should I offer unsolicited advice regarding my girlfriend's piss-poor resume'?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My girlfriend (of two months) is sort of putting out “feelers” for a different job. She recently posted her resume’ on LinkedIn, and when I clicked on it, I was stunned at how poorly it’s written. It literally sounds like a 3rd-grader put this together for her.

two instances of misusing the “there, their” pronouns
she claims to work for an “internationally knowned software company”, among other misspelled words
multiple commas where they shouldn’t be, and missing from where they should be

(just to name a few)

I’m by no means a professional resume’ writer (or proofreader), but if I was a hiring manager in her field, I would take one look at this resume’, and say “Next!”. She and I are in two different industries, so I can’t speak to her quality of work, and even though she and I are obviously “connections” on LinkedIn, she might find it a little bit odd that I even clicked on her resume’ in the first place.

But the question that’s gnawing at me - if you were in my shoes, would you bring this up to her, and tell her “look, I don’t know what exactly it is that you do, but I can give you 10 different examples from your resume’ that would lead me to never, ever, grant you an interview”? Or would you just let it go, for fear that you’d come off like a dick?

For what it’s worth, I’m in my early 40’s, and she’s in her early 30’s (not that that’s completely relevant, but I also don’t want to sound like I’m being condescending or like a “Dad” to her). And like I said, we’ve only been together a couple of months, but up to this point things have been going great.

And I’d also prefer not to debate the whole “it’s probably not a good idea to put your resume’ out on LinkedIn, since your current employer might see it, and start asking questions” deal.

Thanks for any insight, one way or the other.

2

Is she not too bright, or…I don’t know what the other option is, actually? (I ask not just to be a jerk, but I think the answer depends on that.)

3

Suggestion: “Hey, I saw you put your resume on LinkedIn. Would you like any advice on possible improvements?”

4

fair, fair question.

She’s college-educated, very level-headed, and comes from a very stable, normal, middle-class family, and she is very career-oriented.

But yes, if you talk to her, she doesn’t come off in conversation as being particularly bright. Who knows, maybe it’s just the way she “thinks about what she says before she says it”.

And who’s to say, we’re only two months in (and I’m certainly no particular “catch” for her.. I “outkicked my coverage” on this one, if you get my drift), but maybe she talks slow because she doesn’t want to say the wrong thing around me. I have no idea.

5

“Did you run that resume through a spell-checker? Because, when I looked at it, my browser kind of went nuts.”

6

If you care about her and she respects your opinion and trusts your judgement, then of course you should tell her. If any of those are not the case, then you should consider ending the relationship anyway.

7

Okay, because if she was actually smart, personally I’d laugh at her (all in good fun) and tell her to fix that shit. Like I do with my dude when he uses the wrong form of words, which he does ALL THE TIME (like “attackful”).

If she’s not that bright then I’d probably just gently, pretend-offhandedly say I saw a few errors in her resume, but without letting on how glaringly bad they were.

ETA: You’re very honest. I like that.

8

this made me chuckle :smiley:

point taken

thank you Blackberry, I appreciate the feedback, and I like that approach (as well as the one suggested by MLS)

I’ll pitch this to her, here in the next couple of days when we’re chillin’ over dinner, or just watching TV.

Thanks!

9

For future reference, there’s no apostrophe in “résumé.”

10

yeah, I never like having to type it like that - so in the spirit of “fighting ignorance”, you wanna tell me how you type the e’s with the “accent marks” directly above them like you did? :slight_smile:

11

Yes, of course you should tell her. She looks like a complete fool with those kinds of resume writing errors.

As a secondary point (and God knows I’m no position to lecture people about precise grammar), but if a 30 something college graduate is posting the stuff you referenced in a professional resume that’s worrisome beyond the whole job search thing. Re a future with her the likelihood is that she is not particularly literate or going to be willing or able to engage with you in complex analytical discussions about a variety of things.

If this is not important to you then no worries, but I will forewarn you from hard experience that when there is a big mismatch in literacy levels between two people in a relationship big problems are often in store, on multiple levels, farther down the line.

12

Why not recommend a professional to look over her resume? It’s very common, and she won’t take the criticism from you.

13

So wait, you’re in your 40’s, dating someone in their early 30’s, and it’s not because of her brain? You dog!

14

Hold down the ALT key and type 130 on the numeric keypad. It doesn’t work with the numbers above the top row of letters, it’s got to be the keypad.

BTW using an apostrophe after an e to signify an *accent aigu *was the one-time standard typography for some French words when your typewriter didn’t have French diacritics. But it’s outmoded.

Also, the word is so common in American English now that it is quite acceptable to spell resume with no accent marks at all and it is clear from context what word it is.

15

Why bother correcting her at all? All you’ll do is risk putting tension into your relationship. Believe me, you’ll fight this fight many more times in all sorts of different contexts unless you let it go now. I know it’s for the best that she fix those (admittedly egregious) errors, but she’s not going to perceive it like that. Eventually maybe she’ll come to you for advice.

16

Hmm, Alt+130 gives me an apostrophe. I use Alt+0233 for é. (I keep an ASCII chart for 128–255 taped to my monitor. But I have a lot of them memorized.)

ETA: Hmmm, just noticed the lack of leading zero; I always mentally add it because I’ve been using the 4-digit Alt codes for years. Alt+130 does indeed work.

17

How would one make the ALT+ trick work on a laptop keyboard that lacks keypad? I know about Character Map, but can’t help thinking there should be an easier way.

My answer to the OP is: if you want her to even get an interview, she needs to know about the problems with the resume. It’s quite possible to be kind while telling her that the spelling and grammar problems do not give a good impression of her professional abilities.

18

Fuck yeah, correct it. You want a relationship where you don’t feel the need to ask strangers questions like this.

19

Problem is, those aren’t merely typos. It really seems like she doesn’t know the right word to use. Is there any way you can offer her a bit of tutoring in such a way that she won’t feel like she’s being sent back to high school?

Having a professional clean up the resume only makes matters worse - what happens if she gets hired and then the boss gets to see her actual composition skills?

20

All I ever do is Google the word and then cut and paste the result:résumé. See?

Or, jalapeño.

Works like a charm.

You should be able to tactfully state that you came across her resume on Linkedin and noticed a couple of typos she should fix. I think if you approach it that way instead of “Hey, your resume sucks. Do you even know how to spell?” you’ll come across OK and she should be thankful. I know I would be if my resume was out there with spelling errors.