I have in the recent past received two job application letters of note.
One was from someone looking for a job as a “softwear engineer”, and I don’t mean a lingerie model.
The second, almost too funny to be real, was from someone who claimed he pays “great attention to dtail”.
What was the funniest or weirdest job app or interview you’ve had?
I don’t take 'em in, but I can offer one I submitted.
I was feeling whimsical a few years back, and applying for a warehouse job that I wasn’t really anxious to land.
On my MS-Word template-generated resume:
Yeah, I got called in for an interview. Yeah, that was the first thing they asked me about. Yeah, I totally deadpanned my answer. Yeah, they hired me.
You should have repeated that six or seven times.
A while back at my old brand consulting job, we got an application from a Kiwi looking to break out of the English teaching biz. The cover letter written in hastily-scrawled black marker was less than impressive (though amusing). There wasn’t any one thing on the resume that jumped out and said “don’t hire me!”; rather, it was the fact that it was 17 pages long.
We debated briefly over whether we should bill him for the wasted fax paper.
When I was at Tower we received an application form from a Rodger Mycock.
Where I work now, a couple of years ago we advertised for another junior Graphic Designer. 280 odd applications, at least 260 needed to go into the bin. They ranged from a girl telling us she didn’t actually speak English yet (her friend had typed it) but this would be a great opportunity to do so and were there any Spanish speakers there, at least 3 of them did their CVs as newspaper front pages with the headline being ‘so and so gets job at (our company)’. In the bin.
The crowning glory was a kid who could only use Flash (we don’t. At all), and sent us a presentation on the History of Fireplaces. Which was as exciting as it sounds.
My favourite: ‘I am confident witty person who loves shaking hands with the fresh face. I feel this as I was born under the sign of NASA.’
That went on for about 2 pages like that. It was brilliant. I wanted him in for an interview, but dept head said no go. Boo.
We had a guy submit an application for a programming job. One section went something like this…
Skills…
C++
Visual Basic
Assembly
SQL
I can fit a whole orange in my mouth at one time.
I think my all time favorite was this little gem, in response to an ad for a Case Management position for my organization which provides services to persons with developmental disabilities:
I have a degree in Criminal Justice which I can use to keep mentally retarded people in line.
OK…
Speaking of Criminal Justice degrees, what is it with these people? They apply for everything, clerical positions, positions that require master’s level degrees in counseling, janitorial positions, and direct support professional positions. Just what can one do with a degree in Criminal Justice, I wonder. Yet, a local college churns out these degrees by the hundreds every year.
Forgive my ignorance, but why is this funny?
At last, my chance to fight ignorance:
It should be software.
My, that feels good.
Bolding Mine
Look very closely at the word softwear. See it now?
Application denied in favor of multiple applicants with agriculture BS degrees – they can handle a cattle prod, which can REALLY keep people in line.
[QUPTE=swampbear] Speaking of Criminal Justice degrees, what is it with these people? They apply for everything, clerical positions, positions that require master’s level degrees in counseling, janitorial positions, and direct support professional positions. Just what can one do with a degree in Criminal Justice, I wonder. Yet, a local college churns out these degrees by the hundreds every year.
[/QUOTE]
I’ll bet I know just what college you’re talking about, too. The answer is that Criminal Justice is a recent enough field that it was pretty easy, 10-20 years ago, to gain accreditation in the field, without having to demonstrate any academic contribution to the subject. Since English usage and grammar isn’t even an issue here, it displaced a lot of useless liberal arts majors with a lot of subliterate useless liberal arts majors.
I list on my resume, under professional organisations
American Historical Society
American Association of University Women
Phi Theta Alpha
Medieval Academy of America
Official Kinks Fan Club
:eek:
I had a girl apply for a bartending position. Under “Other Skills” she listed “Hula Dancing and Sword Fighting.”
Another guy applied to be a doorman/bouncer. His current address: Southern NM Correctional Facility. He said he’d be available to start 2 weeks later.
My favorite was the guy, when asked who to contact in the case of an emergency, answered “911.”
[hijack]
When law-enforcement agencies started requiring continuing-ed credits and/or actual degrees for promotion there was a sudden need (and often a dangled offer of grant funding) to establish CJ programs and crank out degrees, meaning accreditation was often quick-and-easy.
Then, a lot of the non-police employees of municipal and state governments realized they ALSO could ratchet up their eligibility for moving upward in pay scales by adding these degrees to their CVs; they were followed by private-sector people (with the rising concern about terrorism)… in both cases, partly at the realization that since they were often designed to be of use to police already in service, the programs are optimized to easily fit around people’s lives, and structured in a straightforward “let’s get finished” manner. This also made the CJ degree very attractive to people who’d otherwise have a hard time fitting a degree into their lives.
[/hijack]
PLEASE tell me you hired her!
Not a hijack–pertinent and true. Thanks. What I said is still true, I think, but the participation of store front “universities” with an eye on the main chance (say, every big city’s Woodrow Wilson College of Law) undoubtedly fueled the fire. If plumbing were a civil service job, clog removal would be every history major’s second degree.
If by knowing what college I am talking about you mean a certain diploma mill in southwest GA, you got it.
So, then, King of Soup and JRDelerious, I am right in not feeling the least bit guilty for immediately putting all resumes from people with degrees in CJ in the don’t get an interview pile. I thought so.
Well, unless you ARE looking for security staff, or having a degree is more of a “punched ticket” requirement than a specific specialized-field qualification. In which cases you then separate the ones where the degree is from a respectable school and the resumé shows good, solid, relevant experience. But you would already know whether that fits your business at all.
Back to OP:
Around these here parts (Puerto Rico) , there is a sort of social expectation that for certain professional levels your resumé be in the English of the big-business/science community, rather than the vernacular Spanish (those with really kick-ass CV’s, OTOH, just send it in Spanish – I mean, if you’re a former Attorney General, what have you to to prove to some HR lackey 
?)
I’m never disappointed in predicting that the next batch of applications will include someone who tries this WITHOUT going thru the trouble of actually paying a competent translator. We’re talking people with Masters degrees, man.
Damn, I should have caught that. Usually I’m a spelling Nazi. :smack:
Whom HR people feel even less guilty about hiring, because they’ll settle for less pay and lousier work than those snotty eggheads. Win/win! (Well, win/win/lose, but hey, someone’s always gotta lose.)