Comments on: How To Get Your Resume Noticed

By: Betty

Betty — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:46:00 +0000

I had an interview with a “collection company” and I was excited. I work doing medical collection and billing and this company was going to give me great benefits, great pay, shorter commute, work in office without any patients (or so I thought) I was told it was in unmarked billing due to the collections and I would only know that was it by the #. Anyhow turns out once I’m there it is the company that does collections for Daniel’s Jewelers. During the interview the guy asked me if i had ever “borrowed” something and “forgot” to give it back. I simply said yes. He gave me the most serious look I have ever seen on anybody and asked for me to complete the answer. I said pencils and pens. Confused he asked me to explain. I told him I always forgot to give back pens, pencils after borrowing them. LOL He laughed and offered me the job and I had to laugh and say NO thank you. He was shocked..it was the perfect opportunity but I wanted something in the medical field ;-/ Now i am looking for work again and once more he has offered to interview me lol :)

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:20:43 +0000

I work in an engineering group at a hospital and a few years ago we interviewed a candidate for an engineering position. He had a few years of experience at another hospital but quit because he “didn’t like his boss” and had been waiting tables since then. Fine. He then went on to say that the worst part of his current job was “dealing with customers”. He had also taken eight years to get his bachelor’s degree and had no real explanation as to WHY it took that long, just something along the lines of he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do.

But the kicker was when he gave his presentation (which we ask of all candidates, just to see how they do on their feet talking about some specific topic, technical or not). He decided to be clever and launched into an “engineering analysis” of his candidacy, which was basically two reasons why we should hire him and about six reasons why we shouldn’t, including “I don’t do well under pressure”. We were speechless.

Needless to say, he did not get the job.

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:17:02 +0000

I interviewed a candidate for a copy editing job whose resume listed two positions, at different newspapers, as being his current employer. I thought this was odd but ostensibly possible, so I asked him to describe his current job. He launched into a diatribe about how everyone he ever worked with was incompetent. I finally interrupted to clear up the “current job” question and he said “If you’d been listening to me, you would know I left [job a] in 2005 and [job b] last year.” I asked why he listed two current jobs on his resume when he was actually unemployed and he said “Yeah, my wife asked the same thing when I printed the resume.”

Since the most important skill for the job is “attention to detail,” he wasn’t hired.

By: FightOnTrojans

FightOnTrojans — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:26:20 +0000

I was interviewing someone for a position within my department. He currently held the same position at another company, and worked with several of my former co-workers. I asked him about his current work environment and he proceeded to bad-mouth my former co-workers and several of the company’s practices (which were similar to many of ours). Needless to say, he didn’t get the job.

By: Karla

Karla — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 01:08:18 +0000

I am a corporate recruiter for the call center industry. I phone screened a woman for a customer service representative position and she did well. I invited her for an interview and it was a disaster. She had totally inappropriate bouts of laughter! I excused myself the first time keeping a straight face so as not to offend her and went into an empty office and nearly had a heart attack. After another episode I politely ended the interview. After she departed the building the receptionist told me the candidate had an outburst in the lobby that sent her scrambling to look for a fake dropped pencil under her desk and asked me if I had seen the warning email she sent me…..Obviously not! The poor woman, really I feel for her…it does explain all the temp jobs though.

By: Yonit

Yonit — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:08:30 +0000

I was interviewing for my own replacement at a manufacturing consulting company. The position was part-time requiring basic skills in engineering, computers, web design, research, economics or some combination of the above and the rest could be learned on the job. I got so many unqualified resumes from people who listed MS Office use as their only computer skill, I figured people were just sending out resumes without reading the job description. One of the better ones was the basic just out of high school or your run-of-the-mill college student who delivered pizzas. The computer skills were ok though, and I almost put the resume in the maybe pile (the applicant pool was that bad) until a co-worker pointed out that the applicant was married and in his 30s. Not the kind of person who should have the resume of a kid.

By: Tdave

Tdave — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 07:39:33 +0000

How’s this for dumb? Just out of high school my mom insisted on writing my application and insisted on putting “Non smoker” at the bottom. It was a job in a warehouse for an industrial saw company. The interview seemed to go O.K. until the interviewer excused himself and made me sit there for about 20 minutes. He came back in with a cigarette, blew smoke in my face and said something to the effect of “Don’t call us we’ll call you.”

By: Ashe

Ashe — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 07:03:28 +0000

Mine wasn’t exactly aweful but it was awkward!

My father offered me a job at his company, but he’d just hired a new GM who wanted to interview me first. After being reassured by my father that my qualifications were perfect and I would get the job – and then being grilled my the new GM (who I wasn’t a fan of) it was weird. He knew I had the job but felt it was necessary to put me through the “bad cop” test.

I got the feeling at the end that had it been his decision, he wouldn’t have put me on… but he get fired not long after! I won.

By: Confused

Confused — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 06:07:40 +0000

After I got out of the Army I decided to get a job in security. One of the places I interviewed for was for a corporate airplane hangar. After getting asked the regular barrage of questions he proceeded to give me a tour of the entire (security sensitive) facility as well as introduce me to all the other employees. Naturally I assumed he was going to offer me the job or why go through all this trouble.

A few days later he calls to tell me he give the job to someone “more qualified”. He has since left the company. 2 years later I got the job there and find out the “more qualified” person was just a personal friend of his. Apparently he conducted all his interviews that way. I wonder how many people thought they had the job. . .

By: Thursday

Thursday — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 02:31:58 +0000

I applied (and interviewed) at a manufacturing company my brother had been working at for years: apparently, they were bleeding for staff, but the PR guy only hired one person a month or so, which was barely enough to match attrition, never mind adding a third shift!

Two weeks later, I had to call back to find out what was going on, and he provided me with my most interesting excuse for not being hired: I might get a job writing full time and leave the plant.

Bwa?