To ask what is the worst job application you have read? *lighthearted*

[jobapplicationshock]

Name changed as this is outing.

Someone has been headhunted for a corporate job that she seems to fit exactly. Great education, exemplary recommendations, great networking skills (all according to linkedin)

I was responsible for going through the applications and forwarding on; all great until I got to "the one" and my eyes nearly popped out of my head.

On the "about me" bit she has written "[MNHQ removed as it was identifying]"
Objectives are "[MNHQ removed as it was identifying]".

This is a first time for me, enlighten me with your tales of application woes please

also Tsunami you say that but I've applied for a lot of jobs using online application systems which insist on you listing your GCSEs and A-levels etc. one by one...

So utterly tedious for all involved.

Its an old cliche response to that question on forms, except this wasn't a form. He added to his CV for no reason, and he was about 22 so not old enough to be from the Bernard Manning school of comedy. I guess he thought it was an icebreaker...?!

I once had a friend who had a 4 page CV. He listed his junior school, his subjects there, then the secondary school GCSEs, and various non informative bits and pieces (member of the scouts when he was a kid etc). He also had it in 6 point font. (He was in his 30s)He wondered why he wasn’t getting jobs!

My db has an MSc in a science subject. After one interview he was told that he got the job on the condition that he resat his GCSE science and got an A!

We sent out a job with applications only. No c.v's

One applicant emailed in a cv, which was ignored.

When the interview date had passed, he emailed to ask why he never got an interview.

I informed him he never filled an app form in.

He basically begged for an interview. I said it was too late, then he emailed a bizarre message saying we didn't know what we were missing as he would be our most loyal and humble servant.

No. It wasn't Paul Burrell. It was for a job in the social housing sector.

Silverspot

The job might not include hockey, but to be representing her country over a number of years is a huge achievement and shows grit and determination, singlemindedness and attention to detail- all of which are good things to have

PineappleSnapple I took it as it was asking him his sex and instead of writing or ticking the Male box, he wrote "Yes Please" as if it was posing a question, i.e. [do you want] sex?

I had one that just wrote ‘ I’d be great at this job’ - I begged to differ....

I had to help choose my dd's one to one when she needed SEN support in reception.So the head asked me to read through the applications,most were good,with one having loads of experience & lots of qualifications, but one had bad handwriting,awful spelling, punctuation & grammar & not a lot of SEN experience.So I ruled her out, but then I met them at interview & she was just perfect.
She was my dd's one to one for 2 years & was amazing.I couldn't have hoped for a better one.

Expecting one of my desperate, hopeful job application faux pas to turn up on this thread.

I employed someone partly because on her c.v. she stated that she gas excellent IT skills and her c.v. was well written.
On her second day our database developer was showing her the specifics of our database and she asked him "How did you do that?" She had no idea how to put an upper case letter in a document.
The strange thing is that she became good at her job.

Surely you don’t need to list every single team you’ve been in? Simply say “I have represented my country in hockey since I was 11/12”. Less is more and all that.

I wouldn’t list my GCSEs individually, I’d just say “10 GCSEs at A*-C including Maths and English”.

Ha ha , you wrote "gas" John

Feeling bad for writing my GCSE's now but I don't have any better qualifications!

I've had loads of people beg for jobs inside of feedback and bug report forms for software.

It doesn't look great when you tell me to ring you so that you can explain the issue to me that way as it's "complicated", then go on to tell me what a great asset you would be as you've used loads of software. If you can't even explain a software bug in writing - which is how these things are done - and you also failed to include any way to reach you so that I can get that information, you would not be right for this job mate.

Henrythehoover Then you need to adopt a different tack. A competency or experience led CV should be more appropriate. I have 3 degrees and they aren't as 'important' as they once were. Now I sell my core skills and competencies. Unless accreditation is mandatory - my degrees are now largely just the bare minimum.

he was told that he got the job on the condition that he resat his GCSE science and got an A!

Did he? I hope he didn't.

Years ago someone applying for an admin position: 'My ex-husband is a doctor, so I have lots of medical knowledge and know how to treat most conditions.' I have no idea what she was thinking.

Job Centre Advisors often require people to apply for totally unsuitable jobs. If they don't apply for it, they will get their benefits stopped.

Sort of a job application. My workplace has students in as interns during the summer, with the hope of a job offer at the end. One person seemed to think that he was guaranteed a job because his dad was fairly senior in a company that was a key customer. He was late to everything, drank at lunch time quite a few times and complained about everything he was asked to do. The final straw was when I asked him to print some documents for us to take to a meeting. He changed some of the words to rather rude ones. I pretended not to have noticed but let the boss know. The student went to my boss and told him that I had clearly not been checking his work properly and had left papers with swear words in with a big customer. He seemed to think he would get extra credit for 'catching me out'. Seemed genuinely shocked when he didn't get a job.

my Dsis once received an application letter that had been typed on the applicant's current employers' headed paper.

The applicant also spelled my Dsis surname wrong. It's only 5 letters long ffs. As the job was a clerical one involving a need for accurate work, that one got filed under W rather promptly.

The man who listed his membership of the Bruce Forsyth Appreciation Society under "hobbies" - fair enough so far, but it didn't stop at that and he dragged it into everything. So "aims" included improving promotion for the Society, the employment record listed just about every task he'd ever done for them and so on

The young woman who wrote her CV entirely in Welsh using a size 14 font, with the English translation under each section in an almost microscopic size 8

Best of all, perhaps, the applicant who wrote a cod application making (actually pretty clever) fun of the job and presumably filed it away for his own amusement. Only he sent the wrong one in when he actually applied ...

Plenty of fun sponges on here today.

With all due respect, someone's 'best' isn't good enough.

They need to meet the criteria.

It's the world of work not a charity.

I was doing some Recruitment last year and the main criteria was that the candidate MUST have experience of working in a certain industry and that was very much emphasised in the job ad
Around 90% of the people who applied didn't

I blame the job centres! The equivalent in Geneva was that in order to be paid benefits in order to live, you were required to give proof of having written letters of application to 10 companies a week. Once you'd got through the companies which were in a related field to your qualifications, you obviously made your way through the Yellow Pages. As long as the job seekers' office got copies of your application letters, all good, no matter the relevance of the companies to your experience and abilities. Nonsense!
This has reminded me of the time I went for an interview with a recruitment agency when I first moved to Geneva. I was chatting on about my degree, when it became apparent that in my hasty cutting and pasting to get my CV sorted and translated into French, somewhere along the way, I'd left off my four years at university. Oh, how they didn't laugh and never contacted me again!