Resumark Blog

Dear Madman, a nice list. While laughing I went back and reviewed my CV. Nothing to add tankfully!

Am I the only one to notice that this is the most typo-free Comment section of any online article on the web?

I got this gem yesterday

Help with advertising, orders, employee scheduling, cooking, money, and moral

the one about "coping" may not be an error :)

Hey Andrew,
Your web address has a typo in it :-)
http://www.resumark.com/blog/a...

"top 15"

Thanks for the hilarity though! Much appreciated.

HHRR are so cowards that laughs of poor people mistakes.

How many times candidates attend interviews and the interviewer is not there ?, we must wait for them. This is an error, in this case HHRR error.

Perform quality treating people with decency and respect instead of remark human errors.

Funny stuff. One technique I have always used to proof read documents as critical as resumes is to read them backwards, slowly. If you speed read through something, you will miss words that are correctly spelled but incorrectly used. Reading backwards forces you to really look at each word.

The humor, though set in cement, was apt.
Funny. Sy

It is sad that we are all too quick to throw the first stone especially in a time when we ALL depend on spell check and calculators to do our checking for us. A minor misspelling on a resume does not represent whether or not a person is unqualified for a job. If their credentials are worth a look then I believe that it would be a shame to throw them aside for that. As a recruiter, it might be helpful to bring those mistakes to the attention of your candidate. Being kind and helpful will get you much further in life than making fun of another person's shortcomings.

lol... that's amazing. But I do think we have two main issues here... people are usually in a hurry, do not have time to check and re-check it (huge mistake...) and as we say... when things are bad.. they can become worse!!! lol

To those who think the MS Word spell check would fix these: Look again. In most cases the wrong word is used and the word is correctly spelled.

After I am done with spell checker, I usually review my resume reading it backwards. That forces you to focus on every word.

Once had a candidate accidently send me their completed application for one of those dating websites instead of their work resume.

Some people wonder why they don't don't get many interviews!......
Amusing post!
Karl Davison

These are so good! Will pass on to my HR colleagues.

I used to do newsletters for several hundred readers. After the board and I had reviewed one issue I jokingly handed it to my fifth grade son to proof. He immediately found a glaring error on the first page that all of us had missed! I am very careful about proofing now...

Hey!!! makes a wonderful reading!!!! Hilarous. One can note that some of the mistakes are right in spelling and MS word will not help... clearly shows anxiety in the applicant.
Look forward to newer list in time to come.

Once we told a candidate that her resume included some typos and that she may want to fix them before coming to interview for a marketing coordinator's role. At the interview she handed us a "fixed" resume that still included most of the same glaring mistakes. Obviously she didn't get hired for this position that required good communications skills. She could have e.g. asked a friend to proofread her resume.

I have recently started to keep a file of such examples, probably should have done it sooner. I have seen people spell their own name wrong among other things. One person described their college degree as an Ass Computer Technology, of course it happened to be the same one that could not spell her name right. Below is unedited from an applicant:

Cover Letter
------------
willing to work fulltime if ya are willing to train i am willing to
learn i have lot of experience retail,consumer
service,telemarketing,sales,marketing,stock,nursin
home,aide,factory,warehouse,un,load
truck,invertory,bussiness,mangement,restuant,food
service,housekeeping etc driver,driviers,got chauffer lience etc if
ya are willing to train i am willing to learn i can work
anytime,days,nites,weekends,holidays,open,closed be on call even work
on days off

Resume
------
loking for work looking for new experience if ya are willing to train i
am willing to learn can work anytime

Coming from a recruitment perspective, I see my fair share of typos on cv's, but my favourite has to be Curriculum Vitae, the very first word on the page being spelt incorrectly.
Candidates always capitalise these words, and MS word has a setting that ignores spellings for words that are in CAPS. And I saw one the other day that said (in caps) that they were a "Poperty Manager"

Similar to number 19, I received a resume in which the person said that he/she was very DETAL ORRIENTED.
Wow, I thought, that wouldn't even pass spell check!

I should use some of these in my current resume. Early in my career, i'd send my resume to a recruiter, often electronically, only to have them retype it. Since there are dozens of acronyms, many of them were typed wrong. But the recruiter used these to ask me questions about what i actually did. This let me talk about things i'd done that were interesting, though not necessarily directly relevant to the position. I remain convinced that these errors helped me get employment.

These days, recruiters are too lazy to perform this service, making minor style changes only to my electronic copy.

“Instrumental in ruining entire operation for a Midwest chain store.” Wow! Must hire that guy!!!

“My work ethics are impeachable.” Am I hiring Bill Clinton for this job?

“I consistently tanked as top sales producer for new accounts.” Which, I guess, is why this person is applying for a job in Accounting or Building Maintenance?

“Directed $25 million anal shipping and receiving operations.” Sounds like this person worked well in the adult video industry.

It's amazing what we miss and the mistakes that we make as professionals who take pride in our work. I loved the list, it made me laugh out loud. Has anyone else noticed that it is not only the job seekers making mistakes? I've noticed numerous jobs listed on job boards that have multiple spelling errors. I believe it's a two-way street, we all make mistakes and can be judged unfairly by those judging us. To err is to be human.

I giggled all the way home thinking about "receiving a plague for my volunteer work". LOL I honestly got to giggling and couldn't stop. I write a campus wide weekly newsletter and I print it out and have my staff edit it before I send it out via e-mail and still even with multiple eyes we miss stuff. Our brains have a magical way of overlooking what is right in front of our eyes.

I LOVED this excellent. Laughter in between waiting for phone calls for a job. Thank-you.

hehehehe...OMG! This list gave me a wonderful laugh..... too good.

Oh boy, these are so good. My vote is definitely for #4. Anyone who attacks their resume is definitely worth hiring. If they're willing to attack their resume, then just imagine all the problems they could attack for your company.

I once received a resume that stated that the applicant had received a "plague" for his volunteer work. Sure made me wonder where he had been volunteering!

I loved this list! My Professor always asks the girls in my Machine Transcription class why are there so many spelling mistakes being done? We're typing in Microsoft Word, and it just so happens there is awesome little function known as "Spell Check"....obviously the contributors of these mistakes did not "pay attention to detail" and check their spelling and grammar.

LOL
12. “Dear Sir or Madman,” -- oh, man:-)

Todd is right - Number 12!! For me it is the real winner by a long way...totally funny and it really cracked me up - so much so, my ribs hurt!!

BTW: Cathy, you were not the only one who spotted that...actually I spotted that one right away!!

I've got one, although it isn't resume or cover letter related. I used to be the editor of my business school newspaper, and my Webmaster accidentally described the gay and lesbian student group as the Outcast group instead of using the group's actual name (OutClass). Fortunately, I caught it before anyone saw his goof!

If the resume is prepared in MS Word, the utility spell check may be used to correct such errors in the entire documnt.Probably, paucity of time and carelessness of the applicants may be the reason for this state of affairs.

Then there was the poor lady looking for a Public Relations position...

...who mis-spelled "Public."

(NO, I'm not using my correct name - she MIGHT be reading this!)

I made that mistake ONCE -- unfortunately, it was while I was the editor-in-chief of my student newspaper (I was a journalism major) and it was in a front-page story about a speech the president of the university gave (left the "l" out of the word "public"). As I said, I had to make that mistake only once. *insert sheepish grin*

Great list !
And the winner is 19.
“Strong Work Ethic, Attention to Detail, Team Player, Attention to Detail”
So funny...

I was recently asked to review a resume that included experience as "Pant Manager".

Oh come on, number one cannot be true! Alas, it is amazing what spell checker will give you as an option. Love number 12 as well.

Great list. I will always remember when one of my secretaries many years ago addressed a cover letter that was supposed to say Mr. Bing Dong but instead she typed Mr. Big Dong. Fortunately, I noticed it before sending it out.

Perfect example of why you need to proofread prior to publishing.

So, am I the only one who noticed that your "Top 15" list actually contains 20 items!!!!

Very funny! Will always remember when I edit my resume.

Thank you,

Alina