WASHINGTON — Attention, job seekers: If you put on your resume that you’re a certified HVAC worker, you should probably know what HVAC stands for.
Additionally, pig Latin is not generally considered a foreign language; serving time in a prison doesn’t count as working there; and spell check doesn’t catch everything (more on that in a second).
These lessons may seem commonplace, but somewhere out there, someone didn’t get those memos. That’s the word from Career Builder, which lists these among the most egregious blunders and howlers people have made on their resumes in an attempt to get attention from potential employers.
Career Builder also passes along the tale of an applicant whose job history had him working for three companies in three cities at the same time. Another applicant listed as a reference an employer from whom they’d embezzled money and who had taken out a warrant for the applicant’s arrest. Still another’s email address had “2poopy4mypants” as the username.
It’s understandable that these job-seekers would want to stand out — Career Builder says that 70 percent of the employers it surveyed say they spend less than five minutes looking at a resume; 48 percent, less than two minutes.
But you don’t need to get desperate: Forty-two percent of the employers surveyed said if a job lists five required qualifications, they’d consider hiring someone who met only three.
So you don’t have to say you used to be the CEO of the company to which you’re applying. (Yes, really; someone did that.)
And slow down and read your resume over a few times. The spell check problem? One applicant who meant to list in his job history that he’d worked at a warehouse instead wrote that he’d worked at a whorehouse. That’s a mistake spell check wouldn’t catch. Assuming it’s a mistake, that is.
