Be aware of switching between passive vs active voice...

...because if you are not, your list of skills might sound less like you are a potentially quite valuable employee who can speak multiple languages, and more like you are the crappy parent of a potentially quite valuable employee who can speak multiple languages.

From resume:

Bilingual

• Partially raised a spanish speaker

• Spanish major
• Formal written and verbal translation

I suggest starting with these two new challenges:

1. Spelling. Some areas of focus:
a. "I before E except after C."
b. If your instinct tells you "Use an A!" question it. Question it closely.
c. If these prove problematic, consider using the spell check function on your computer.

2. Periods, and when to use them. Related: Run-on sentences, and what they are.

From resume:

"My experiance in the sales and finance feild has been long lasting and I have recieved over 40 salesman of the month awards and am looking for new challanges."

Start Small

From resume:

"To tackle customers needs in designing and creating there kitchen and bath remodeling additions and updates. "

I truly do appreciate that this candidate is showing some initiative in selecting more action-oriented verbs. But I think you should master basic grammar first before getting creative.

Meet Your College Graduates, America!

Hi America!!!! How are you doing?

I just wanted to take a moment out from my busy schedule of sighing, eye-rolling, gritting my teeth and putting myself on mute so that I can yelp with agony to help brighten your day with the Hope and Promise of the next generation of Recent College Grads.

Here are some confidence-instilling tidbits from a recent resume of, yes, an actual Bachelor-degree havin' young person. His/her graduating GPA was over 3.0.

"PRESENT: Bartender
I am the head bartender taking the most shifts as well as the most rewarding...In which ties to my role as assistant manager resolving problems and finding solutions when the manager is not available. Such as proper ways to treat food not up to the standard of the guest as well as unruly guests.

PREVIOUS: Fitness Councelor

At [redacted] i was a fitness councelor/sales man."

No you're not.

From resume headline:

"I'M THE CANIDATE YOUR LOOKING FOR."

And if you can't see why, that's why.

Craigslist Grabbag...Grab Bag?...Grab-Bag?

All the below are resume headlines from Craigslist:

If you do outside criminal background checks. Dont bother.

If you can teach it, I WILL SALE IT!!!
I just don't know how good you can truly be at selling if you don't know that word exists.

From resume headline AND Department of Lowered, Sad-Making Expectations: Recent college graduate seeking an entry level admin position

From a resume headline I forgot to post about back when this resume was relevant cuz summertime fun is OVER: Gay summer personal assistant

Once again, careless placement of modifiers might just create questions rather than instill in potential employers an overwhelming desire to hire your sizzling competence like yesterday.

I mean, first of all, I don't need to know that you are gay, but this is where my thoughts immediately go when I read that (read in voice of Ronco announcer):

Are you planning on having a Gay Summer but are overwhelmed at the thought of how much is involved? Making the reservations at P-Town? The manscaping? The purchasing of lube and hot pants? Making a house mix for the BBQ? It's endless, girlfriend!! [Of course in the commercial I am making in my head, that last sentence has a dude in a mesh shirt like collapsing on a pile of CD's on a table.] Never fear! Your Gay Summer Personal Assistant is here.

Or was. But the summer, Gay or no, is over.

(And I'm sorry, Gay Husband, for the parade of Gay Cliches but whatever, you do it too. Shut up.)

On the bright side...

...although I have spent the past three weeks silently changing "vender" to "vendor" and correcting endless misuses of the word "there" because I am far too filled with outrage that my underling (not selected by me, naturally) doesn't know these things to approach her in any sort of friendly and/or effective manner...

...it still beats talking to the goddamn public.

Regular posting to resume soon.

In the meantime, Candidates, please note that if you choose to have a resume headline that says:

"Asian female bartender....kind of."

You make me less interested in finding out about your skills and abilities and more curious about exactly WHICH word - Asian, female or bartender - "kind of" is in reference to.

My underlings are killing me.

KILLING ME.

I feel it's tacky to bitch too much about co-workers (because they are, you know, real people as opposed to the theoretical people as represented by a resume or brief phone screen).

But I will say the following. These sentence fragments?

"The candidate presented his self well..."

AND

"She holds her employees to high standers..."

I am really REALLY the wrong person to whom to present those.

No fake. I think of all the people in the universe who should not be in charge of people with truly poor grammar, I am at the top of the list.

Like I am filled with such a white hot blinding rage - a rage that feels, as Vonnegut said in Mother Night, as though I hate with God on my side - at the existence of those sentences...it's not good. It's not good for anybody.

"Obsessive grammarian seeks position as proofreader, writer, or editor."

Thus spake the resume headline and the resume itself was refreshingly - and appropriately - completely free of typos or mangled language.

Candidate, I wish I had a job to give you. I would like to make you Manager of the World. Because if there is one thing that makes the gnarled little knot of coal in my chest almost beat like a normal human heart, it is an obsessive grammarian.

ALERT!! New Stupid Made-Up Corporate Word to Replace Stupid Overused Corporate Word

At some point, Office Worker, you just capitulated, didn't you?

You were initially hesitant because it seemed to be used so ubiquitously by the upper-management types. Those folks whose language seems to consist completely of meaningless buzz-word filler.

You tried your best but you couldn't resist the constant onslaught, right? You eventually started using the word "proactive."

Well get ready for the next horrorshow, proactive's heir:

PLANFUL.

Planful.

Planful.

A muckety-muck used this word in a conference call last week. I have been blissfully removed from these kinds of meeting for the past couple years or so, so possibly this is not new. Possibly this is old hat like "impactful." (Miles away, I know Gay Husband is reading this and shuddering.)

But it's new to me. New and ATROCIOUS.

Why don't you just shit on a Powerpoint and call it a day, muckety-mucks? Why use the English language at all when you clearly hold it in such contempt?

But before I go...

...the Public had this to say today.

From candidate's resume headline:

"Just greaduated"

This wasn't Myspace. This was Monster.

And this wasn't a typo inserted in the midst of a big block of text.

These are the only two words in the headline. Ergo, this person only had two words to scan to proof this and think..."Hmm. Fifty percent of the first thing I am showing to a prospective employer looks somehow...off."

I have, on occasion, physically harmed innocent hardware due to frustration with Microsoft software. Nevertheless, I can see that Bill Gates is a smart dude.

And so the fact that Bill Gates is concerned enough about appear before Congress to speak about how he is, essentially, kinda scared shitless about the state of American education might be enough to make me sit up and take notice. However, I don't actually need that because the crumbling American education system seems to make a little appearance on my desktop at least every other day.

Word Cop: Are you tired? Or hesitant due to concerns?

My Readers seem like a pretty literate bunch so this is in no way directed at you all. This is for Hiring Managers.

If you have some concerns about a candidate's background and are therefore feeling reluctant to bring them on board, you can be

a) LEERY
or
b) WARY

But if you put the two together, it does not, actually make a super-strength hybrid of the two. It just makes you tired because that is what WEARY means. And I really doubt you are "really super exhausted of his background due to his job hopping." The candidate might be weary from the hopping. (rimshot)

But you are, again, either LEERY or WARY.

Thank you and good day sir.

Word Cop: WAIT! Something DID happen!

Today, on a work teleconference, someone actually said the word VAJAJAY.

Key words in the above sentence:

"WORK TELECONFERENCE"

"VAJAJAY"

Off-Topic Word Cop:Temporary Restraining Order

I would like a temporary moratorium on the words "musings," "rantings," or "ramblings" being used within 50 feet of a blog for the next six months. There is an exception for Copyranter because...well, because he's earned it.

Sorry, bloggers, but it had to be done. Own your thoughts! Did Hemingway muse or rant or ramble? No, he stated! State, I say! State your thoughts!

I will be probably imposing a restraining order on myself in the next few weeks, as this genre (complaining about how the people you encounter in your job are just so ungodly stupid) is also beyond tired. But I keep hoping I can ride out the trend past the trendiness.

Word Cop: Nails on Blackboard

For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with language and how people use it. Um (gestures to entire blog) OBVIOUSLY.

I don't know why it is. If someone has a verbal tic or uses certain words, I cease to be able to actually listen to the content of what they say, and instead become completely focused on the tic or the word. Sometimes it's in a good way. My gay husband refers to a certain kind of girls' short-shorts as "Cooter Cutters" and sounds exactly like some sassy seventy-year old lady when he says it. And the channeling of a Golden Girl through this Banana Republic-wearing hot gay potato never fails to make me giggle endlessly.

Then again, sometimes it's NOT in a good way. We recently had a call with our team to talk about certain things, and we kept discussing "basic qualifications." Instead of calling them "basic qualifications" everyone on the team calls them "basic quals."

Quals.

Quals.

I don't know why...I mean I REALLY don't know why, but this word "qual" makes me shudder. I have tried to parse my reaction but I cannot. I just inexplicably hate this abbreviated word with every molecule in my body. I didn't hear anything else I'm supposed to be listening to because every time they said "qual," I tensed up.

Secondly, they also kept talking about making our job descriptions "pop." I think it's great that we're trying to improve our ads, but "pop?" It's not a red accent wall. It's not eyeliner. POP?

Anyway, this post is less to critique anyone on my team and more to wonder: what is wrong with me? Why am I so fixated on this stuff? Does anyone else do this?

Speaking of 1947...

Today appears to be the day that I receive resumes from a wormhole opening into the first half of the Twentieth Century. Along with the Mrs. mentioned previously, I just received a resume that starts out addressing me and my counterparts as "Gentlemen."

Okay, it's 2007, and unless you are posting a memo above a urinal, it's no longer really safe to address any business correspondence to only "Gentlemen."

Before the Contrary Maries and Misters start waxing red-faced about political correctness, it's not about that. It's just a question of ACCURACY.

Especially with a resume, because if my experience is any indicator, Human Resources is like 90% ladies. Sometimes I get a sinus headache from all the estrogen.

ANYWAY. Just say like "Hiring Manager:" or "To Whom It May Concern" or whatever. I don't care. Just don't call me Mister. I had a short haircut when I was a kid and somebody called me "Young Man " once and the wound still smarts.

Unless you truly are a sleep-walking entrepeneur...

...and need to make the distinction, you can leave the following emphasized word off your resume:

"Made conscious decision to establish my personal stand-alone enterprise."

From my experience, few people make that decision unconsciously or subconsciously.

And you ESPECIALLY do not need to put the following on your resume (which is how the above actually appeared on the real resume (emphasis added)):

"Made conscience decision to establish my personal stand-alone enterprise."

I appreciate that you actually spelled the word correctly, but it's the wrong word.

Conscience? It's a noun. Means your sense of right and wrong.
Conscious? Adjective. Means what you meant to say but didn't need to.

Terminology to Keep Internal

During an internal company call today amongst the recruiters:

"What we need to determine is how to lure candidates into [company]'s web."

(And not meaning "web" in the "World Wide" sense.)

I have an idea!

Don't use language that makes it sound like being recruited for this company is akin to being pulled into a Ponzi scheme.

No one told me...

...that "loose" now means "lose." As in "Every time I loose power I loose my phone line" or "Don't loose your keys." This is now rampant. And no, Candidates, I'm actually not talking to you; this is directed at you, Co-Workers.

Is this a thing now? Like "it's" when it's supposed to be "its"? Something that is about to become so goddamn ubiquitous that there's no point in getting worked up about it anymore?

There should be some kind of memo that goes out monthly that outlines the Grammar Battles No Longer Worth Fighting so that I can better know when to waste a rise in my blood pressure.

Ow.

From resume (emphasis added for leg-cross-inspiring misspelling):

"Duties: Pulling Charts putting the right documents in the chart taking Vital Signs screening Patients getting them ready for the Dr. Giving Injections doing EKG Test. Weighing Patients setting up tray for Pap Simmer, Assisting Dr. with Pap Simmer. Assisting Dr. with I&D minor Surgery."

Not even going to comment on the worrying possibility that this individual is helping with ANY surgery, minor or not.