From the front lines of human resources

Julie R. sent us these resume gaffes. She's hiring new people for her business--but only one of these candidates made it to the second round. You'll see why:

1) From a two-paragraph Objective: “I am very goal-oriented and I achieve over half of all goals I set for myself.”

Maybe I’m too type A – but “over half” is not my idea of success. I can see it now,
"Gee – I set a goal to take the customer’s order and bus their table, but I just couldn’t get 100% of my goal completed."

2) From a cover letter: “I live right up the road so if you want to give me a call at anytime I can come down there in mins.”

Why abbreviate the word minutes? Is that to show just how quickly this person can get to work? Before the word “minute” is finished--and so fast a period is not required between sentences?

3) Here is an example of the shortened resume-speak taken too far. It still needs to make sense, after all. Peppering one’s resume with fancy phrases like “as to” and “therein” doesn’t improve incoherent phrases: “Practice French service and advise as to wines.”

Since the rest of the resume was written in the standard resume past tense, this person should have said, “Practiced French Service and advised patrons about wine.”

4) “HERE I WORKED IN THE SEAFOOD AND PRODUCE DEPT. PREPARING AND MAINTAINING THE DEPTARTMENTS AS WELL AS OFFERING GREAT CUSTOMER ASSISTANCE WAS DONE DAILY. Though I didn’t appreciate the all caps, this seemed more like a cut and paste error from editing. I gave this person a pass to round two because I liked the rest of the resume.

5) And finally, to the person who misspelled their name at the top of their resume: Come on! That is just lazy.