The following e-mail, kindly sent in by Disciple Amanda – shows just how risky recruitment can get.
Dear Guru,
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
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.
