Years ago, while job hunting, I came across an online ad for a printing company, which specified that they were looking for someone ‘computer illiterate’. I sent them a message asking if that was a typo, and got a nice email back thanking me for pointing that out, with an invitation to send my CV (we don’t differentiate between resume and CV here, they’re all called a CV). I complied, and… got a reply back saying that they couldn’t open the file, could I resend it as a .jpg file?
In the early 1980s I was News Director of a small TV station. It was so small that I pretty much was the news department. I received a resume from a recent college graduate. She listed as a reference Studs Terkel, who was an award-winning writer and historian, a well-known radio celebrity in Chicago, and just generally famous.
It struck me as somewhat pretentious.
Now, giving her the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she was somehow acquainted with Mr. Terkel, and perhaps he had offered himself as a reference for her, but I had no way of finding out, as she gave no method of contacting him in any event.
Sure, I could have called her and asked for his number, but as I didn’t have any job openings anyway, and I had a 30-minute newscast to shoot, write and anchor every day, I didn’t think it was worth my time just to satisfy my curiosity.
If 1950s TV has taught me anything, it’s always good to have a Paladin around.
Ironically, the company I work for now went through a phase where we were allowed to pick cute titles for our jobs, and we had a fair number of Wizards.
No there were substantive differences. IIRC there were differences in what they had studied. They were just a couple who thought it would be cute to do his’n’ hers resumes I think.