This is the one with resume nonsense.

Posted September 1st, 2009 by Mike Lawson

Once upon a time I worked as a hiring manager for a non-profit.  My job basically consisted of reading resumes, interviewing and putting people through the new hire orientation.

And I’ve kind of forgotten how silly some people can be when they are creating their resumes.  Take for example this absurd entry on a resume I just received:

If you think that I want to know your age and marital status, I’d just hunt you down on Myspace/Facebook.  Right?

In my past position that I mentioned, I received resumes with the stupidest mistakes.  My personal favorite is the un-edited OBJECTIVE sentence.  I loved when I would receive a resume that said the applicant’s objective was to “receive a full-time position at Bank Of America that utilizes…”   Sometimes I would reply with “Your objective says you are looking for a full-time job at a bank.  You must have misunderstood our job posting; this is a part-time job working with youth.”

Once I received a resume from a dude that wanted to work with kids and he mentioned that he was the president for this legalize-marijuana organization.  Which on the surface isn’t bad.  I mean, going out and getting petitions signed and talking about the positives of legalizing something doesn’t automatically make you a bad guy.  But when I clicked through to their webpage, I saw that this org was responsible for organizing these big smoke-ins…where people sat around in public places and smoked weed.  Kind of disqualifies you from being the “adult mentor” type?  No?

And one of my favorite responses as the hiring manager was when a young lady sent me her resume, and I was having a long/bad day already.  Her resume was riddled with typos (annoying), and when I called her she had some shake-your-booty ring-back music (super annoying).  Keep in mind she applied for this job. I wasn’t chasing down cold leads or anything.  After finishing my spiel about the job requirements, the lady said, “Umm, do you know if [Name of a different organization] is hiring?”

I was confused.  “You applied for a job at [Name of my organization].”

“That’s kind of far to drive.  Do you have the phone number of [Name of different organization]?”

“Google it.” I said before hanging up.