Resume Retardation

I’ve bitched before about the quality of resume we’re getting for our software developer positions.  We have another spot open and we got another resume riddled with errors.  I counted 18 major errors and I skipped a lot of minor errors.  This is just plain stupid, people.  I’m going to show you what you are doing wrong, so that you can review your own resume and possibly correct some of these before someone like me sees them.

First of all, this resume has the unique presentation where commas have been replaced by ellipses.  For example, when listing skills, it says something like, “This language… that language… some other language… some server software…”  I don’t know why people try clever things like this.  It reminds me of a goofball new-age manager who always used semicolons instead of periods.  So, sure, I noticed it and it makes me read your skills list with ridiculous, dismissive pauses as if after every skill you’re saying, “You know, I could go on…”  But if you’re going to do it and be pretentious about it, at least be consistent.  Don’t have the last three items separated by commas.

Now the offenses:

“Develop SSRS Reports in a ASP.Net Application using SQL, Silverlight, ASP.Net 3.5” – “A” should be “an”.  I am lenient when people talk about “a SQL database” or “an SQL database”, because of the two different pronunciations of “SQL”.  I know of no other way to pronounce “ASP”.  A/an errors appear three other places in this resume.

“Developed a WCF to be used by collages to receive leads for their schools” – “A WCF” means nothing.  “A WCF application” is probably what was meant.  “Collages” is completely wrong.  “Colleges” is the proper word.  There’s no excuse for this.  You are writing software for academics!  A similar problem where sentences end with “a SQL 2008” excluding any descriptor like “database”, “procedure”, or ”application” appears in two other places in this resume.  Another completely wrong word (“from” as “form”) is in the resume.

“Developed and Deployed an Company Intranet site (Oracle, HTML, JavaScript, and Java)” – “An Company” is improper.  You can read it and say, oh, it used to just be “an Intranet…”, but he added “Company” and didn’t change the “an”.  Yes, that’s probably correct, but it’s not an excuse; it’s just an explanation.  By the way, the random and inconsistent capitalization is a lot of the minor errors I didn’t count.  Also, note the proper use of an ellipse.

“SharePoint Sever 2007” – Really?

“Windows Phone 7 Developments” – How many developments are we talking, here?

“Wrote to chapters for the WROX SQL 2012 Bible on Row Level Security and Data Encryption.” – I hope those “to” chapters were proofread by someone capable of writing proper English.  This is not someone who should be writing or contributing to books.

So what we have here is a resume by someone who has been working professionally longer than I have. This resume has not been proofread by anyone, not even the recruiter that submitted it.  This person, who has been working as a contractor, has had to update his resume seven times in the last three years.  It appears he has not reviewed his work in full.  This is someone who clearly does not have an eye for quality and when the work is done, he moves right on to the next thing.  This is why contractors suck.

Postscript:

The interview was a total failure, so I didn’t need to voice my opinion on the quality of the resume.  However, as a personal embarrassment, I found the worst resume mistake during the interview.  The heading: “ACCOMPLIMENTS”.  I never would have thought a heading to be misspelled.

2 Comments.

  1. Grammatical errors are my pet peeve! Not proof-reading your resume is just lazy and speaks volumes about the applicant! I feel your frustration!

  2. Resume Retardation 2 | Anachostic - pingback on October 12, 2017 at 9:41 pm

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