errors and mailed it back to him… I would have given ANYTHING! to have been there when he opened it.

The funniest I ever saw was when a resume indicated that she “prohibits excellent written and oral communication skills”!!! That’s just funny!

One of my favorites was from an individual applying for a higher-level clerical position, claiming she was “detali oriented”.

Another was a team interview with an individual applying for a position of direct care for psychiatric patients who arrived wearing a turban, one-shouldered top and sandals that laced all the way up her legs. When asked if she felt she was appropriately dressed for an interview replied “don’t you think I look pretty?”. Needless to say, that was a short interview.

And, one interviewee, when asked the question, “can you identify any areas of improvement”, insisted, even after multiple attempts, that she had no areas that needed improvement. Her final response was “I guess I’d better come up with something because someone in the room thinks I must have”. I replied that while I admire her confidence, we all have traits, habits, etc that need continuous work. To me, that kind of arrogance means “not a team player because I know more and am better than anyone else”. It’s too bad, because she arrived professionally dressed, was otherwise articulate and her long-term goals would have been perfect for our organization.

So, I’m a little slow on the uptake!
I took time to realize that the reason I was not getting hired was that I was over 50. It’s absolutely amazing how the jobs stopped exactly when that line was crossed, the lame excuses used to end interviews when the saw me and realized that I was not “a good fit” for their team, etc. I could go on and on but I won’t.

I had a applicant ghosted a headshot as the background to her resume. I nearly spit my coffee out when I saw it

I had an applicant apply for an IT position who had no experience. His response to my question about the lack of computer experience on his resume?
“I’m even more computer illiterate than my resume shows”

One candidate included clipart on their resume of two cartoons shaking hands.

About 15-20 years ago I had a lady put down on an employment application that she had left her last job because “her boss was stupid and wouldn’t listen to her”. The reason she had left the job before that? “her boss was stupid and would always argue with her about how to do her job”

Needless to say, no hire!!

One applicant used colored paper and drew glitter designs around the border

Actually, I liked the line that anapplicant used “I’m allergic to unemployment”

Had an applicant state under hobbies “getting drunk everynight down by the water, playing my guitar and smoking pot - job description clearly stated that the postion would be subject to ramdom UA testing.

Same applicant under Why Interested in Postion stated “to keep my parole officer from putting back me in jail and not losing their unemployment.

Another applicant had applied for a postion, stormed into the office with a case of beer in hand set the case of beer on the desk and drunkenly asked why he had not been called back and was there something wrong with his resume/application … enough said

These are ture and I am not making these - they actually happened

One Candidate mentioned that he is applying a for a programmer’s job because he is not getting a CIO job.

While at my last job we purged resumes after one year. While going through a pile of these I found a resume where a woman had attached a picture of herself in a mini mouse costume.

A resume once showed under Hobbies; Drugs and girls.

A young woman who came to the interview resembling a flower child, wearing bellbottom jeans and a blouse like a pajama top, stated that her number one complaint at the office was the dress code.

Three years ago I interviewed with the Naval Surface Warfare Center. After the traditional resume submission and interview, which all went really well, I wrote the traditional “Thank you for interviewing me” email. Throughout the email, however, I accidentally spelled it the Navel Surface Warfare Center. (Spell check didn’t catch it, because it is still a word) After I sent the email, a few minutes later I realized the mistake, and sent the email again, hoping that the interviewer would just think that I accidentally hit the email button twice because of a slow connection or something, and just read the latest, fixed version. I still got the job!

An acquaintance of mine works with city kids in a training program. As part of the program they go over how to write a resume and fill out job applications, etc… At the end of this course they have the kids fill out a job application and write a resume. In the section where the application asks applicants to list any organizations that they belong to, several of them listed Bloods, etc…

My best job interview applicant blunder: I worked for a company that had several locations around Midtown Manhattan. Seeing as my office was not located in our “Main” location, I was always very clear when setting up interviews about exactly which building (including street address and cross streets) the applicant expected to come for the interview. I received a call from the applicant – two hours AFTER his appointment time: he had just arrived at the security desk of one of our other locations 7 blocks away! He accused me of being unfair when I told him that he need not bother coming to my location as I no longer wished to interview him.

One candidate shared that he had been cut from the Notre Dame Football team…

The best one we ever saw at our company, for explanation of a crime, was “hit my baby’s momma over the head with a phone”.

We also saw an applicant who listed under “job related skills” - for a web designer - “can function without additional oxygen at 24,000 feet”.

Beyond the resume… On his first day of employment, after being assigned to a site manager for training, the site manager called me around 10AM and said the new employee kept falling asleep throughout the morning. I then had the individual report into my office to explain himself. He stated that he was up all night with his friends celebrating his new job! Needless to say, I immediately terminated him.

I kept calling my interviewer “my Lady” after pretty much every other sentence. She called me on it, asking what my fascination was with the Renaissance. OUCH!

My sister-in-law misspelled the word “proofreading” in her skill set.

I was back from the states and applying for a part-time waitressing job while studying in Ireland. While in California, I’d worked at the exclusive ‘rich man’s’ camp known as the Bohemian Grove. Wating my future employer in ireland to appreciate the importance of getting to work at the Bohemian Grove, I added in parenthesis (a Gentleman’s Club). Of course, little did I know that in Ireland a ‘Gentleman’s Club’ is euphamism for strip bar. My interviewer told me my mistake only after offering me the job, and explained that as the deciding factor in hiring me!

The objective on one recent resume I received stated that the applicant wished to pursue a challenging account executive position with our rival firm.

One candidate curiously provided the following statement in their Curriculum Vitae under “Other Interests”.

“Playing with my two dogs (They actually belong to my wife but I love the dogs more than my wife).”

We had someone list that they were “handy with a hatchet” under the ’skills’ section. Keep in mind this was for a ticket-taker position at a movie theater, so hatchet skills weren’t really necessary.

I assume the derogatory comment from “Kathy, Tuscon, AZ ” who turned down an interviewee because their hobbies was “middle eastern politics” is racist. Someone should not get an equal opportunity because they have an interest in the conflicting middle-east? That is bogus. What if the person said they have an interest in “American politics?” Since our current political agenda is chaos, would that be a turn-off for Mrs. Kathy? Why do we stand for racist comments such as this?

I read a resume once where the candidate wanted to pursue a career on the Information Supper Highway. He must have been really hungry.

During a hiring session, I came across a resume that was well written and included all the qualities I expected from my staff. During the interview I asked him to fill out an application, which he did. I quickly scanned the application and compared it to his resume. I stopped in the personal information section. On the line that asked what “sex” he was; he wrote “occassionally”.

In the recruiting industry I have seen some truly amazing “stupid human tricks” the constant is misuse of words & their meanings. One resume was for a Shipping & Receiving position. The candidate’s resume reflected the following: Stalking, shipping & receiving. Needless to say he was baffled when he didn’t receive any interest after sending his resume out. We were able to help him with this blunder….

A number of years ago, my college roommate had a list of his attributes on his resume. One of them was “I’ve never been fired from a job”. We ribbed him that we were going to add to our resumes: “Never robbed a bank”, and “Only liked disco for a couple of months”.

I had a string of interviews with a company that was prepared to hire me. When I sent thank you letters to all of the interviewers I wrote the name of one of their competitors on the address line.
Although the HR Director did not want to hire me, the president of the division arranged a third interview between the HR manager and me. Obviously I was embarrassed and apologized for the error. She was was still unwilling to overlook the error, but the president wanted to hire me.

I took the job and was extreme. It was a good fit. I took the offer partly because I was impressed that the management was not catering to the HR department.

I took the job and it was a good match.

A cover letter to a resume I received stated the person could start immediately because the company she currently worked for didn’t want her around anymore.

I rec’d a resume which contained numerous typos. Among the typos was: “I am great with the pubic.”

Several years ago a candidate sent in his resume which listed some rather good credentials but it was his list of schools that caught our attention. He had taken some classes to further his career goals at several community collages. Apparently spelling was NOT high on his list as his resume joined others in the trash to form a nice collage. Good laugh though.

A woman sent her resume in for employment and it stated her weight, height, eye, and hair color….

I once made me mistake of using a free resume template I got off the Web. I changed everything except forgot to change the hyperlink in the email address part. After submitting it to numerous companies i realized that if clicked on it pulls up someone else’s email address. Oops!

An applicant’s prior position was “proofreader.” Maybe so, but his resume’ contained 4 typos.

One lady wrote that she graduated from Yale.
Unbeknownst to her the boss won’t hire Yale grads because of Bush and Clinton.

For once I’d like to see some “Top 10 Dumbest __________” (fill in the blank) and the subject is POOR INTERVIEWERS . . . or seemingly high profile interviews that went awry.

I’ve got plenty I could write about–it isn’t always the “interviewee” that has poor skills.

TRUST ME . . .

The HR director at my company is stickler for having absolutely no grammatical or spelling errors on resumes from applicants. He still manages to hire a bunch of idiots, but they can spell and don’t use colored resume paper. Yippee!

I had a candidate list her e-mail address as pornstardelight@*****.com. I didn’t see anyway that I could bring her in for an interview although several other people in the office were disappointed that I didn’t think she would be a fit.

I was guilty once of telling prospective HR teams that I had a B.S. - which naturally I referred to as a Beer Stain. Betcha they were impressed.

The Applicant listed her name as Alice in the resume but wrote Alyce on the onsite application. Needless to say, neither one was hired

Great list, Annie.. But my top four blunders (for the electronic era) did not even make it on your list.

4. Using color. Nothing detracts from the message more than the use, especially overuse, of color. Keep the resume in black and white. A resume that looks like a rainbow will not lead you to your pot of gold.
3. A digitized picture on the resume. Unless you are applying for a modeling (or similar) job wheerein looks are important, skip the picture. Space is at a premium on the resume, do not waste it with a picture.
2. Not knowing what the Internet says about you. You know that Myspace account that you created in college - it’s still active. It still have pictures of you at that party. (Hint: not looking your professional best!) Know what a search of the Internet will show employers about you. Recruiters do sek and certainly they will find. Part B of this snaffu is to never include a personal web page on your resume. Even if you are applying for a web design position. You can include a link to some prior work, but always professional, never about your personal life.
1. The number 1 blunder and sure to get your resume deleted faster than you can imagine. The inappropriate use of an email name. Yep, it sounds cute, but LAZY_BOY@domain.com will not get you a job. Keep the mail account in profesional format. YourName@domain.com. In the same thought.. DO NOT use your current employers email to search for a job. Really tacky here. You need an email account that is private and professional in nature. A prospective employer will frown upon you using your current employer’s time and resources to look for a job.

Avoid my Top 5 and Happy job hunting!

I have to confess that I don’t see anything wrong with some of these. What is gauche about listing Middle Eastern Politics as a hobby? Maybe I’ve lived in DC too long…

Indicated that he had “excellent dental health” and went on to describe how many fillings he had in his lifetime and that he had excellent gum health. It was a 9 page resume and the first page was nothing except highly personal details such as this.

How about the resume we got from a graduate student in Communications that read “additional references available apond demand.”?

A friend of mine - Brian - sent his resume around with his name spelled BrAIn… took him two months to figure out why he didn’t get any calls…

Some of the worst mistakes ive seen on Resumes are the simplist mistakes. The one I see the most is a wrong phone number on the resume. Or even worse, the right phone number but when I call the number I get a voicemail filled with 3 minutes of “gangster rap”
I think the funniest resume I got was one with a cover letter explaining that he had a “little trouble” with the law in his past. However the letter assured me that it was a simple “crime of passion” and the judge had even seen it his way. I just had to call this guy to hear his story. Turns out the “crime of passion” was murder and the judge “seeing it his way” was the fact that he only had to do 15 years in prison.
On the other side of the coin. Quite a few years ago I was working as a hiring manager for a small marketing firm. One day I got a box in the mail. Inside that box was a rubber foot with a resume attached. The cover letter said just this: “Just wanted to get my foot in the door”. This made me laugh so hard, I had to at least interview they guy. I ended up hiring him.

After interviewing a very “slick” future salesman, I was glad to see that I recevied a thank-you note from him.

I opened it up and was speechless to see one men’s black dress shoe…size 10…with a note thanking me and telling me that he was excited to get his foot in the door.

The best part? I was heading down to the printer to pick up his rejection letter then I got the package!

After being laid off from my 1st job, I had to redo my resume. I had my current boyfriend, my career services director and a couple of my friends all review it. All agreed that it was a good resume & go ahead to send it. At the 1st interview it netted, the elderly secretary of the attorney I was interviewing with asked why I had the heading “LEGAL UNEMPLOYMENT” on my resume. Freudian slip perhaps?

While working in the hospitality industry, I was priviledged to be given a copy of a resume for an open Executive Hotel Sales Director position by my GM. The candidate explained an eight month gap in employment by admitting that he had been fired from his previous position because of a ‘maturity issue’. The candidate further explained that he’d used the eight month period to improve his ‘masturbation techniques’ and was now fully ‘masterbated’. My boss and I assumed he had meant to use (incorrectly)’maturated’ but he was taking no chances with this particular candidate!

I recently received a resume from a job applicant whose cover letter said that he was sending this to me, the HR Director, as a “courtesy” before “making any attempt to sidestep” my authority and going directly to the “real decision makers.” (That would be me, too.)

One more favorite for you - the fellow who wrote as an objective that he wanted to be a millionaire by the time he was 30.

Two consistent problems I saw as a branch manager hiring in the Boston area: cover letters prepared with problematic mail merges (”Dear Dean Witter Manager” - when our firm was not Dean Witter); and letters addressed to “Branch Manger” - spell-check doesn’t do it all, folks! You have to actually read it over first.

Repeat performances from folks who apparently blanketed the Street with resumes attached to cover letters that discussed how much they wanted to work for a large investment banking firm. We were a discount brokerage and did not do investment banking.

My typical response was “well, good luck to you!” and the resume went into the circular file.

many of these aren’t ‘blunders’ as the author sloppily states.
if a person enjoys watching alligators then that’s what they should say.
the loss of a long time pet can cause serious depression.
etc

I work in a small chain retail store aimed at female customers betweeen 4 and 18 years old. On one of our applications, a girl wrote ” I’m 16, I’m pregnant and I can do anything.” At the same time she turned in her application, her boyfriend handed in his. On his: “Felony for breaking and entering.” Well, I’d hire those two to work with young girls, wouldn’t you? Ha!
However, the same day as one of my interviews, my doctor had just prescribed me a new medication that she assured me wouldn’t interfere with my daily activities. But right in the middle of the interview, I suddenly got dizzy, started sweating profusely and nearly fell out of my chair. I asked my interviewer if I could be excused to the restroom, and she said yes, take your time. I spent twenty minutes trying desperately to recover from the hotflash and control my bowels. I was so humiliated that I nearly cried, but thankfully she understood and hired me anyhow!

The blunders I’ve seen include people who list email addresses such as “sexykitty4u@emailaddress.com”, or that have an email address that, when you look up in google, you find pictures of the person out drinking the night before, or their myspace page talking about sex. That’s always bad. Create a separate email address for business related purposes. I also hate to see when they mis-spell words like professional (proffesional) or experienced (experianced).

I received a resume that had “incarnated” listed under experience. I have only heard of one individual, Jesus Christ, with that type of experience so I was very confused until I looked at the next page of the resume when his probation paperwork was attached. The “incarcerated” and recently released individual was also unable to spell!

We’re hiring people to teach college-level composition. One of the candidates we interviewed, after the interview, has started emailing the search committee using only lower-case letters throughout the email. Sheesh. I can’t imagine a context where that would be appropriate, but certainly, when you’re being considered to teach the conventions of formal writing to students, it’s stupid to show blatant disregard for them to the people thinking of hiring you. He made it easy for us to dismiss him.

I once got a resume that was obviously made with Word Resume Wizard. There were many problems with it, but the one that I still remember five years later is that in the education section it actually said “Graduated: Yes.”

I had a client when I was working at the state Department of Labor who stated that he couldn’t look for work because he had “ammonia”. As proof he produced a bill from the Emergency Room over a year old. Still owed on it, too.

We were interviewing for a part time office admin position. One resume, in particular, listed “changing diapers” and “raising kids” as work experience. Also, listed as experience was “surfing the Internet” and she understood how to use Word and spell check. There were misspelled words throughout her resume.

I’m a corporate recruiter and once I received a picture of a candidate as a young girl working at a hot dog stand in the summer.
I guess the idea was to show that she had always valued hard work, even as a young girl? I’ll never forget it!

About 10 years ago, I helped polish a resume and cover letter for a friend. She didn’t have her own pc, so she used a computer at Kinko’s to make a few last-minute changes to the cover letter. That computer was infectec with the “wahoo” virus, which affects Word documents. It rearranged words, phrases, and sentences throughout the cover letter, and inserted the word “wahoo” randomly throughout the letter. We didn’t discover this until after she had sent out the resume which, to our horror, listed her address as wahoo Colchester, CT and her phone number as: (860) wahoo 555-5555. Amazingly, she received a phone call and was interviewed for the job–and the subject of the disastrous cover letter never was mentioned!

As a translator working in Taiwan, I frequently translate resumes from Chinese to English. It is fairly common practice here to include among personal accomplishes all the things that one might have done as a child–and I still find this to be hilarious. Even though the person already has a master’s degree, sometimes you’ll find that he or she lists all student officer positions, English contests won, and so on, beginning with the grade school level. I just eliminate these and write a personal note to my client to that effect.

I received a brief cover letter stating that the applicant’s resume was posted to a particular website from which I should download it. I didn’t bother.

A long time back, when the internet still a thing connecting universities I posted my resume on the newsgroup alt.jobs.wanted. Needless to say, had it been flawless I would have been mercilessly mocked: I included my job experience at the time which included things like busboy and janitor.

The same resume got me free flights for interviews when I sent them via post however. It turns out though they were looking for EO hires (one of my my college buddies also got these free flights listing house painter and janitor on his resume).

Seems we two naive rubes from nowhere were not so naive as the folks screening our resumes.

I once received a resume where the respondent listed her job duties under the most recent position. For the subsequent job listings she wrote “see above”. True Story.

I have had handwritten letters come in, ones with very um, interesting email addresses for contact information (if I can tell anything about your sex life from your email address, you might not want to use it).

And if you are applying for a job as a librarian, please don’t tell me that you are qualified because you have sold books at a bookstore.

Also, don’t ever list your only qualifications for a job as “my spouse is interviewing for job there so I need to be hired there too.” Especially when the position you are applying for requires specific skill sets and degrees.

One candidate’s electronic resume included links to her homepage, where the pictures were of her in the nude.

I once received a cover letter that started “As you know, finding full time employment in this field is very difficult. I have applied to over 200 positions within the last 2 years”…

I was working as an engineer for a Fortune 100 company and we received a resume that had “Middle Eastern Politics” listed under hobbies.

My favorite was a candidate who actually photocopied their resume and cut off their own name. Only the address was showing on the top of the page.

I have a friend that applied for a job w/ a certain city. Unfortunately, he sent a resume that had the name of another city that he was applying to , on it.

Needless to say, he didn’t get the job.

Idiot!

I was a R&D manager at a large aerospace company and the resume was from a fellow who had gotten a degree in programming while in prison and apologized that he hadn’t yet gotten any real experience because his sentence still had 3 more months left to serve!

Any “Dear Sirs” immediately see the circular file.

Also had a resume with an enclosed super-sexy head shot. I know this is Hollywood…but: no.

A candidate asked me if we have mandatory drug testing, so I said “yes”.

The girl that listed wedding planning and Grays Anatomy as hobbies. How is any of that applicable to a job?

While there’s no conceivable reason what so ever to list Gray’s Anatomy as a hobby, wedding planning is something you should have taken note of. Event planning and marketing go hand-in-hand incredibly well, so if you had a candidate who plans weddings on the side, that same candidate could very well learn to plan company functions and tradeshows.

I once recived a very impressive resume…too bad the guys father emailed it to me…along with a list of reasons why I should hire is son. And no, I did not know the father.

Sometimes, the right envelope can get you the interview!

During a hiring cycle, I kept a resume that I otherwise would have tossed because it had an interesting hologram on the envelope.

Later, the resume became mixed-in with the “call-back” pile even though the applicant was not at all qualified for the job (candidate was a new grad, we were hiring for a senior position).

When the candidate arrived, I realized my mistake while skimming his resume on my way to the conference room. I felt really silly, but at least I was courteous enough to explain what I had done. It actually worked out for him as I was able to hook him up with a friend of mine hiring new graduates at another company.

I was applying for restaurant management positions a few years ago. I wrote what I thought were very nice cover letters to various high-end restaurants around town expressing how much I admired their chef or reputation or wine list. It wasn’t until I had already mailed 3 or 4 that I realized I had mixed up envelopes and sent the wrong letters to the wrong places. Needless to say, none of them called me.

Rain’s is a classic; I’ve already copied and sent it to several people via e-mail.

In addition to the list, my friend Tony overheard his manager interviewing someone within an accounting firm. The person being interviewed stated they knew Lotus 1, 2, AND 3! (For those of you who don’t know, the competitor software to Microsoft’s Excel is called Lotus 123… no “and”.) That got a chuckle from the manager and that resume presumably went into the circular file, as that person was never seen again at the firm after the interview!

I wrote on my resume that I took the same classes and had the same grades as President Bush. No math; no physics; no chemistry; no biology; no common sense!

I recently saw a resume where the candidate used the Microsoft Word “Resume Wizard”, but apparently couldn’t even follow those simple instructions the whole way through….

….the top of her resume read:

“Objective: [Click here and type your objective]”

It’s OK though, I didn’t have to bother with sending a rejection — she wrote me an email a few days later saying that she was no longer interested in our position, as she had “…excepted a job offer with another company.”

Somehow, we weren’t exactly heart-broken about losing someone with that level of star quality…

Interesting enough, people here in the Philippines regularily put their height, weight, marriage status, picture, religion, etc. on their resume.

I used to write resumes for other people. So imagine my horror when, after haphazardly cutting and pasting my resume together because I couldn’t find a copy of it, I discovered I put the same time period for each job I listed! Since I don’t recall being cloned, there was no way I could have held five different jobs all at once, ahem. I didn’t make this discovery until I made about 20 copies at the printers…

As a Unix Systems Administrator, I can’t tell you how many great resume’s I have read only to interview the person and find out they couldn’t answer even the most basic newbie questions. Almost as if they wrote it thinking they wouldn’t have an interview before being hired!

Hint, don’t put something on the resume if you don’t know anything about it.

I work for a financial services firm. We get some intersting resumes. Amongst my favorites:
* The candidate who said that he wanted to be a lawyer. Why apply to an accounting firm then?
* The girl that listed wedding planning and Grays Anatomy as hobbies. How is any of that applicable to a job?

Interviews are also fun with people asking inappropriate questions like our part-time policy (while interviewing for a full-time job) or maternity leave (are you telling us something?).

Rain’s takes the cake, but I have an interesting contribution. I once worked for a nutritional products company, so already you know some interesting characters were applying for jobs. Some people listed items such as “maintaining a healthy digestive system” as a hobby, among, the more mild items.

Does an employer care that you have healthy bowel movements?!

Needless to say, now I work for a Fortune 100 company.

I worked for a publishing company for more than six years and every time we had a job opening, the same woman would apply, no matter what the position. With each resume she sent, she attached a photograph of herself wearing an appropriate outfit for the time of year, i.e. in front of a Christmas tree in winter, a spring outfit while Easter Egg hunting, etc.) Her cover letter was always written on the letterhead from her current employer. As you can imagine, we never hired her but looked forward every time she applied so we could see what new outfit she had on!!

I once had a fellow apply for a computer programming job and his resume qualification was that he was the bottom man on a 2 man Unicycle team that performed at carnivals!

Better than the resumes were the marathon runner that showed up (in shorts) and ran in place during the interview, or the girl that pulled out an egg salad sandwich and ate it as she wiped her hands on my glass desk

My co-worker who is now 35 and well-experienced, told me that at the age of 19, she applied for a legal secretary position through a standard-form application. In the section that read “Emergency Contact Number” she wrote “911.” She eventually got the job and was told the response made her boss chuckle. Unbeknownst to him, she wasn’t trying to be humorous!

My personal dumbest was having printed and sent out my resume on the back side of a draft of a cover letter to another firm.
Nobody discovered the goof-up until I was actually being interviewed. The interviewer took a good look at it and asked (in total dismay), “What is this?”
I guess I was lucky that the company still hired me nevertheless.

I used to mail out job applications to people who called to request them. I once had a completed one sent back to me in the original envelope I had mailed it out in. The applicant had just crossed out his name and address and wrote “return to sender” on the envelope, apparently to avoid paying postage. Needless to say. I never even opened it.

Also I had a friend who once indicated on her resume that she was “detailed oriented”.

1) “I was fired because my was slow.” We assumed she meant to say that her “work” was slow.

2)”My duties included cleaning the restrooms and seating the customers.”

I have a question.
Is resume supposed to be short (1page) and general or companies prefer resumes with more details and it could be more than 1 page?

http://letsgobble.com/

I’ve seen a couple in my career. One applicant for a nursing position noted that she didn’t like dealing with blood or needles.

I had another applicant note that she no longer ran her own business because of mis-management by husband and her resolution to that was to divorced him.

One of my favorites was an applicant who put Gold’s Gym under “Professional Memberships”

I once was playing around with my friends while writing my resume. I added things like 10/02 - 08/05 God. Oversaw and maintained creation, chaos and stability of the entire universe. Forced to resign due to conflict of opinion with human race with respect to the flavor of car wax.

This alone is childish, and fun to giggle at, but when I forwarded my resume off to a very nice job, after speaking to them for months trying to get my foot in the door I realized I sent the wrong one.

2 weeks later I recieved a letter from them declining my resume due to overqualifications. They had no place for the creator of all that is, was and ever will be, and didnt believe the shareholders would feel comfortable with a former diety who liked to spend late nights with a bottle of jack and 17 small stuffed animals as his new hobby, overseeing foreign operations of the company.

There’s this one girl who said on here resume that she was NOMINATED for prom queen. I didn’t see much significant achievements from her college years.

I was relocating from NY to MA. I spelled out “Massachusetts” in my cover letter, but I spelled it wrong, with an extra E (”Massachusettes”

When I figured out it was wrong, I felt dumb. I don’t think anyone noticed, though. I got lots of interviews and hired almost immediately.

I once received a resume with a head and shoulders picture in the top left of the first page. The picture was of a lion’s head, wearing a coat, shirt, and tie. I’m not sure if the applicant was trying to say the resume was a bunch of “lion” (lyin’), but I never interviewed him. I often wish I had - just to find out what possessed him to put that picture on his resume!

In his resume for a managerial position one candidate bragged of his “contract negation” experience. Somehow I don’t think that’s a good thing!

A woman once sent a resume claiming, among other things, many years experience in a professional office environment. The position she was applying for was a front office customer service rep. She showed up at the interview dressed in a flowered housedress and flipflops and asked if this was going to take long because her husband was outside waiting….needless to say she was gone in less than 3 minutes….

Annie here, and I’ve gotta say, these are way better than the”Top Ten”! Just backs up what I always knew: When you want to know what’s really going on, ask Fortune readers!

I was sent a resume from our hiring team (how it got through them is beyond me) and was given a time for an interview. The 7-8 pages should have been a tip-off that this one would be classic. The Seinfeld like 3rd person references were abound…Jimmy likes to Ski…Jimmy has 3 years of experience…Jimmy knows C++ and Java. The interview ended when the candidate proceeded to tell me that he was getting tired and needed to take his percoset. He didn’t get a callback.

While looking for my first job out of college, I used faxing software to blanket about 40 placement firms with my resume. Unfortunately the cover letter stated that I was looking for a “proffreading” position. I still got several calls. Luckily their proffreading was no better than mine!

When interviewing candidates for a computer systems administrator job with a financial trading firm, a candidate had put on his resume that he had experience with “Sysco” routers. He meant “Cisco”. Cisco makes computer network routers. Sysco is a food services company. When I pointed out the error, he said that his agency had rewritten his resume for him. He seemed fairly competent aside from that. But, we had about 4 or 5 guys interview him we couldn’t believe a tech person or his agency could make such an obvious blunder.

I used to work for a recruiting co. We received a resume that was printed on the back of the person’s current employer’s letterhead. So he demonstrated that he stole from his employer! (i.e. company letterhead/paper).

Oh yeah: typos, spelling errors, and horrible grammar. When you’re trying to get hired, it’s best not to send a message that YOU DON’T CHECK YOUR WORK.

Someone I knew didn’t have much job experience, so he filled his resume with “activities.” These included hobbies such as “playing video games” and “collecting toys” and extracurriculars from high school. He was 23.

It seems like common sense that you’re only supposed to include “the good stuff” since you’re selling yourself, but so many job seekers put negative information on their resumes. Why do people include information that gives people reasons not to invite them for an interview? Don’t say on your resume that you’re here in the US with a visa…let the employer be impressed with you BEFORE they start thinking about sponsoring you for a Green Card. If you’re entry-level, don’t list your GPA if it’s poor…let the employer be impressed with you BEFORE they find out your grades aren’t as strong as the other candidates. If they want to know these things, they’re going to find out eventually but if you’ve already interviewed made a good impression, it might not matter anymore once they find out. And then, there are those that list information that’s not relavent at all and could be used to discriminate against them: age, marital status, gender, number of kids, etc. And what kind of an idiot puts their social security number on a document that they’re about to send to a stranger?

I worked at a large company for 10 years, and left to go to a smaller company. After 2 years, I applied back at the former company. Since I had not updated my resume in the two years, I only updated it to reflect the new experience. I didn’t pay enough attention to realize that I had left my old company name and title at the top “headline” of the resume on both pages.

One resume that came across my desk stated how the individual had won a contest for building toothpick bridges in middle school. Mind you, the person was in their mid-twenties.

I once heard of a blunder that I thought was really funny.

A resume listed a skill as “being bi-lingual in three languages”..

A friend explained frequent job changes in the past as the result of his “flatulence issues” but attested that he’d since “remedied the problem”

Someone who was trying to get re-hired with a different department within the same company, lied on his resume about all the responsibility and accomplishments he had previously in a different department. Little did he know that department managers do talk to each other and share information about prospective candidates, especially a rehire.

Working for a professional baseball team, our HR department once received a Nike baseball shoe with the resume and cover letter rolled up and placed in the shoe…of course the letter started with “now that I have my foot in the door….”. At least it wasn’t a used shoe - it now sits by a window housing a plant.

It was a pretty normal resume, but at the bottom under hobbies it listed “competitive juggling.” To me, juggling is what a clown does and the postion didn’t require a clown. I almost didn’t take the guy seriously and we debated whether to interview the him based solely on that line. It ends up he was a great hire and employee - but about a month afterward I asked him why he listed it and he just said it was on a whim. I think its best to leave the hobby information off a resume unless specifically requested by HR, or it applies specifically to the job. It can be discussed during the interview.

Years ago when I was working in employment my boss showed me a resume with the heading “courts martial”. It was followed by the explanation that none of his offenses were serious.

I once received a resume that had several grease stains and a smudge of chocolate on it. It went right into the trash!

A candidate decided to list her hobbies. Among them: “Having a good time”. I mean, aside from the inappropriate nature of that comment, who doesn’t like to have a good time?

When I worked in HR one of the most amusing cv’s was at least 4 pages(typed) and the main theme was the story of how the applicant’s parents met and fell in love, something like Dad travelled and Mom was the prettiest stewardess!’it went on the describe their perfect childhood in true Waltons style, and then why he had to be the best person for the position…etc etc. needless to say he went on the ‘No’ pile. But all the HR folk remembered him.