Comments on: Bad Job-Hunting Tips You Must Avoid, Part 2

By: dimes

dimes — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:59:22 +0000

I’m wondering if one were confronted about their implied degree, would they admit that no, they never actually finished it or would they lie and say they had?
On that note, I have a cousin who got an associate degree and boasts about being “college educated.” Surely an employer would recognize the difference between a junior degree and a baccalaureate degree.

By: Penelope Trunk

Penelope Trunk — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 02:27:45 +0000

I agree that typos are bad. But I'm saying no one is sending out all perfect resumes all the time. It's too hard, because we're always tweaking our resumes and we're not always having a professional proofreader check them. Here's a longer discussion of why you don't need to be up in arms about typos on a resume.

By: Global Investor

Global Investor — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:31:09 +0000

I’m confused about the typos statement too. Having a professional review your resume is essential to limiting any errors.

You would need to establish a personal relationship with the employer before an interview, otherwise the typos will kill you.

By: Cujo

Cujo — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 11:45:55 +0000

I’m absolutely with you on the resume – if you can’t even produce a single perfect page, given a lot of time and with a lot on the line, how big a mess is it going to be when I trust you with a BIG project?

By: Saving Advice

Saving Advice — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 07:00:29 +0000

It pays to review your resume. So many people simply do a spell check which catches misspellings, but not grammar mistakes that can be even worse…

By: Flexo

Flexo — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:40:49 +0000

Penelope: Thanks very much for stopping by!

By: Penelope Trunk

Penelope Trunk — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:37:06 +0000

Hi, Flexo. Your post is a shining moment in a week where (at last count)about 300 people took the time to log into Yahoo Finance to say how much they hated my column.

I enjoyed reading your commentary.

I have one semi-related tidbit: The degree I never finished was a master’s in English. When I was interviewing Thomas Benton, a columnist at the Chronicle of Higher Education, he told me that people with graduate degress in humanities would have had better odds surviving the Titanic than they do getting a tenured teaching job today.