I frequently throw resumes in the trash if they have spelling or grammatical errors. In my work there’s a lot of sub-editing and copywriting, and the candidate has to be good.
After months of doing this, however, I found a typo in my own resume. :smack:
And having made a typo in post #37, thank Og I wasn’t complaining about the candidate’s inability to spellcheck!
Well, typos in a message board post you just sort of throw out there are a different thing than typos in your application materials. But even typos are better than tortured word usage that makes the reader go, what the cow is this guy talking about? Here, we can’t even really tell if the applicant is trying to convey “I helped people in this position” or “I was fired from this position.”
And I’m all for brevity on resumes, but really your achievements should not be reducible to a single word (“Key achievements: Mitigated.”)
I was in a restaurant over my lunch hour a year or two ago, and I overheard to some office workers making fun of a job applicant’s resume. They were going on and on about the bad grammar and how they threw the resume in the trash. They kept laughing at the bad grammar, saying “How could someone be so careless on a resume. (Snort, snort) She wrote ‘learnt’ even.”
Finally, I couldn’t take it any more and piped up. The applicant had been consinstently using correct English grammar (according to the examples they were loudly citing). “Learnt”, “dreamt” and “spoilt” are valid past tenses and past participles, though they are a bit antiquated and not as common in North America. I asked where the applicant was from because it was probably something regional to her formal education. Bingo, her formal schooling wasn’t in North America. They’d thrown out the resume of a perfectly qualified applicant due to their own ignorance. In which case, I think the applicant dodged a bullet – if an employer can’t read the resume right, how can an employee have confidence in him/her.
As for the OP: The context suggests “mitigate” is being used to indicate the position was terminated but their performance was satisfactory and they left in good standing. Sort of “mitigating circumstances”. I don’t get the choice of word though. I understand how hard it is to find something appropirate though that doesn’t sound like you were fired.
I confess I am curious to know what s/he would say were you to call him/her up and explain her error.
I bet other dopers are curious too…
If I am right, then you are under what the kids call peer pressure, and I hereby inform you that you ought to give in to it.
-FrL-
Nono. It depends on what job was being applied for, of course, but I think it was probably perfectly valid to throw the resume out. No matter what the explanation is for her usage, the fact is, her usage was inappropriate. She was using forms that are incorrect according to the context. And, given the project she was engaged in, this is a case in which she should have known better. (Again, that’s making certain assumptions about the kind of job she was applying for.)
-FrL-
[Points finger]Yeh fiahd.[/points]
-FrL-
Um. Have you people still arguing for this ‘poor’ candidate missed this? (my bolding)
Even if they meant “helped”, helped with what? How can that on its own be a key achievement?
Oh, I would agree with you, but my anecdote is leaving a lot of context out for the sake of brevity. The guy who tossed out the resume was basically an ass who didn’t know any better. If it had been a American who lost that particular job because she wrote “labor” instead of “labour” it would have been equally silly in that particular case.
Where I used to work, it would have made a difference for someone applying to my postion which required specific written and verbal skills (we created materials for both U.S. and Canadian markets). But that’s something that would be determined during the interview, where it could be better assessed, and not from a resume alone.
Any pobe ought to know this.
I’d never seen the expression in use until I and my co-worker had to edit a vast mass of documentation from a supplier.
It was like dealing with a vat of half-digested spaghetti. The documentation was unclearly and pompously written: the writers had used ten Latin-derived words where five Germanic words from the core stock of the English language would have been both shorter and easier to understand. Even if it had been clearly-written, it was also poorly-arranged, with concepts being divided unnecessarily among two or three different pages. Oh, and it was all written in RoboHelp.
:: shudder ::
We came to the conclusion that the quality of writing was not just a result of dialect differences; that the writters were trying to armwave the reader past their lack of writing skill by using many big words to obscure their lack of organisation.
So that is why I try to make my writing as simple and clear as possible when writing technical material. Expressions like e. g. and viz. do not help in that goal… even if viz. weren’t almost unknown on this side of the pond.
(Readers from a romance-language background may not fully appreciate just how much duplication there is in English vocabulary, and the different emotional connotations of the duplicates. For many, many, many concepts, there is a Germanic word (like tool), and a Latin-derived word (like implement).
The Germanic word is often short, even monosyllabic, and has connotations of clarity, and is used in situations the meaning must be conveyed quickly. The Latin-derived word often has connotations of formality, even intimidation, and is sometimes used where some authority is trying to conceal or mislead the reader. The classic example is bueaucratic doublespeak.)
You make me laugh – I mitigate you last.
Mitigation – we do’n’ need no stinkin’ mitigation!
Veni, vidi, mitibam.
You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on th’ mit-i-ga-tion chanel.
What a piece of work is a mitigator, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your mitigation.
Mitigate THIS!
. . . we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never mitigate . . .
What does not mitigate me makes me stronger.
Mitii!
(Miti!)
Miti Mitiga!
(Miti Mitiga!)
Miti Mitiga Mitigabam!
(Miti Mitiga Mitigare!)
Mitigabamus!
(Mitigabamus!)
Mitiga mitiga mitiga-bamus
(Mitiga mitiga mitiga-bamus)
Oh nononono, (not) a mitiga
(Oh nononono, (not) ca mitiga)
Ennyminey desaminy punana warraminy
(Eeny meeney deci meeny oo na na walla meeny)
Yip mitiga wapum bapum bobo wa hipum
Sadly, I found myself dancing the Macarena to this…
So the boss said, “Shit,” as he tossed the resume in the waste bin.
WTH was that? 
-FrL-
I would guess that mitigated meant that the employer paid a fee to the temp agency.
I wouldn’t fault the applicant for not knowing what is “common usage” to you.
After all, it is probably “common usage” at all the places he’s worked. It probably appears on much of his personnel paperwork.
We could tell you, but then we would have to mitigate you.
(Google on “flee fly” – you’ll come up will all sorts of different lyrics for what is essentiallly a campfire song made up of nonsense words.)
[QUOTE=According to Pliny]
I would guess that mitigated meant that the employer paid a fee to the temp agency.
[QUOTE]
As in secondment, with the agency being the formal employer renting out the temp? If so, he should have used the correct term. Mitigate ain’t it.
Let’s try that coding again. Sorry folks.
As in secondment, with the agency being the formal employer renting out the temp? If so, he should have used the correct term. Mitigate ain’t it.