Dubai Consumer Mirror: Forget marketing .. HR is more fun!

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Forget marketing .. HR is more fun!

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Dear hr

I will be happy to apply for a job In Your venerable company about deployed in newspaper.

Thank You

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Hi All.......
I heared About your Company,So,I interest to be A Good Membership in your Team.

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Dear Sir,

I have Bachelor.IT
Iam interested in getting on opprtunity
to work with you,sir Iam not Have Experience but
have brain can think for any problem and find solve
it,So I will send my C.V

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Disclaimer: all above letters are 100% real and sent by 100% real people. Identities were removed to protect the innocent.

The above are examples of what NOT to write in a cover letter.

To all you job seekers out there, if you are not entirely, completely, absolutely, utterly and totally certain of your resume and cover letter drafting skills, do make the effort to show it to someone else. Sometimes Microsoft Office spell-check is not enough to write a proper job nailing letter or resume.

There are many online resources that one can use to brush up those job hunting skills. Websites like Monster or Bayt are loaded with tips and tricks on what to do and not to do when looking for jobs.

Good luck and thank you Buj :)

16 Comments:

Awwwwwwww shame......I see a lot of those kind of letters...it is sad.

By CG, at February 11, 2006 at 1:31 PM
very noble of you to protect the identities of the innocent. i suggest also posting some corrections to these letters and maybe even some tips. there will bound to be some people who read this blog and think this is the correct way to approach a company for work.

haram ya prof

By BuJ, at February 11, 2006 at 2:48 PM
Good point buj - i am not bashing them what so ever.. (would never do that)

And to be honest, i highly doubt any of them will come across this blog for many reasons; mainly, the emails were responses to an ad we placed in a newspaper outside of UAE..

:)

By moryarti, at February 11, 2006 at 3:36 PM
I have replied to similar letters with genuinely kind, well-meaning advice. The response is usually nothing, or anger.

I actually think that someone who sends such a letter is either too stupid or too lazy to bother with.

There may be a few rare cases where a genuinely interesting, skilled candidate has limited or strange English, but I've yet to see any. It also wouldn't be so bad if the letter included a disclaimer: "please excuse my imperfect English, it is something I am working to improve".

Would any of us apply to a company, let's say, in Siberia, writing a sort of broken Russian as best we can, perhaps using Babelfish, and expect to be seriously considered? Of course we bloody wouldn't.

By secretdubai, at February 11, 2006 at 5:37 PM
that's because babelfish is blocked in the UAE

BAZING!

By samuraisam, at February 12, 2006 at 8:23 AM
These by far aren't the worst CVs btw.

I've seen someone that sent in a CV to a company, they printed it out from word, and the spelling/grammer was terrible, it was for a low level job, but anyway, they printed it out, scanned it in again (?), and then saved it as like a 300 pixel wide gif file, it looked terrible, I actually felt quite sad after seeing it /:

By samuraisam, at February 12, 2006 at 5:18 PM
Sam what drug are you on man?

These are not CVs but some kind of covering letters. Also surely out of all the people here you'd know the correct spelling for grammar...

If babelfish is blocked, how about www.freetranslation.com ?

By BuJ, at February 12, 2006 at 7:40 PM
bah, it's not like i'm writing anything on here that i'd get marks on.
As for cover letters/jobs, I haven't had the (mis)fortune of applying for one yet. One day... one day....

By samuraisam, at February 13, 2006 at 5:50 AM
if i were interviewing you i'd hire you on the spot just for your attitude! don't worry u'll get a job in no time, just try to enjoy uni, matey.

if you need cv advice just holler

By BuJ, at February 13, 2006 at 12:47 PM
sam.. those cvs that ppl send as gif files. i've come across some myself - i guess thats when ppl loose their soft copy and instead of re-typing it - just scan their hard copy and mail it accross

By Anonymous, at February 13, 2006 at 1:05 PM
well... sometimes even places that are meant to help you with your CV can turn out being less helpful.

I just posted abt it on my blog...amusing but sad!

Good on you moryarti for being so "professional" about it :) hopefully if not them, some other miskeen will find it helpful.

By Shaykhspeara Sha'ira, at February 13, 2006 at 2:38 PM
harsha: the gifs i saw were about 400 pixels wide, you couldn't read anything clearly iirc, but I did however notice the border, which was little red apples all around the cv...
The scan quality was terrible. It was quite sad to look at.

Buj: will do (:, cept i'll probably just get a job packing shelves at a supermarket. cept it's all mafia'd here; the supermarket around the corner mystically only employs French people, the one a tad down the road only employs chinese people, and the one further further down the road employs old people, it's all senior-friendly, if you have a seniors card, they give you a free cup of tea if you shop there /:

By samuraisam, at February 13, 2006 at 2:58 PM
So Sam - you'd be accepted in all 3 supermarkets if you spoke French, ate Chinese food and helped little old ladies across the road?

:-)

By nzm, at February 13, 2006 at 5:20 PM
*buj smiles as he reads prof's edit to this post*

By BuJ, at February 14, 2006 at 2:05 AM
i so wanna post a cv for u guys to see.. its a word doc - but how do i upload it ? :o(

By Anonymous, at February 14, 2006 at 9:31 AM
Harsha .. maybe its time to start your own blog and join the gang ;)

By moryarti, at February 14, 2006 at 1:15 PM