VERY O/T RANT - resumes

nancy324

nancy324

Cathlete
Okay, so we're not offering such a stellar salary for our paralegal position. But we do offer good hours, good benefits, and a very pleasant atmosphere. And we're not looking for ANY skills other than the ability to write a letter, sound good on the phone and use a computer. I would have no problem hiring a college graduate with no experience at all.

One resume I received stated "Assisted principle paralegal". All the other resumes I received were even worse.

Now, mind you, if I were looking for a person to run our computer systems, I wouldn't even be looking at spelling or grammar. But this is a paralegal position.

Today, I was on one of my attorney list serv groups. One woman said she was a CPA who had just graduated law school and passed two bar exams. She was looking for a position as an attorney and asked if we would look at her resume. The very first sentence began:
"OBJECTIVE: Seeking a position of in an Estates & Private Clients Group..."

Okay, tell me I'm a dinosaur and I'll go quietly. But what does an attorney or a paralegal have to offer other than her attention to detail and ability to write and draft documents? Do people really expect to find jobs if they don't even take the time to proofread their own resumes???? x(

Thanks for listening. Rant over.
 
>One resume I received stated "Assisted principle paralegal".

Huh?

>"OBJECTIVE: Seeking a position of in an Estates & Private
>Clients Group..."

I guess when you are in doubt over about from by as to which preposition to use, you should use them all! }(

If you are a dinosaur, I am as well. People's language skills have definitely taken a turn for the worse. I think a lot of it has to do with not reading much anymore (other than newspapers, instant messages, and web posts, none of which are necessarily models of good language use). Most people write what 'sounds good' to them, and unfortunately, that's not based on good modeling, and seems to be based on what they 'kinda' heard (like my neighbor, who says 'supposably' instead of 'supposedly').
 
>>
>One resume I received stated "Assisted principle paralegal".

Well, with this one I think there was just confusion over principal and principle. Not a proof-reading error, just a lack of knowledge about the correct definition. Not that it makes it any better...


>"OBJECTIVE: Seeking a position of in an Estates & Private
>Clients Group..."
>
>This one I would find inexcusable. I mean, is this really the first impression you want to make? I know I have read over my own resume close to 20 times before I have every sent it out.

I agree with Kathryn. I think people just go with what sounds correct to them. Personally, spelling errors drive me crazy, especially when people seem to just spell phonetically. Also, if you don't know the definition of a word, just don't use it. Please don't make something up. I was on an airplane last year and a 8 year old asked her mother then meaning of the word "optimistic." Her mother thought for a moment and said,'someone who doesn't care about things.' HUH? It took everything in me to not turn around and correct her. Now this little girl is walking around with the wrong definition of this word. UGH!

I guess I'm a dinosaur too!:)
 
Thanks for your response, Pippa.

I like to think I've loosened up just a tad over the years. I mean, I just gloss over misspellings and grammatical mistakes in casual atmospheres like the Cathe boards, or from people in fields where writing isn't important. In fact, I don't even bother correcting my own spelling and grammatical mistakes on the Cathe boards. But I believe there is just no excuse for a mistake on a resume, and it's 100 times worse if the job you're looking for requires you to be detail-oriented and write well! :eek:
 
No, Nancy, you are NOT a dinosaur! I teach high school English and when the kids groan about "doing grammar," I always tell them stories like yours (I'm adding it to my collection, if you don't mind!).

My other pet peeve is the lack of decent vocabularies, which, as Kathryn mentioned, is only growing worse. Reading and regular exposure to challenging language is the best way to improve one's vocabulary - yet it's the one thing that many of my students do NOT value. x( I keep trying, though! :7
 
Here's a nice resume to brighten your day



Resimay
To hoom it mae cunsern,

I waunt to apply for the inginier job what I saw in the paper. I can Type real quik wit one finggar and do sum a counting.

I think I am good on the phone and no I am a pepole person, Pepole really seam to respond to me well. Certain men and all the ladies.

Im lookin for a Jobb as a inginierr but it musent be to complicaited.

I no my spelling is not to good but find that I can get a job thru my persinalety. My salerery is open so we can discus wat you want to pay me and wat you think that I am werth,

I can start imeditely. Thank you in advanse fore yore anser.

hopifuly Yore best aplicant so farr.

Sinseerly,

BRYAN nikname Beefy

PS : Because my resimay is a bit short - below is a pickture of me.







Employer's response:.....
Dear Beefy-I mean Bryan ,

It's OK honey, we've got spell check. You're hired.




See what's new at AOL.com and Make AOL Your Homepage.

Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! Get 'em!




Edited: Darn the picture didn't pull in. You can do a search on google for "resimay beefy" and see what his picture looked like.
 
Isn't it pathetic?? It's just so sad that this is the best highly educated people can come up with. It really makes me wonder how our nation is ever going to compete with everyone else out in the "real world".

Another pet peeve of mine, which runs along the same lines you mentioned, is when folks who work at cash registers can't count back change. I learned to do this when I worked at a concession stand as a high school student. We didn't have calculators to fall back on, so it was either learn quickly or make a "fool" of yourself. Today, I see a lot of "fools" out there I guess, because if they mess up and punch in the wrong numbers on the register, they are completely lost!:eek:

Oh, and I love when people use the word pacific instead of specific. Ugh!!!}( Do they not know that the Pacific is an ocean????

Can I join your old dinosaurs club??:7 :p

Angie
 
Can I be a pterodactyl in the dinosaur club? Or maybe a triceratops?

I HATE misspellings in a professional setting, and I can't imagine someone applying for a job in the legal field where attention to detail is so critical!! When I was in the position of hiring I would immediately toss resumes that had bad spelling. If someone doesn't care enough to make a resume correct, how much will the person care about the job they do for my company?

I'm probably more of a dinosaur than you are, Nancy. I'd be hard pressed to talk to a computer person who had an unprofessional looking resume.
 
Re the Death Of Proper Writing prong of this thread:

What's getting very, very tiresome for me is the increasing use of text-message - and in fact message forum - abbreviations in more formal written communications. Folks, it's spelled "YOU", not "U". It's spelled "BEFORE", not "b4".

I don't think it's DinoSore to rant about the increasing corruption of written English. Didn't a corporation lose* millions, possibly hundreds of millions, of dollars recently in an appeal because of one misplaced comma? Proper language usage counts, not just as a matter of propriety but also economically as well.

*it's spelled "LOSE" in this context, not "LOOSE"!*

A-Jock
Paralegal Who Duddn't Need No Spellchek
 
I hear you, cat. I had to learn the hard way.

My stepson, who graduated at the top of his graduate school class in computer engineering, was getting ready to send off his resume, when WE asked HIM to look at it. Not the other way around. My DH and I pulled it apart and put it back together again.

He has been with the same company now for about 8 years, has a great salary, has risen up the ranks, and is much beloved by his boss. I can't tell you how close he came to sending out that resume as it was. x(
 
Nancy,

I feel for you. But let me tell you, I have been SHOCKED at some of the letters I have seen presidents and principals send out with their names on them. I have worked in firms where marketing (my department) was supposed to proof all outgoing written correspondence. But, of course, some know-it-alls would insist that THEIR stuff didn't need to be proofed, and would send out letters with mistakes that could have been avoided had a second pair of eyes looked at them. (How awful it was to see one of those horrors in the computer file after it was long-gone!!!)

But, then again, I have seen clients' letters and memos that were just as bad. I guess we can be comforted in the fact that the people who write bad letters probably don't realize it when they read bad letters!

AND...I can't believe this.... DH just came in while I was typing this, and said, "We can't get away from it," and showed me a sentence in Food & Wine magazine that said, "Rye bread is known for IT'S...." Well, I still don't know what it's known for because that ill-placed apostrophe stopped me cold!!!

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
 
Thankfully, our illustrious President can serve as our role model for proper language usage:

Knowledge is power . . .

Bush on the economy:

"The government is not the surplus's money, Vice President." (Washington Post, 11/05/00)

"A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness." ("The Edge" with Paula Zahn, 09/18/00)

Bush on education:

"You know, sometimes when you study history, you get stuck in the past." (Wall Street Journal, 06/25/01)

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" (Florence, South Carolina, 01/11/00)

"(T)he illiteracy level of our children are appalling." (Washington DC, 01/23/04)

Bush on family values:

"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." Lacrosse, WI, 10/18/00)

"I know how hard it is to put food on your family." (Greater Nashua, NH, 01/27/00)

Bush on whatever the h*ll:

"There's no question that the minute I got elected, the storm clouds on the horizon were getting nearly directly overhead." (Washington DC, 05/11/01)

"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" (Concord, NH, 01/29/00)

A-J
 
More lessons:

Bush on race:

"What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think, vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position." (San Francisco Chronicle, 01/21/00)

Bush on Civics 101:

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." (Washington, DC 12/18/04)

"As you know, these are open forums. You're able to come and listen to what I have to say." (Washington DC, 10/28/03)

Bush on geography:

"I was raised in the West. The west of Texas. It's pretty close to California. In more ways that Washington, DC, is close to California." (Los Angeles Times, 04/08/00)

Bush on world history:

"For a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times." (Tokyo, Japan, 02/18/02)

Bush on ?!?!?!:

"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet." (Arlington Heights, IL, 10/20/00)
 
Almost home . . .

Bush Max:

So on behalf of a well-oiled unit of people who came together to serve something greater than themselves, congratulations. (Remarks to the U. of Nebraska women’s volleyball team, 05/31/01)

We’ll be a great country where the fabrics are made up of groups and loving centers. (Kalamazoo, Michigan 03/27/01)

Do you have blacks too? (To Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso, Washington DC 11/08/01)

More and more of our imports come from overseas. (Beaverton OR 09/25/04)

Arbolist . . . look up the word. I don’t know, maybe I made it up. Anyway, it’s an arbo-tree-ist, somebody who knows about trees.” (USA Today, 08/21/01)

The senator has got to understand if he’s going to have – he can’t have it both ways. He can’t take the high horse and then claim the low road. (Florence SC 02/17/00)

I think war is a dangerous place. (Washington DC 05/07/03)
 
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