RESUME Boo-boos

Resume:

1) Put in your resume the things that you know about, not what you wish to know about. I have an experience interviewing an IT applicant. He put on his resume that he knows PHP (programming), but later on I found out that he was just studying it... on his own... using books he bought... dated 5 years ago.

2) Treat your resume seriously. We were looking for Thai speaking Customer Service Representatives. Of course we used the online job sites. We pulled out the resumes of those who indicated in their skills that they can speak Thai. You know resume search credits are not cheap so we have to be very careful of pulling our resumes there. We called one applicant and she said on her resume that she can speak Thai, Mandarin, English and French. Impressive right? We asked her if she want to apply as customer service representative for Thais. She said yes. She asked for the salary, we said 40,000 to 60,000 pesos. She immediately said yes. We asked her anyway - since we cannot test her Thai skills - how did she learn how to speak Thai, she said, "No, I don't know how to speak Thai." We said that it's on her resume. She said, "NO, THAT'S JOKE ONLY." Then blurted out an evil laugh. We immediately hang up on her and blacklisted her. Worst applicant ever!

3) If on that skill, you score 1, 2 or 3 on the scale of 1-10, don't include it. A lot of people put things on their resume that are not totally true. Most people would say that they know how to speak French, German, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. when they can only say Si. Ya. Annyeong, Hai, Ni Hao which are basically Yes/No or Hi. Whoever told them that this is a skill, needs to be shot in Luneta. A wake up call, 70% of Filipinos know these as well.

4) Be ready to be tested on the skills written on your resume, because 95% chance that you will be tested.

5) Never submit a Bio-data. Do I need to say this? Yes! Believe it or not 5% of applicants bring in Bio-data. It's not that I discriminate them because bio-data costs 1 peso compared to resume printing starting from 3 pesos, but the point that giving a bio-data does not show the skills that you have. It may show almost 100% about your personal information, but skill-wise, it doesn't Put some effort on writing a resume.

6) Never copy and paste the resume from the internet. Elementary much but yes I have to say this. Some people make a resume by copying from the internet and editing some things. One time I have to laugh in one resume because the name, address and birth day was not revised, showing an American Address and a 40 year old birth day of an applicant who is a fresh graduate with a picture showing a guy, when the name was a girl and a boy in his twenties.

7) Never make a resume if you don't know how to. Yes guys, please try to seek help from those who know how to. There are some resumes who are obviously erroneous. A lot of typographical error. A lot of formatting errors. And the information are kinda badly thought.

8) Appropriate pictures please. Whew! What's wrong with these people? One applicant had his picture taken with a background of a toilet bowl and a guy taking a leak behind. One person sent a half-body picture, naked, posing as a macho dancer and the body obviously cropped from someone else and used Adobe to paste the head on to it. My goodness! There are applicants who put pictures with angles used for Facebook - camera on top, below and with a V fingers. One person put a picture with 2 of his friends at the back. One applicant scanned then picture and pasted the whole page with his picture only 1/32 of the whole page scanned. Some are even wearing their house clothes, haven't brushed their hair or even washed their faces. One guy even put his high school picture even if he is already 40+ years old. Believe it or not, some people put cartoon characters on their resume picture.

9) Submit an original resume, not photocopied. If in case you really cannot afford to reprint your resume, make the decency of photocopying your resume clearly. Don't use 25 centavo photocopy using newsprint.

10) Put a picture on your resume as much as possible. Although not required but at least it will be of advantage for you. That would really exude professionalism.

Hope this helps you guys!

Love you all!

INTERVIEW Bloopers up next!