How-To: Resumes and Interviews

I'm in the midst of reviewing student applications and resumes and emails and calls for interviews. This happens every year. We are always hiring and training students, and frankly, this place wouldn't run without them. I've been doing this for several years and you'd think that by now I would know what person is going to work out and be a good employee and who's dumber than a bucket of pudding.

And you would be very, very wrong.

One thing I've learned... you cannot tell by looking.

The thing about this job is you need to be detail-oriented and used to catching minute errors in spelling and little quibbly things. You have to be able to read well. Sometimes you have to trouble-shoot and intuit what you THINK the patron might want. When the prison library requests come in and an ex-con requests the title: HOES, he is looking for popular street erotic fiction, not a book on useful garden tools by Martha Stewart. Some people catch on to this rather quickly. Some never do.

I just had a great student graduate and leave for greener pastures so I need to hire a new student. So far, so not good.

So here are some tips for college students, and people in general, when you are looking for a job.

1. Don't show up to a 1:00pm interview looking like you just rolled out of bed.

2. Don't tell the interviewer, after they ask you why you applied for this job, that, "Yeah, I think I need some structure in my life." I think that's what the ROTC is for.

3. Don't wear flip-flops to a job interview.

4. If you do wear flip-flops, please get a pedicure. I don't want to look at your fungal-infested toenails and have them remind me of the corn chips I ate for lunch.

5. Please include your name on your resume.

6. Also, feel free to use a resume template. Just be sure that the objective line doesn't say: Please write your objective here.

7. A good objective if you can't think of one: To get a job. This job.

8. Don't list your friends or their parents as references. Or your parents. Or your pets.

9. Please check for misspellings and correct numbers. I don't want to call your phone number and get Domino's pizza.

10. I know many students don't have much work history and write their hobbies down as a way to fill space on the paper. You don't have to do this. I don't really care.

11. If you must include hobbies, please spell them correctly. If you like painting and reading that is great, but if you really do like EXORcising and not EXERcising, then we might have a problem. Although freeing innocent souls from the clutches of Satan's demonic minions does indeed sound like an INTERESTING hobby. You can just keep that private.

Hope this helps all the job-hunters out there.
Good luck!