I tend to be more frustrated by hiring managers than feel sympathy for them, but I have to say that I've heard some pretty hilarious stories from a few of them about the worst resumes they've seen. One of my favorites: The woman whose experience was otherwise perfectly suited for the position but whose email was "f***b******getmoney" @ whatever-the-hell-it-was.com.
After Redditor Stairway756 asked the online community, "Hiring Managers, what is the biggest red flag on a resume?" the hiring managers of the world weighed in. We're cringing on their behalf.
"You see some insane emails."
A very unprofessional email is definitely one. You see some insane emails. I knew someone who got an email address that had "big daddy" in it.
"I'm all for being tolerant..."
I once had a guy submit a resume saying that he could not work with women or speak to any woman due to religious reasons. I'm all for being tolerant of other people's beliefs but this was for a customer service job. If you can't interact with women at all then maybe this wasn't the kind of job he should have been applying for.
"Doesn't stop me from hiring anyone..."
Doesn't stop me from hiring anyone, but changes things up when someone says they speak another language. If it's Spanish, you'll be interviewed in Spanish. Sometimes that goes very poorly for the applicant.
"I asked the recruiter..."
The guy who applied for a design job and attached a photoshopped image of him as a centaur comes to mind. Also typos. I was hiring a very senior level person who seemed like they could do an amazing job, but there were SEVERAL typos on her resume. I asked the recruiter to let her know.
"We had an application..."
We had an application where the applicant had a felony on their record. They spent half a page in the middle of their resume explaining how the felony wasn't their fault and that we should hire them. Their felony was from stealing from another department from the last time they worked at the company they were applying to. It's a big company so it think they were hoping we wouldn't care since we were in a different department. I don't know how they made it through the HR pre-screen and how they weren't on the do-not-hire list.
"I've seen someone..."
I've seen someone put their certificate of baptism under Certificates and Awards.
"To this day..."
I once interviewed a woman for an IT job.
Me: What do you find most challenging about your work?
Applicant: Chinese people.
To this day, I still can't believe someone would give that answer in a job interview.
"First..."
Any type of MLM. First, it's not a real job. Second, it shows a lack of judgement. Third, it says to me that you don't have a good work ethic.
"I like descriptions..."
Buzzword salad - listing every hot technology plus ridiculous stuff. Example: "Experience in C#, Java, SQL, XML, json, csv, postgresql, SQL server..." If you're listing file formats and several flavors of SQL it's a bit much.
I like descriptions of the work you did, like "Created a Java app that fetches XML files from an SFTP and parses the data, applies business logic requirements which I helped define with the accounting department, and loads results into an AuroraDB." That's the kind of line I would ask about and try to dig in and find out what you really know.
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