Jun 1
150 Funniest Resume Mistakes, Bloopers and Blunders Ever
People write the strangest things on their resumes, sometimes downright hysterical. Why should only recruiting managers get to laugh at these? The Top 10 are at the bottom. Enjoy!
2 Comments so far
Some of these are pretty good. Part of my collateral duties a decade ago at a large law firm was to screen resumes for lateral hires into my department. I used to keep the worst ones. Sometimes a resume would make it into my stinko file simply because the applicant’s credentials were so unbelievably weak that it was laughable that he would even apply to a leading law firm. Others made it because of resume gaffes. One of them became a part of popular culture for a little while:
A young lawyer named Peter Thottam (”rhymes with ‘bottom’” — his quote) became frustrated with the results of his job search. Accordingly, he posted to what today would be called an online message board. Unbeknownst to him, at that time, practically everyone in large law firms across the country read that board every day. I was a frequent contributor and a bit of a cult personality, but I was not involved in the Thottam situation. Thottam posted his resume for the entire world to see. He bragged about his rather mediocre credentials (again, he totally failed to know his audience) and worst of all, put his SAT scores on his resume. Within literally seconds, several Board Admins advised him to remove the resume, or at least the SAT scores. The reason, of course, is that everyone with higher scores would consider him a mediocrity, while everyone with lower scores would consider him a snob. And everyone would consider him a dweeb, but that was a pretty dweeby community to begin with. Well, Thottam very arrogantly refused, with unintentional hilarity. He thus became fodder for all discussion on that board, and thus at every large law firm in America, for several weeks. He thus became completely unemployable in his chosen profession. I believe he later tried to sue various persons connected with the message board.
My point is, applying for a job is partly what’s on the paper, but mostly how you approach your intended audience. For example, later this year I will be applying for several competitive positions which happen to require security clearances. I happen to have some, uh, interesting history and associations. Taking a cue from Gehlen, who once said that to keep a secret, it helps to make it a very boring secret, I will endeavor to make those stories/secrets as BORING and LONGWINDED as possible, if anything OVERdisclosing them from the get go. I have every confidence they will be utterly ignored by the time my candidacy is considered. Or at least that’s the plan.
Dan,
You are completely right. I used to be at Goldman Sachs and dealt with Peter Thottam who was terminated from Goldman Sachs back in ~May 1994. He was hired for an audit function within Goldman Sachs as part of our Management Controls division. He was terminated for his insider trading activity and NASDAQ eventually became involved. I recently came across his resume again and I noticed Peter Thottam was lying about having worked with our firm for two years. He only worked here for about 10 months and was promptly terminated. I heard later he went to the Advisory Board and was there for a short stint as well. The rest of his resume is littered with short stints here and there (he seems to blame the economy or the firms but fails to look deep inside and realize that the problem is himself) I find in my experience in HR that individuals such as Peter Thottam need to get a reality check and seek psychological help.