Job Applications

When you submit your cover letter (consider including one when it is requested!) and resume:

• Don’t tell me that, although you don’t have the particular skills needed for the job, you still think you’d be a good candidate.
  
  
• Don’t write that you didn’t pass your Spanish course, but you really did try hard and that is a good quality to have as an employee.
  
  
• Don’t send in your meaningful-to-you-and-your-success-as-an-undergraduate poetry. Especially when the open position is not “poet”.
  
  
• Refer to your interest in an interview, not "coming in for a sit down."
  
  
• Don’t rush through your cut-and-paste job and leave “Dear Ms. McCarthy” in your cover letter when you are actually addressing “Mr. Plummer”.
  
  
• Don’t generically refer to the position for which you are applying as “the position being offered within your company.”
  
  
• Don’t begin your letter about a minority population by stating that you believe “it is the weather that brings them here.”
  
  
• Don’t sign yourself as being my “humble servant.”
  
  
• If you have to misspell or leave out a word, at least don’t do this in the sentence touting your writing skills.
  
  
• Don’t list getting an annual raise as one of your big achievements in previous jobs.
  
  
• Don’t write in your cover letter that you were dismissed by doctors as having no chance for rehabilitation and then list “dementia, schizophrenia and multiple personalities” as “areas of expertise” in your resume.

Yes, these are all actual things I've seen over my years of hiring people. At least it brightens my day with a good chuckle.