The Most Outlandish Resume Mistakes of 2012

culled from:www.forbes.com

Unless you’re applying for a job at a pizzeria, your résumé objective shouldn’t say, “to make dough.” Nor should it be decorated with pink rabbits or include texting slang like “LOL.”
Candidates have actually made all of these mistakes, among many others—and while they probably caught the attention of their potential employer, chances are they didn’t land the job. These blunders did, however, earn them a spot on a new compilation of hiring managers’ most memorable résumé missteps.
Outlandish Resume Mistakes
 “Every hiring manager has seen a résumé that was a bit ‘out there,’” says Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at the jobs website CareerBuilder.com. “These job seekers are probably trying to be clever and stand out, but it often backfires and that résumé usually goes straight to the ‘no’ pile.”
Harris Interactive conducted a survey on behalf of CareerBuilder among 2,298 hiring managers to unearth 12 of the most eccentric things employers have ever seen on résumés this year. For instance, one applicant wrote about her family being in the mob, while another candidate applying for an accounting job said he was “deetail-oriented” and spelled the company’s name incorrectly.
The study also reveals one-in-five HR managers reported that they spend less than 30 seconds reviewing applications and around 40% spend less than one minute–so it’s possible that some applicants include outlandish or inappropriate content to stand out from the crowd of candidates. But there are more professional ways to get noticed. (See “Seven Ways To Perfect Your Resume”)
In Pictures: 12 of the Most Outlandish Resume Mistakes of 2012
“With technology, it is so easy to just click and send a résumé out, but if you take the time to tailor it, it will get more time for review,” says Haefner.” A customized résumé resonates well with hiring managers and that will help you stand out for the right reasons.”
Haefner suggests modifying your résumé for each position to showcase your achievements and professionalism, and to demonstrate why you are the best candidate for the job. But be sure to do so with clean, clear content and easy-to-read formatting. “You want to go easy on the eye,” she says. “And you should only include relevant and appropriate information.” Including a silly detail or decorating your résumé may be eye-catching, but it will bring only a gasp or a chuckle–not a job offer.
“It’s not always bad to be creative,” she adds. “But you want to be creative in a smart way.” The best way to do that is by tailoring your résumé to show who you are and what you can bring to the table. “Very few people take time to do this, so you will stand out,” she says.
Since creativity isn’t completely out of the question, CareerBuilder asked hiring managers for real examples of creative approaches that made positive impressions. Here’s what they reported:
• One candidate sent his résumé in the form of an oversized Rubik’s Cube, where you had to push the tiles around to align the résumé. He was hired.
• Another candidate who had been a stay-at-home mom listed her skills as nursing, housekeeping, chef, teacher, bio-hazard cleanup, fight referee, taxi driver, secretary, tailor, personal shopping assistant and therapist. She was hired.
• An applicant created a marketing brochure promoting herself as the best candidate and was hired.
• A candidate listed accomplishments and lessons learned from each position. He gave examples of good customer service he provided as well as situations he wished he would have handled differently. He was hired.
• A job seeker applying for a food and beverage management position sent a résumé in the form of a fine-dining menu and was hired.
• Another job applicant crafted his résumé to look like Google search results for the “perfect candidate.” This candidate ultimately wasn’t hired, but was considered.
Whether you decide to be creative with your job application or take a more traditional route, your résumé must be flawless. Haefner recommends asking three or four people to edit it, as sometimes you need an objective eye to notice that some content may be sloppy, inappropriate or irrelevant.
“Think about how you want to present yourself,” she says. “Hiring managers have a big pile of résumés to review, and they are always looking for a reason to put you in the ‘no’ pile.”

When asked what would make them automatically dismiss a candidate from consideration, employers pointed to résumés with typos, résumés that copied large amounts of wording from the job posting, résumés with an inappropriate email address, résumés that don’t include a list of skills, résumés that are more than two pages long, and résumés that are printed on decorative paper, among other things.
The bottom line is that your résumé is often where you make your first impression on a hiring manager. To avoid having it also be the last, carefully consider what you want the employer to see at a glance, and strive to stand out for having a professional, tailored document. Claiming that you’re able to speak “Antartican” or referring to yourself as a genius and inviting the hiring manager to your apartment for the interview just won’t cut it.
Click here to see 12 of the most outlandish résumé mistakes of 2012.
Image by Getty Images North America via @daylife
Executive coaching is a fast growing business, at least in the ‘usual suspect’ economies of the developed world. And there are no shortage of individuals, firms and educational institutions ready and willing to provide it. Just try entering the term into Google to see just how many (this morning the search generated over 770,000 results  – a little behind ‘royal wedding’ with 46 million, but you get the picture). But just how effective is it?
The commitment of corporate titans such as GE, Goldman Sachs and Google now sees spending on executive coaching in the US alone at more than $1billion per year. But whereas 20 years ago most coaching was a remedial effort aimed at poor performers, most coaching budgets today focus on developing high potential leaders. And what are they getting for their money?
Though the exact impact of coaching is notoriously hard to quantify, Marc Roudebush, CEO of Inspiring Workplace, points to a recent global survey of coaching clients by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Association Resource center which concluded that the mean ROI for companies investing in coaching was 7 times the initial investment, with over a quarter reporting an ROI of 10 to 49 times. For Roudebush, who has worked with senior executives at companies as diverse as Google, Bacardi and HSBC, the reason for such large returns is clear: leaders cast a long shadow. “When they are able to walk their talk, people listen and are likely to follow suit, improving the levels of enthusiasm, trust, and team effectiveness throughout a team or organization.”
As well as providing executive coaching services and producing academics that deliver some of the most credible work in the area, many of the world’s top business schools are putting their money where their mouths are by allocating at least a small part of their MBA programs to the intense, one-to-one techniques involved. And some are sticking their necks out even further.  The ESMT school in Germany, for example, claims that it is now devoting between five and eight times more time to coaching than its peers on the European continent. Meanwhile, The Wharton School in Philadelphia has committed to a two-year coaching experience as part of a major overhaul of the MBA program – a focus they hope will encourage development of the personal skills that are crucial to exemplary leadership.
Although this must give some badge of quality to the concept of executive coaching it does also raise the worry that its real basis is academic theory rather than hard, practical ideas that can be used in the day-to-day workplace.  Take for example, the coaching undertaken by Christophe Haag, an associate professor at the French business school, EM Lyon. He focuses on ‘emotional intelligence’, the ability to recognise how other people are feeling in a business context and to react appropriately for mutual benefit. As Haag puts it, “There is a direct link between emotion and successful communication. And in day to day situations, as well as in times of crisis, it’s the leaders who can use a wide range of emotions effectively who gain the most support from their audience.” The idea may not be new, but what is novel is his belief, based on extensive research, that the skill can be measured as an ‘emotional intelligence quotient’ and, crucially, developed through training. Perhaps surprisingly this training does not involve years of analysis and introspection, but a series of extremely straightforward exercises.  One simple example is where he instructs his student to look at pre-written cards that describe emotions such as ‘angry’ or ‘enthusiastic’ and then make the appropriate facial gestures. At first this is done in a mirror and the student assesses their own performance, but step two is for them to practice with a friend or partner and have them critique it.
Back at ESMT, Professor Konsatantin Korotov, takes the view that ambitious executives don’t only need to understand what makes others tick they need to recognise what is going on in their own personalities. And coaching can play a key part in making this happen. “If a particular behaviour is ineffective, it makes sense to try and understand what explains it,” he says. “If an executive is, for example, afraid of taking risks, the reasons may be found somewhere beyond the rational, conscious level.” He argues that a coach can help individuals explore beyond the obvious, less as a teacher and more as a guide, helping to get them to what he describes as the ‘a-ha moments’ that lead to real insight.
Perhaps, however, the most effective coach of all is staring back at you from the bathroom mirror every morning, at least in the view of another business school, the Desautels Faculty at McGill University in Canada. Great believers in the idea that working out the answers for yourself is often the most effective approach to problems, they have deliberately created space in their MBA program, whereby students get an opportunity every week to switch off the phone, email and internet and engage in some good old-fashioned reflection. Liberating the inner coach, it seems, may still be possible in the modern world. But only if you’re prepared for the peace and quiet which most of today’s professionals and managers can only dream about.