Bad, bad resumes

It was pretty "interesting" at work today.

I put up a recruitment ad online for my position. Today is the first day. I have to screen through the resumes before I pass the potential ones to my manager. I am guessing the ad was put up at midnight because there were already 4 resumes coming in as soon as I opened up my mailbox.

I received more than 50 resumes at the time I knocked off. I think I will have a busy morning tomorrow screening through all these resumes. But most of these candidates made it easy for me... because their resumes were really................. horrible.... Not worth to go through in detail.

Horrible and ridiculous resumes.

Just about a week ago I read an article of the mistakes, spelling mistakes in particular commonly seen in resumes. I thought, well, those are some mistakes that one should not have made. Simply because, Microsoft Word auto detects your spelling errors and highlights it. How can anyone still make spelling mistakes when one glance on your resume, you can see where the problem is. Well, it appears that this happens really frequent and quite common.

Of all the resumes I received, I would say only 5-10% are the good ones. Seriously.. 5-10% only. But I must mention, nearly 70% of the applicants are foreigners such as Philipinos, Burmese and China nationals.

I know their English is not very good. I'm not picking their mistakes in grammars or their English level. Spelling mistake however is one thing I cannot accept, as I mentioned, Microsoft Word lets you know your spelling error. Some of these applicants made seriously unacceptable mistakes.

For example, one lady wrote : "I'm applying for a job"
"A job". My advertisement clearly stated we are looking for an Administrator. Why can't she put the name of the position in her letter? This is not the worst, she used PINK. PINK fonts in her email!!! Who is she? Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blond who uses pink paper for her resume??

Another lady wrote : "I am applying for any job."
................... Again, why can't she just put the position in that sentence?

AND, many girls put unacceptable photos in the resumes. Self-taken photos in the room, photos cropped from their leisure photos, photos taken at studio as if they're applying for a modelling competition, photos as if they are looking for online friends... HORRIBLE... I almost burst out laughing when I saw them...

And I was really surprised to receive many application from men. Administrator is "traditionally" a woman's job. But we do consider them all the same. I received one application from a China guy. I noticed there are other email addresses in the CC column. And I wondered, who the hell he CC the email to?? I opened that email full screen, and I saw dozens of emails in that CC column. What the ...??!!! He sent this email to me as well as a whole bunch of other people, mainly job agencies. How lazy can you get? AND! He wrote "I am excited to see the position of Marketing Assistant"................. Hello?! Which part of Administrator he couldn't understand? I can't stop laughing seeing this application... because of his laziness. He should be a bit cleverer and put all in BCC instead.

Then there are those who types "pls" for "please". Didn't their teachers teach them not to use sms languages for job application???

Then there are those who don't put ANYTHING in their email, not a word in the subject column. They only attached their resumes. It was too nice of me not deleting these emails right away. I still open the resumes only because I am a curious cat. I want to see how good, or bad, their resumes are.

I began to understand why I got this new job of mine after seeing these applications...

There are so many graduates applied for this position... Is market really that bad? There's even one who graduated from a university in the US. Another graduated from NUS. But she never stated what degree she has got...???? And her resume did not have the standard of a graduate... It was all very weird. Today really made me 大开眼界.......

And who goes interview with a polo-shirt huh? I saw one today...For God's sake this is not a factory job...

What is wrong with these people? Some things are really just common sense. You don't send photos that look like you are looking for a boyfriend to your potential employer. You don't send an email without writing anything, without subject to your potential employer. You type every single word in full in your email to your potential employer because they are not your msn buddy. How difficult is it to understand these things??

I have serious urge to reply to all these candidates and tell them what mistakes they have made. Perhaps I should hold a lesson for all these candidates. Let's see, I only have to charge one person $20. I received 50+ resumes today of which maybe 90% are ok ones. So, $20 x 50. I could have earned $1,000 in one day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!