What seems to be a 20-word resume submitted by a prospective job applicant is circulating online, and has provoked a serious conversation online.
Job applications are tedious especially when you think of how many applicants a prospective employer has to consider. The implication of this tedious process for an applicant is simple; the shorter, the better. Zipjob’s Caitlin Proctor who is a professional resume writer advises applicants to maintain the standard 2 page resume, but also keep a single page resume in some situations.
The typical one page resume is easy to browse through very quickly. Such resumes are suitable for networking events, job fairs, and other such in person scenarios. It is better for recent graduates, and first time applicants (people with limited experience) to keep their resume moderately worded. Without work experiences, a two page resume will contain mostly irrelevant information. Applicants should try to keep it simple, and concise, but too simple may be counterproductive.
A “too simple” example is circulating on the internet via Reddit from Firmteacher who shared the image of a resume. This resume was from a potential employee who applied for a job with Firmteacher’s wife. This very simple resume was taken a bit too far with two sentences containing just 20 words. Within few hours of this upload, the circulating image of this resume received more than 102,000 upvotes.
The resume written by “Faith, M” or to the name “Faith, M”reads:
“was working for a trucking company. Just got fired for insubordination. Not true. Looking for upright employer.”
The said post has generated a sort of befuddlement online with various social media reactions.
Meattyloaf noted: “Forward/direct, straight to the point. This person was built for business.”
Redneckpflap was of the opinion that this applicant was “probably trying to get some kind of unemployment benefit and needs to apply for x numbers of jobs per week or something.”
The user Bot-magnet reacted: “No phone or email listed, otherwise it’s an eye-catcher” with no hidden meaning writing: “Playing hard to get. I like it.”
Reactions from some users narrated their strange job application experiences during recruitment. According to BGL911: “I had one at work once that had ‘resumay.txt’ at the top, and read simply ‘I am hard work and English good. Please job.
Secord-92 reacted from a unique perspective. According to the user, they working for a trucking company can produce this level of confidence. “If they are a professional driver…this is likely enough to get hired somewhere pretty quickly!”. User DM591 supported this with an affirmative post: “As a former On The Road (OTR) driver, most companies don’t even require a resume to get hired. So this individual actually went above, and beyond.”
Big_duo3674 narrated his experience: “We got an application with about half of the personal information filled out with words way out of order, and for all the rest of the sections he only put two single words in. Under the previous experience section it said ‘Making pizzys.'”
Although there is no confirmation that the resume poster was applied as a driver, the truth is that there is a serious dearth of labour among truck drivers recently. There was a recent AG Week report about a $39/hour truck driver vacancy from a South Dakota cooperative which was posted on AG Week. This vacancy could not attract even a single applicant. Who knows if this viral post will be the first of many to come.
https://www.newsweek.com/job-applicant-20-word-resume-reddit-1731689
