Wednesday, January 21, 2009

There is an intensive recruitment process going on at work at the moment, and while my upcoming visit to Thailand means I won't be involved in any of the interviews, I am helping with the shortlisting. And seriously, What. A. Nightmare.

Now don't get me wrong, every now and then I will come across a resume that knocks my socks off, but 95% of them are absolute, utter shit. After a total of ten hours spent in a room (and I'm not finished yet), pulling my hair out, I can only conclude the following:
  • People put in applications for jobs that they don't actually want
  • People think that having a background at Just Hooters will land them a job in IT
  • People are stupid
  • People don't bother trying to make an impression, as though landing a job is just the luck of being randomly picked
  • There is some grand plan in place by somebody who is trying to torture me through extreme time wastage
  • The world would be a better place if somebody invented a Shit Filter to save me hours of my life
  • Aforementioned filter could work by immediately deleting a resume which misspells the word "rapport"
  • (Most recent variations are "rapors" and "repour")
Though I have really learnt a lesson about how to compose a good resume. I'm finding myself skipping over sections with a loud pffffft noise, when I've included those sections in my own resume in the past. It all becomes far more valid when I'm suddenly doing the picking.

Moving on!

BUS STOP GRAFFITI:


How gay is Callum? How gay is Callum? Is it a rhetorical question? There is no question mark at the end. Or should I ponder this, and give him a score out of ten, with 1 = a rugged, hairy bear-type labourer in the closet and 10 = Carson off that How to Look Good Naked show? I don't know who Callum is. Why have you given me a question which I can't possibly answer, mysterious bus stop vandal?


I love ale! What a peculiar thing to scratch into a chair. It is very different to the standard graffiti around the place, which mainly involves calling somebody a slut or is completely illegible. And what sort of young hooligan refers to his beverage of choice as "ale" these days? Unless this is New Thing that I'm yet to get the inside goss on. Behind the times, etc.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude Callum is totally gay.

Can you pls give us a "top ten worst resumes"? (Confidentiality is for dorks.)

phishez said...

Maybe the last hooligan meant to say alex but ran out of room?

Or they wanted to put beer, but realised there was not enough room.


Or they were a uni student trying to be smart when drunk.

Shelley said...

Variation on Mark's theme: for those of us attempting to get into poncy public service jobs and who are baffled by the bullshit of the selection criteria could you please rip off the really good ones and share them?

Power is there to be abused, after all.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I second the posting of the best and worst bits of the resume's!

Mark stole my Callum comment but I'm quite impressed with the ale grafitti, much better than the standard blah blah is hot.

RAT said...

Mark, done! Well, I've done the top however-many resumes I could think of. Some of them are so painful I have been trying to forget them.

Phishez, oh my God, that must be it. It all makes sense now. I am voting on the "Alex" theory. Damn it, it's not so special any more. Sniff.

Nails, done! Kind of. Hopefully I've managed to reveal a few government secrets. If you can fluff your application out with buzzwords and bullshit successfully, you should be able to get an interview with no probs.

Lucy, yes, I think so too. Actually I'm quite impressed with the wording of the Callum graffiti too. Not the usual "he IS gay" but an interesting quiz-type twist. My bus stop is vandalised by thinkers, obviously.