In re poopypants17@hotmail.com, you’re totally right about getting a real email address. I mean who uses hotmail anymore?

AMEN!!!! I am constantly amazed at the stupid, very preventable mistakes job seekers make! In fact, it was the whole reason I wrote my book “Stop Peeing on Your Shoes- Avoiding the 7 Mistakes That Screw Up Your Job Search!”

My fave email address was whiteslacker@email.com. Yeah…I’ll let ya know if I run across an employer who is actively recruiting slackers….

Oh can I relate to that one!
It is shocking what material one receives when hiring. Getting a job is a sales job, it’s a good idea to brush up on some communication skills – verbal and written.

I remember the one time I said in the ad, do not send a CV yet, just answer these two questions. Guess how many people did exactly as told? 10%
Shocking. And I specifically did it to see who actually a) reads the ad and b) takes the time to do as asked and c) follows simple orders.

It’s nice to know that in this competitive job market, more than 50% of the applicants are eliminated immediately due to very basic errors. That bodes well for people who have taken the time to learn how to apply for a job. But, 481 inquires for an assistant editor position? Now, that’s scary!

Peter, thanks for validating what I teach my students every day as a career counselor. I’m on the right track!

Peter – so you talked about your elimination process – talk about the good points of the candidates you saw – and who and why did you eventually hire? I think sharing your experience is helpful to others. Thanks.

Helen Rosen
President and Founder
Direct Approach Solutions

Oh, how I wish I had kept some of the resumes I used to get when I was hiring for assistants at previous companies. Some of them were so laughable that I had to share them with my husband (thank god we don’t have HIPAA laws in our industry!). A few shared such intimate details that were completely irrelevant to the position (e.g., a woman who offered information such as her hobbies, the number of children she has, the fact that she left an abusive relationship, etc.) that I was tempted to write each of them a letter offering them tips on how to write a professional cover letter — or at least send them to the nearest resume-writing workshop.

It’s amazing that with all the resources now available on the Internet about how to apply for a job and stand out among the sea of applicants, there are still so many out there who haven’t a clue.

Cheers,
Marjorie

I had a very similar response to a recent job posting. Letters addressed to different companies, horrible spelling and grammar, but the worst was:

im interested in ur job. when can i call u?

Seriously.

Excellent advise Peter. The only thing I would ad to this, not that it was applicable in your case, is that larger organizations choose which resumes to physically look at with software designed to find the most relevant resumes to the job.

This software uses the terminology from the job posting to determine which resumes are most relevant. The result is that even though your resume should say the same thing, you should look for key phrases in the job posting to include in your resume.

Um… so…. the complete opposite of how to please a reporter? http://shankman.com/five-guara.....ry-placed/ (Just asking!)

Great post Peter. So true about the quality and condition of the resumes on market today. As a recruitment professional, I review and share about 40-50 resumes each day with both my internal staff and external client base. The amount of work that goes into these “candidate” resumes between the garbage we find on CareerBuilder, Monster, etc…and what we deliver to the client in the HOPE of convincing them to interview is astounding.

The larger portion of unemployed applicants would greatly increase their chances of getting interviews (and eventually off their couches) if they would take the time to personalize each application effort, spell check their documents prior to sharing and for the L.o.G, follow instructions as provided in the job announcement/advertisement. Thanks again PS!

I’m sending my volunteer contact information because your post went immediately to the job-seeking Veterans I’m working with. I usually use redhotmama at hotmail dot com as my example but that might really be someone’s address, so I only use it verbally in workshops.

I’m chuckling at the grammatical & spelling errors in some of the responses. Can’t help it; it’s the editor in me!

At first I thought it was a bit silly you would eliminate someone for grammar or spelling, and then I realized they were applying for an editorial position, and laughed.

My grammar and spelling are not perfect, but I manage to publish a lot of technical and scientific papers. Since we are hiring people for their technical skills, I might overlook one error, but not multiple mistakes. As for the email account, though, if you don’t have the technical skills and common sense to replace your fatstinkydonkey@aol.com account with JohnDoe@nyu.edu , then, yes, you are definitely applying to the wrong place.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the duplicate “be” in the last sentence of the article. I’m sure it was a plant to catch the proofreaders among us. Good points. Good responses.

Look, I am probably one of the older folk that subscribes to HARO. I have over 35 years of work experience from being an exercise instructor in the 1970′s, a para-legal, Systems Analyst and Consultant. Currently I am business partners with my husband.

What saddens me is that we as a society have not changed and technology has not really helped us – it just adds more “things”. For example, when I was an Office manager in the 70′s for a law firm, there was only the good old IBM selectra. For you youngsters, that’s an electric typewriter. When we received Resumes, the first “file13″ batch were the ones without cover letters. The next “file 13″ batch was with “typos” – we didn’t have spell checkers. The next was grammatical errors. Oh and the ones where the person didn’t sign their name to the cover letter.

Peter, your statistics were so accurate and I am talking about “1978″ and beyond. So, maybe because I have 2 teens entering the “college” arena, and the cost for college will be over $1/2 million , just for undergraduate, if one wants to attend a private university – WHAT ARE WE TEACHING TO OUR YOUTH THESE DAYS??? and at what cost? The good old business rules are still not being taught, or is this generation not getting it????

Darn, I wish I had seen your job opening…….

A contrarian point about spelling and grammar: It’s one thing to reject applications that are riddled with errors. It is quite another to reject applications for “one” error.

I worked in HR with a company that had great difficulty finding good candidates. They were looking for an unusual combination of specific high skills and advanced education. One of the hiring managers was rejecting people whose resumes contained a single stray (or missing) apostrophe. Meanwhile, the company was understaffed for critical work and spending ungodly amounts of money on the recruiting cycle. One of the top employees (now a director) used to joke, “There was a typo in my resume. I’m glad no one noticed!” The hiring manager is no longer with the company.

You can find typos in the New York Times. If you look for them, you can find typos in almost any published book you read. I found typos in my book that I had corrected in the galleys; apparently the person in charge of editorial changes didn’t know the difference between “principle” and “principal.”

Tiny mistakes happen everywhere and to everyone. (As a commenter pointed out above, the sentence about errors by applicants uses the wrong verb tense.)

Forest. Trees.

You make some good points, Barbara. Thanks for sharing that.

Helen

Great post, Peter! I am a PR student and I recently sent my resume (with a cover letter, thankyouverymuch!) to a few companies for internships. Before sending out my resume, I researched how to write great cover letters and then I had a few people read through my cover letter and resume. One tip I found when researching that was helpful was to show that you had some personality, yet try to eliminate too many words. You want it to sound conversational, and creative. I actually got interviews with all the companies I sent resumes to!

This is so true! I also wonder why the grammatical and orthographic errors happen so often, considering that you have spell checkers and so much advice on the internet. It seems that people don’t bother to do what you ask them for. Like sending the CV by mail when they are specifically asked to send it by email.

This is brilliant. And, as an added bonus, Mr Poopy Pants now is getting lots of spam to his hotmail address ;)

“BE BE smarter.” I think you need to take your own advice.

Peter, I’m sick of reading posts like yours. It is always the candidate pool that has the problem. Right?

Try looking at job postings for a while. I just saw an opening for an “Engilsh Teacher.” Postings are allowed to be vague or to embellish or be written poorly. Interviewers are somehow allowed to be unprepared or underdressed, to waste people’s time, to not stick to stated deadlines, to not know what they need, and to not follow up with candidates whom they have interviewed. I have been less than impressed with the behavior I’ve seen from those in charge of hiring and I imagine that their hiring decisions are reflective of the disorganized searches I have been a part of and have heard about.

Somewhat true Kevin. I’m getting the feeling that because there are so many job seekers right now, most companies feel they don’t have to put in a lot of effort on their end of the job search. I would warn companies that job searches are a form of public relations and a way to demonstrate what is considered acceptable behavior to new employees. If you behave poorly while hiring a candidate, don’t be surprised when that candidate as a new hire tuns around and does the same to your customers.