It's resume time again...
And you know that means it's time for unintentionally hilarious resume submissions. Our IT staff is very short-handed, due to simultaneous office expansion and employee truncation, so everyone here is sorting through resumes for the 5 or 6 jobs we have available. As we have multiple projects going on (not to mention 2005 budgets, which I'm handling), the sorting process, as I wrote about last year, has been accelerated.

I have on my wall what I consider to be the worst cover letter ever, and there have been no contenders to the throne (not even one where an applicant addressed our male CEO as "Ms."). However, a recent desktop technician's resume was brought to my attention for serious review. My colleagues were thinking of adding him to the phone-interview pool, but I vetoed it, based on one single missing letter. I don't mean a missing cover letter or mailed envelope. I mean a missing letter in one sentence on an otherwise spotless resume. Here is the sentence; see if you can find the missing letter:

"Eager to learn, self-starter, diligent and through."

You know, I might have let this one slide, but this guy chose the exact wrong sentence for a misspelling. I'm sure he is very thorough in everything he does. Except, of course, on work which may reflect his competency or be important. If he can't find the time to be thorough about a piece of paper that might get him hired, I can't see how he's going to be any better here.

And, while I laugh at this poor fool's expense, I'm tempted to email him to let him know of his error. I feel bad for his plight. But, like him, I'm not going to follow up because I'm through.

I'm... too sexy for my name
Either scientists have a lot of time on their hands, or some reporters are just killing for a story. Turns out that your name's sound has a sexy quality:

Men with “front vowels” in their names — sounds formed at the front of the mouth like the “a” in Matt — were considered sexier than men with “back vowel” sounds like the “au” in Paul, she concluded.

I'm a little confused, since my first name conflicts with my middle. I will vouch for the non-sexy quality of Paul, mostly because anytime I hear the name, it's usually together with the first in the form of outrage (i.e., my mother getting angry: "Matthew Paul Jones!!!!").

Alas, for Jaquandor, the news is not as good:

But men who might be thinking of taking more feminine names to become sexier should be careful not to go too far: Men with women’s names were rated least sexy of all.