Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Copy and Paste

Today a friend told me that she was reading over resumes and essentially they all said the same thing.  What, you ask?  Well, they said “Copy and paste” from Google, apparently.  I mean, they all said the same thing.  In the most generalized way possible.  At no point did any of them make relevant sense to the job to which they were apply.  Nor did they even try.   Here, I will give an example, just by Googling job objective:

“Obtain a position at ABC institute where I can maximize my training experience, program development skills and my teaching abilities.“

And here again:

“Obtain a position at XYZ Company where I can maximize my management skills, quality assurance, program development, and training experience.”

And here once more (from an actual resume):

"Looking to obtain a position with a reputed company which will require me to utilize my skils, abilities, and experience." (SIC)

So, kids, what have we learned here?  That the upcoming generation knows jack about resume writing?  That Google has made us lazy?  That “well, someone already did it so I don’t have to try” is acceptable?  That mediocrity is the standard? 

It gave me a great laugh.  But it saddened me too.  Because it reminded me that the general population is not so very bright.  Not that I’m Einstein.  Far from it.  I’m just me.  My job didn’t require a resume.  I utilize my skills every dang day.  And have tons of experience.  But seriously folks … when is it going to dawn on people that everyone else googled the same thing, ergo your answer looks as lame as theirs and at no point in your answer did you actually answer anything.  Kudos to you, oh Billy Madisons of the world.  Copy and Paste on!

1 comment:

  1. Another possibility is that "our generation" is trying to teach "their generation" that this is the way you do things - and this is what's coming out. But when these folks do some of this on their own, it actually works well. All it'll take is a couple of tweaks for someone to land that job by standing out. But from what you've written above - you know that's the way "we" were taught to do resumes.

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