Sunday, November 7, 2010

Tales from the Resume Slush Pile: Insanely Ambitious Objective Statement = Craptastic Candidate

In preparation for the opening of a new branch, we recently put out the cattle call for a host of new employees. Today was Day #1 of a 7-day classified ad extravaganza in the local newspapers. By 8:00 a.m. my inbox was awash with a veritable tsunami of badly formatted, grammatically unintelligible single page upload .jpg attachments. (To give you an idea of just how shallow the talent pool can be, I get hopeful when I see that someone's attached a resume in MS Word or PDF format.) 


As I culled through the deluge of resumes, I started feeling rather inadequate as I read one ballsy, shooting-for-the-moon objective statement after the other. I consider myself an ambitious, Type A kinda gal. But never was I so daring as to claim that my career objective was to "alleviate suffering humanity" or "make myself useful to mankind." 


Now, if I'd just arrived in Sand Land, I might be starry eyed enough to think that behind every hard charging objective statement there was an equally impressive candidate....but I'm older now and a bit jaded. I now know that it's pretty much guaranteed these candidates are the inverse of their objective statement. So without further ado, here are today's awesomely bad objective statements....drumroll please...(grammar/punctuation/random capitalization's are the candidates' own):


1. "I want to work in an Extreme company"


Dude, are you sure you wanna settle for basic, garden variety "Extreme" when you could go for a MAXXXTREME company?


2. "To get an appropriate, responsible position in a professional & growing organization which offer’s mettlesome and challenging assignments supplementing a prolific work environment for achieving greater heights of glory for personal and professional."


wooooo.... you want mettlesome assignments and greater heights of glory...all I want is my first cup of coffee


3. "To dedicate my sincere service to suffering humanity and to update my knowledge level for better."


4. "capable of adapting to any given environment of the latest technologies in the professional area"


5. "Targeting towards remarkable achievements in the field of XXXXXXX, using my Strengths, Interpersonal Skills, & Team Effort."


6. "To achieve a senior position in the field of XXXXXXX and to do research and ensure my usefulness of to mankind."


After reading these, you might be under the impression that I'm working at "Superheroes, Inc." or "Kick Ass n' Take Names Secret Agents, LLC"...alas, you'd be wrong.

3 comments:

  1. Do you also get applicants who actually write on their resumes the things they failed in?

    I would have most definately have turned him down if I'd first read his resume rather than have known him (actually a very smart and competant, adaptable, hardworking person), but he listed his education as not managing to do anything after primaries. I was like, um, just take out your education so no one thinks to question you on it, and list your experiences and competancies.

    LOL, & Heroe Inc.

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  2. hahaha...I get some candidates who attach their transcripts to their CV. In most cases, I think this is probably a bad idea because the grades are often unimpressive. Unless you're applying for your first or second job and don't have much professional experience, in my opinion grades are pretty irrelevant and should be left off.

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  3. what can i say ...type any old favourite movie tag line into google translate - press go, copy, paste & send!!
    that dream jobs is yours bitches!!
    easy cake

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