Marketing disciple gets the CV-jeebies

The following e-mail, kindly sent in by Disciple Amanda – shows just how risky recruitment can get.

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I recently advertised an administrative position working in our small-but-perfectly-formed marketing department. The response I got to the advert placed in the local paper was good – around 65 CVs over a 10-day period. Not bad, I thought, until I started reading them. The priceless gems of information from prospective applicants included:

• One lady who works for a well-known ladies retailer, who is ‘severing customers face-to-face’
  
• Someone whose career objectives were to ‘become a lantern and effect design’ (I really have no idea what this is supposed to mean)
  
• One chap – who obviously thought he was sending a text message and not applying for a job – had written ‘i’ instead of ‘I’ and ‘u’ instead of ‘you’ throughout. Not that I have a problem with party confirmations being signed ‘c u l8r’, as it could save on paper
  
• And, to top it all off, there was someone who, in their current post in a call centre, ‘communicates with the deceased’.

I was so intrigued by the latter that I was tempted to interview her just to find out how she does this, and whether she could call up my long-since-departed nan, who was a bit of a racing fanatic, to get a few tips.