Blots on a Resume
Most of us have a resume on file. We spend hours agonizing over it. We look through the document over and over again to find and correct every possible mistake; we look at it time and time again to see if it is properly formatted; we review it from top to bottom (and back to the top) to make sure that the one reading the resume will choose us to interview, not somebody else. Only when we are sure that everything is in order we send our work to the company that we hope would hire us. After we send the resume, we take a look at it to see how well it is written. That is when we yell "NOOOO".
It happens all the time. Often we don't realize that a mistake has been made until it is too late to correct it. This is often the case when we build our resumes, especially the parts of the document that we don't change often (since we don't change the content of those parts, we usually assume that part of the resume is mistake-free).
Many of those mistakes are minor and some employers may disregard those mistakes (or not — if one can make mistakes on a two-page document, who can believe that one won't make many collosal mistakes on a 500-page plan that may make or break a company?).
The following are a few ways one can make a fool of oneself on the resume, to make sure one's resume would end up on the bottom of the pack.
- Misspelling words:
I hope this is obvious. The employer may not take notice of this if the meaning of the statement is not lost. However, if you send a resume that says "rat on professors" rather than "rate on professors", you may be invited/forced to go to some interviews that you would rather not attend. Also, don't expect Spellcheck to detect all the mistakes. For example, if you type discus rather discuss on the resume, employers are more likely to throw discuses of rejection at you rather than inviting you for further discussion.
- Putting down "Employment Seeker" as your current occupation:
Well, it is probably the truth. We can also use this to fill in the gaps in our employment history. However, it would be quite difficult to write the job description. I don't think "sending application letters to employers", "searching for 'Help Wanted' notices on the street, newspaper and the Internet", and "selling myself to people I don't know"
would help one find a job, except maybe telemarking or pyramid schemes (of course, I may be wrong on the last one, since we have to sell ourselves so that the employer would buy the product —
our service).
- Including jobs from MMORPG in the employment history:
If one states that one has been an alchemist, the employer may ask one to turn lead into gold. Not many employers (that I know of) are actively searching for warriors (except maybe the armed forces and soldiers of fortune). If one happens to be an elf, an orc, or a goblin in the game, the jobs one can find are likely in the fields of performing arts or research in obscure languages.
(However, one may place one's MMORPG experience
into the resume — by stating that one is volunteering one's time on research on sleep deprivation.)
- Exaggerate one's experience:
When we write a resume, most of us do exaggerate our achievements in some ways. Here I am talking about gigantic exaggerations. If one receives a warning letter from a company that owns a copyright, one can claim that one has experience in defending cases in copyright infringement. One can claim to be have knowledge in meteology just by saying that one correctly guesses the weather 80% of the time (unless the employer actually put that person to do the weather report, the claim may be hard to prove/disprove).
Of course, these are not the only silly mistakes one can make while building a resume. If one wants to have a little fun, make one (or all) of these mistakes. This way, the people reading the resume can have some fun at work — they have a chance to have a good laugh while throwing resumes into the recycling bin and giving their sore eyes a brief rest.