My favorite: the guy who refused (politely) to shake my hand, telling me instead that his hands were “kind of sweaty.” Okay, I can understand that, and thanks for being honest. After 2 or 3 minutes of initial conversation, he stopped talking, turned red, and then jumped up from the chair and sped out of the room. I figured it was nerves. 10 minutes later, I was still by myself. I’d moved on to the next candidate’s file, when sweaty palms came back in. He grinned a huge cheesy grin, said “Sorry, nervous stomach!” and sat back down and continued with his answer to the question I’d asked 10 minutes before! :eek:
I understand that people like to pad their resumes a bit, and I’ve come to expect it. But please, please, don’t list the category of “Volunteer Experience,” and then add the single entry “Voluntarily donated blood at the American Red Cross.” Your resume will be passed around the office for months.
Well, around here, having a “funny” email address will probably not affect whether or not I call you back for an interview. But if your email address is something like tequilaguzzler@gun-nuts.com (yes I did have an applicant with an email address that suggested they were a heavy drinker) then that will definitely get noticed. I don’t need a tequila guzzler working with me, thanks.
I also love this one. Keep in mind this is for a Quality Assurance/Quality Control job, which absolutely requires attention to detail. Here’s a perfect example:
Skills: Ability to working great attention to to detail.
Be a no-show at the interview and call to argue (a week later) that it was the interviewer’s fault for not writing the correct date and time down.
Applicant: Can I stop by and pick up an application? Me: No, we mail them to you since our location is very busy. A: Why can’t I just come by and fill out the application in my car? Me: We would rather mail it to every job applicant so there are no issues of discrimination, and the applicant can take time to carefully fill out the application and mail it back. A: That’s a horrible way to run a business. You guys should just pass them out. Me: It would be a great waste of applications since we have many requirements for the job. A: I’m qualified for the job, but you guys aren’t doing it right. ME: We are doing it right. I already know that I’m saving one application, one postage stamp, one envelope, 82 dollars on fingerprinting and DOJ background checks, 50 dollars on range of motion tests, 65 dollars on back X-rays, and 1.5 hours of my interview’s time, and a whole load of issues you would be bringing to my table IF I had even considered you to work for me…all this with just a 2 minute phone call!..Good Day.<click>
Hey too damn bad for both of you! The hiring manager is looking for someone who will be professional and take their job seriously. If all he knows of you is your resume and one of you has “assman69@supersexmachine.com” or some such nonsense he is going to take one look and toss it in the garbage. And he would be absolutely correct to do so. In just one post both of you have sent a message - “I think that the normal rules of etiquette for the hiring process don’t apply to me so I am going to do as I please”. Why would someone want to bring that into their company?
A new Yahoo! account costs you five minutes of your time to set up. Just use some variation of your name and save the clever emails for trading porn with your friends.
That basically goes for anything of that nature:
-goofy emails
-cute phone number mnemonics (i.e. (555) Kickass)
-loud or gimicky ties
-excessive jewelry
The goal is not to distract the interviewer with how clever or creative you are.
Talk to me about your gynecologist’s exam. No really. I’d love to hear all about your pap smear. Wow, they warmed the speculum for you? That’s great. Anyway, what sort of marketing experience do you have?
In fact, a few months ago there was a comic strip that covered this…maybe Non Sequiter…about graduating college and looking for a job in the real world, and maybe it’s time to drop the “hotnastygrrl@aol.com” email address. That’s why I laughed so hard when I saw this girl’s email address, and I like Star Trek! Of course, my store doesn’t have email capability, so I don’t think the boss noticed it at all.
Then there was the guy who phoned us at least once a week for MONTHS asking when we would be interviewing, hiring, etc. Turns out he was also calling one of our other stores too. That manger actually decided to interview him. He never showed up for the interview. Neither store heard from him again, until this week. He has started calling again, at least our store. We’re trying to figure out how to tell him we know about his being a no-show, and that he should really concentrate on some other company.
Well sure, but the example above, and the one that Ghanima gave, are examples of poor taste, and would be poor taste in most other contexts besides on a resume. The person using such an email address is likely to be a jerk, a drunk, or otherwise a lout and therefore undesirable on those points, rather than because of the email.
But just having an address that is a vague or not so vague reference to Star Trek, or LOTR, or your favorite band (in some cases)–to me, that would just be a big “meh”. It’s not the sort of thing I would do myself, partly because I got a hotmail account long ago that’s my actual name. But I don’t care one way or the other if someone else does. If I were interviewing people for a position, I hope I’d remain more focused on the essentials of the job and whether the person would be a good fit. The person whose address is “his.name@rivendell.com” might be the perfect person for the job, especially if he observed all the other rules of interview etiquette…dressed appropriately, did his corporate research homework, knew the technology required, and so on.
Indeed, the way people in this thread have jumped all over Star Trek makes me think it’s just more of the interviewer just not wanting to hire so called geeks, and assuming that anyone expressing an interest in ST is presumably a geek.
I don’t interview candidates, but as a manager I do get to see the applications for our retail sales positions. If you really, really, don’t want to even get to the interview stage, you should use the following examples for inspiration when filling out your application:
Current/Previous Employer - “Cant remember.” The applicant listed working at the unnamed place 6 months ago, but she can’t remember the name of the business.
- Reason for Leaving Previous Employment - “Too fast paced work.” And you’re applying for a retail job?
- Reason for Leaving Previous Employment - “Honerable discharge due to lack of evidence.” Don’t really want to know.
*
These happened during the application process, but they’re still worth noting:
If you’re applying for an editorial job at a publishing company and are asked about your previous experience, don’t flash a stupid grin and tell us that “any idiot can write.” It’s insulting to the dozens of writers in our company, including the people who might have been your bosses if they hadn’t already decided not to hire you.
If you brag to us about your vast writing experience, you’d better have something better to show us than a portfolio of Pokeman fanfiction.
Unless you are applying for a position that involves modeling, do not send your modeling portfolio with your resume. Especially do not send the photos of yourself modeling lingerie even if they were taken professionally.
My boss turned white and declared the candidate “a lawsuit just waiting to be filed.”
My friend Assman69 will be disappointed you think so.
Well that’s the point, isn’t it? You don’t know what the hiring manager thinks of Star Trek or Hobbits or Backstreet Boys or the Yankees or fraternities or any other personal tastes that may be conveyed in a funky email address. Outside of a very narrow list of careers, I don’t know too many places where being identified as a “geek” is a positive thing. Geek to me is someone who is irritating or abraisively enthusiastic about some arcane bit of pop culture. It is someone who lacks social skills. Not exactly great hiring points.
Never write
“I am having good communication skills”
on your resume.
Do not answer “I’m not a senior blah” during a technical interview. Certainly do not answer every question with a variation of that. Especially do not do this when the technical interviewer is obviously struggling to find a softball enough question, just so he can hear you answer a question that you know
I always want to hear someone answer a question that has an obvious, easy answer, and I always want to hear how someone handles a question that they have no idea what the correct answer is.
Guy comes in, interviewing for a contractor position in my team. This isn’t the all-day grilling from 6-8 interviewers we give to full-time employees, but an hour-long confirmation of resume, talk a bit about the project in question, talk a bit about previous experience, and since I am a non-technical manager of technical people, a couple of softball tech questions about the project at hand. If s/he’s going for a technical position, I bow out early and the real techies take over for the last half of the interview. If s/he can’t prove to my limited tech experience that s/he knows what they’re doing, then I say thanks very much and don’t waste the next interviewer’s time…
This guy started balling at about 25 minutes into the hour, before I had even gotten to the point of asking the softball tech question. I felt so bad I had to comfort him and very gently walk him to the door… took 10 minutes before he calmed down enough to talk to me again.
Needless to say, as it’s a bit of a pressurized and high stress environment, I didn’t give him the nod. I figured if he actually worked in my team, I would be going to his funeral when he got under some real stress.
Note to Graphic Designers applying for jobs: DO NOT-
On your CV, put a picture of yourself with 2 thumbs up in a mock newspaper style with the headline (my company) hires (whoever the fuck)!!!
Unless you intentionally wanted us to bin it.
Also, Flash presentations on the ‘History of Fireplaces’ and your mad L33t skills aren’t going to get you far when we specifically state no web designers - its a product design/artworking position. Cue over 200 CVs with Flash as their main strength.
You know we’re offering £15k as a starting salary, tell us you’d just finished a £26k job because you hated product design and want to be a website designer, but this’ll be a nice stop gap for a couple of weeks
