Putting your best foot forward often starts with a CV and a cover letter, but that step appears to have eluded these 10 hopefuls.
Despite ubiquitous headlines hailing the growing economic recovery, it’s still pretty tough out there. The job market isn’t what it was 20 years ago, and applicants often have to struggle through several rounds of applications to land a worthwhile position.
We have a feeling these 10 applicants, featured in a recent compilation by Thought Catalog, were unlikely to make it past round one.
1. A fine example of the importance of quality references
The application asked applicants to “please provide at least two different personal references that are not your immediate family.”
Contact 1: Miss June Juiceberg. Relationship: Mother
Contact 2: Mark Markster. Relationship: Mah boo
2. A strong “strengths and skills” section
Under strengths she mentioned “god fearing” and under technical skills, “windows.”
3. College days come back to boost your resume
As a favor for a cute barmaid, I delivered her resume to the “right people” in my company. One of the bullet points under her experience section was that she had worked on a group paper in college with both a table of contents AND an index.
4. A boy’s best friend is his mother
On a written application:
“Why do you want to work here?”
“My mom says I need a job”
“Do you have your own transportation?”
Different Handwriting – “I will drive him.”
Most of the application was filled out in the mother’s handwriting, she picked up and dropped off the application, and she called several times wondering why her son did not get an interview.
5. Watch that spellcheck
I was taking resumes for my replacement and one applicant wrote, “I got laid in March” instead of “I got laid off in March.” Let’s just say her cover letter was framed and hung up.
6. A racist in the customer service department
Last year when hiring a customer service rep: “Work well with ethnics and people of a different race.”
7. Looks matter, right?
We had a guy write that he was voted “campus cutey” by the girls at his university, and attached a link.
8. A little self-promotion never hurt
I was a supervisor for a contractor that did door-to-door cable sales. We had people who would scrub the resumes, and then a small group of us would interview pretty much everyone who could string a sentence together. We’d generally look over the resume/cover letter for about a minute before the person came in.
I had to interview a girl who, I swear to you, had a picture of herself (very large black girl) on her cover letter and under skills listed “bad-ass b***h.” Turns out it was a real application and my coworkers decided they had to see if she was real.
9. Adding personal flair to the application
This guy put backgrounds on every page… The background image he used was his face.
10. Quoting the best authority
My sister in law keeps a resume she got on her fridge. The person ended with a poorly comprised quote…..from themselves.
Can you top that? Share your best resume horror stories in the comments section below!
