I feel bad for the youth of today

At my company we are currently interviewing for an operations assistant/entry pc tech and we are looking to recruit from a local tech school in our area and I'm astounded how terrible these resumes are. Every single resume just looked progressively worst. From the tone of the resumes they all sound like real young candidates for there sake I hope they are. Its like no one knows how to write a resume or formulate a sentence and these are the top contenders the career advisor has for us. One of them mentioned that they like to listen to trance and ambient elevator music.

I feel there should be a mandatory business writing or life skills class in H.S. because these young kids seem to be thrown into the real world clueless. I can't even say that the people attended tech/career training schools are incompetent or dumb because I attended one of those training schools and met a lot of smart people who advanced into systems/network admin positions.

Ok I'm done with my Rant

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AwesomeGarrett

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

I sincerely hope you don't put "CCENT, CCNA, CCNP" on your resume. lol

I'm actually very proud of my CCENT because I knew very little about networking before I studied and took the exam.

Also some recruiters and hiring managers do not know the difference. So, yes I actually put them all.

fredrikjj

dmarcisco wrote: »

At my company we are currently interviewing for an operations assistant/entry pc tech and we are looking to recruit from a local tech school in our area and I'm astounded how terrible these resumes are. Every single resume just looked progressively worst [worse]. From the tone of the resumes they all sound like real young candidates [and] for there [their] sake I hope [that] they are. Its [It's] like no one knows how to write a resume or formulate a sentence and these are the top contenders the career advisor has for us. One of them mentioned that they like to listen to trance and ambient elevator music.

I feel there should be a mandatory business writing or life skills class in H.S. because these young kids seem to be thrown into the real world clueless. I can't even say that the people attended [attending] tech/career training schools are incompetent or dumb because I attended one of those training schools and met a lot of smart people who advanced into systems/network admin positions.

Ok I'm done with my Rant

I picked up these mistakes pretty quickly and EN is my second language, but language skills are pretty much irrelevant and not something companies particularly care about. I've never gone through any kind of language test on an interview, despite the fact that it's very common for companies to list expertise in Swedish and English as very important. If it actually mattered they would test it.

PS.
I'm not trying to be a douchebag by pointing out these mistakes, and I might have made some too, but presumably, you are effective at your job anyway. In the same vein, there's no reason to believe that some guy or girl who wants to be a PC tech won't be effective just because he or she broke some unwritten rule by putting their music preference on their resume.

wes allen

It is always easy to beat up on the younger people, has been going on forever. My understanding, though, is that resumes for all age groups can suck. I know mine did for the first 20 years. Rather then trying to push people to write one themselves, I am a fan of the "hire an expert" school of thought when it comes to stuff outside your domain. Even if it is just an English student friend that you buy pizza and beer for their help. People just don't always know what they don't know, and effective writing isn't always high on the list of things you need to know.

And, even though it is infosec focused, everyone in IT should watch Eve Adams "Hack the Hustle" presentation on resumes.

xenodamus

OfWolfAndMan wrote: »

The English classes today in this country are efficient enough to teach the children (Except for maybe Mississippi. Their education system is terrible). The problem comes between three thing primarily: Parenting, the general public's influence for being as lazy as possible, and a lack of motivation. Personally, you get out of public schooling what you put into it. The end.

I graduated from a public school in Mississippi with a 4.0 GPA and went on to do the same in college after scoring a 31 on the ACT. I think it's more about parenting and motivation than the teachers. Garbage in...garbage out...ya know? Do you live in MS as well?

403Forbidden

High School doesn't prepare you for the real world, that is not its job. High School is there to prepare you to take the ACT or SAT (at least in the US) to get a high enough score so that the school looks like they did their job give you a diploma and then send you off to college if you have the financial means to do so or if you're willing enough to take on student loan debt that you'll be paying off for the better part of 20 years. High School doesn't even teach you about what you want to know, shotgun blasting various subjects at you so that you'll score well on a broad subject matter test. I was more interested in learning about the sciences than wasting an hour a day for two years in an art class where you just doodled on paper or played around with clay.

the_Grinch

I can honestly say I didn't have any information on a resume until I got to college. Drexel forces all students to take a two term course that deals with interviewing, resumes, and talking to experienced professionals. They also have a web based tool for creating a resume. You fill it in, but it does all the formatting for you. That being said, I got some serious help from a member on here and it made a world of difference.

All that being said, I couldn't tell you the number of times I went to interviews and they people I was speaking with hadn't even read my resume. I'm talking literally asking questions, I'd answer, and then they'd say "oh you wrote that on your resume sorry about that". It's more of the exception then the rule though, as most times in interviews I'd find the interviewer has marked up my resume to ask me question about various sections.

Generally, I tend to feel that we don't prepare graduates (at the high school nor college level) for the real world. I was lucky enough to at least get a murky view of the real world, but it was never clear. I took an economics course in high school that touched on personal finance (but it wasn't required and I only took it because I needed to fill the spot). I was in an engineering program in high school and they brought in people working in the industry to discuss their jobs (so I at least figured out what I didn't want to do). In college, I worked on my own, but Drexel offered a coop so you at least got out into the real world.

Honestly, I advocate that students do a gap year between college and high school, but via a structured program. Be it the military, the peace corp, or one of these programs where for a year you live with various families around the world and so social projects. We generally lack perspective on things and most enter college without a clue of what they want to do.

OfWolfAndMan

I graduated from a public school in Mississippi with a 4.0 GPA and went on to do the same in college after scoring a 31 on the ACT. I think it's more about parenting and motivation than the teachers. Garbage in...garbage out...ya know? Do you live in MS as well?

Nope. Washington (The state kind). Just statistically speaking. I'd say grammar and spelling is significant enough for any situation, resume or not. Format can also be a somewhat important factor to resume writing as well. I agree with the OP though. A class would be a great thing, but I will address the two methods with english class and the problem with both 1.Taking a college english class: You're putting about as much effort into english as you were in high school. Most colleges today just require you to pay for the classes, sit down, and say you've been in college for four to eight years (Or more) to obtain a degree (As long as you pass your classes). Doesn't mean you've learned anything (Not saying there aren't colleges that don't teach you something). 2.The employer pays for a business-funded english class: Sure, it would be nice. However, the boss wants to invest in priority. If he doesn't need to fund something like this, he's not going to. The better option for employers that look for a forte in english proficiency is to hire those that possess fluency in the language required. For example, if they state "Strong oral/communication skills" and the errors are noticeable, then I'm pretty sure your applicant forgot to leave out the "Dishonesty" key skill. Just saying

it_consultant

A resume is not a test of one's writing abilities. It is generally inexcusable to have misspelled words or poor grammar on a resume not because we are expecting you to be an English whiz, but because there are a VAST amount of references available to the public at little or no cost which will help you write a competent resume. When we see a poorly written resume, we think LAZY. This is not limited to IT, there has been a general decline in the quality of the American student and worker. I can see this clearly as I am an early millennial; I see the generation before me and the people younger than me who are now entering the workforce, we are going in the wrong direction.

Luckily IT people are given a bit of a break. It is a common understanding (deserved or not) that IT people are weird about things like writing and are often forgiven for a bit of awkwardness. Resumes that would sink a candidate in another job might get a second look in IT hiring because a lot of very good IT guys write resumes like 5th graders. Ask an IT recruiter, half of their job is rewriting your POS resume before it gets to their client.

SteveLord

Those people probably relied on the tech school to do everything for them. Then they realized their enormous tuition cost didn't include a professional crafting it for them in addition to the poor education they probably received. That's how many of those schools operate! "Career services" is one of the most attractive bait.

GAngel

Not only are they lazy they can't even take the time to change the headings. If i advertise a security admin job you could atleast take 3 seconds to change your heading from looking for a help desk job. Atleast 50% of rejected resumes on my desk are because of this. Mis-spelled words (its a resume for pete's sake - your only point of contact initially). The only thing worse than a bad resume is the guys who lied and knows nothing in the interview. Can't give me anything beyond the most generic of definitions.

If i or others in my dept are just going to have to train them to be a functioning worker much less an IT worker it's a non-starter. It's sad what counts for an average level of english/math/reasoning & deducting in today's world.

Eg. I used to have a simple question I'd ask where to find the answer you'd need add 21+33. Only one candidate could do this in his/her head without paper or a calculator. Some still manged to get it wrong.
I've had to take the question out of my pool because it's clearly too hard for an intermediate level position I was hiring for.

tpatt100

I think people tend to look at the youth with hostility because we are jealous they are young.... I am a child of the 80's and I am very confident in assuming my parent's generation had plenty of negative stereotypes of my generation.

I think there might be an issue with writing/grammar due to the high speed and high availability of the internet that lets some of us take it for granted. We default to sending things via text messages and documents rather than talking because it is quick and easy and with that we became kinda lazy because it is so easy to type and send things now.

With so many things that required taking the time to do like calling and waiting or going to stand in line, we do online now. Forms are there to guide us and we just fill the information out, no formatting required just fill in the blanks. Come time to create a resume and if it can't be done with a wizard some people get confused. The "fast and easy" method doesn't work and they already sort of devalued the importance of typed messages representing them to an employer.

DoubleNNs

AwesomeGarrett wrote: »

This actually is a sensitive subject for me, as English is not my first language even though I was born in the states and most of my schooling has been state side. You'd never know from talking to me as I do not have an accent of any kind. I do try and make an effort but I cannot always identify an incomplete sentence.(That's what my wife is for .)

As far as resumes go, I will admit, I don't put the best AwesomeGarrett out there.

Once I talk tech though, people seem to suddenly forget to how bad my grammar or spelling may be from time to time.

Unless your wife edits all your TE posts, it seems like you have better grammar than I do - a native English speaker.

Which goes to prove sratakhin's previous post:

sratakhin wrote: »

Found this picture somewhere.

networker050184

Again, I don't think it has anything to do with youth. I think it's just a pure lack of effort on everyone's part young and old. I only read experienced people's resumes (10+ years experience most of the time. People in their 30s-50s) and see the same exact things you guys see with entry level ones. Lack of attention to detail and a complete misunderstanding of writing a professional document.

networker050184

DoubleNNs wrote: »

Unless your wife edits all your TE posts, it seems like you have better grammar than I do - a native English speaker.

Which goes to prove sratakhin's previous post:

And what is the difference between those two? An effort put forth in one and laziness in the other.

LarryDaMan

redz wrote: »

You're always attacking the younger generation. They aren't perfect (hell, I'll agree that many aren't even good).

I thought you said you were only 28 in one of your posts, no?

Is there a dog year equivalent for IT folk? 28 is pretty youthful.

redz

I am 28, as of about a month ago - but at 10 years of experience since starting at 18, I don't generally group myself in with your 22-25 year old workforce.

tpatt100

Do not disrespect the youth, for one day they will be changing your diaper. - Confucius.

Tremie24

Yeah I have to agree that it doesn't necessarily target the youth. I just attended a resume work shop offered by the work force center. The majority of the people were probably late 30s and above. Writing a GOOD resume is something takes time. I've had my resume laughed at before, but in the last few months I've had it critique. Every time I present my resume to someone they always say that's the format I like to see.

GoodBishop

tpatt100 wrote: »

Do not disrespect the youth, for one day they will be changing your diaper. - Confucius.

Or selecting your nursing home.

kohr-ah

I guess the college I went to now has a required Resume and Interview course you must take (it is 8 weeks long) as part of the degree. I wish they had that when I got my AAS from there :P

zeroth

dmarcisco wrote: »

Let me apologize in advance if punctuality and spelling is incorrect. I mostly respond on my samsung galaxy 2 when im free and fixing little details are a pain.

Not trying to wind you up or anything, but:

punctuality != punctuation, they're two totally different things.

"punctuation and spelling are incorrect"

"fixing little details is a pain"

Legacy User

@zeroth Don't worry I don't take things to heart. When I typed that I was handling my business in the bathroom. I wrote it once after getting aggravated trying to edit a post on my phone and never proofread it. Good catch though!

Just let me clarify as I see my original post struck some chords with a few people. I know I should not have generalized it but in my situation it appeared all the applicants had to be fairly young. My assumption was based on the nonsense written in the hobby section a good majority felt it was appropriate to add playing video games or the kind of music they liked or a mixture of both. Honestly, its sad and I felt bad for them. The resume is the employers first impression of you and you can't think its ok to send something that sounds as if it was written by a 5th grader. If I knew any of them personally I would certainly mentor them and give them guidance but I don't. I know first hand how it feels to go on plenty of job interviews or apply to jobs and not get calls back and it sucks.

I feel like the younger crowd just gets thrown out to the wolves without any real world preparation. I start to think could this be one of the key factors so many young graduates have trouble finding work after school.

The point of my post was not meant to offend anyone but was merely a way for me to express my frustration. I would always hear stories how resumes get thrown in the garbage after the 30 second mark and I witnessed it first hand. These candidates may be brilliant but we will never know since they could not properly showcase that on the resume. I'm sure these are the same resumes that they send out to different companies. My words of advice to all the newbies trying to break into the industry before placing the blame on anyone else claiming noone is giving you a chance think about this Would you hire you?

tprice5

I should punch my college resume seminar instructor in the face. I was told to include hobbies bc it let the employer know more about you and that you might connect with them via a shared interest. After my first job I deleted that off my resume so fast... "hobbies include: water skiing, cycling".. embaressing, ha.

::sigh::
At least it's off now.

In all seriousness though, I am still up in the air about how to format a list of certificaiton.

EDIT:

xenodamus wrote: »

I graduated from a public school in Mississippi with a 4.0 GPA and went on to do the same in college after scoring a 31 on the ACT. I think it's more about parenting and motivation than the teachers. Garbage in...garbage out...ya know? Do you live in MS as well?

My family is from MS and I have two cousins in Med school. Sadly, they are the exception.

redz wrote: »

Man, Packet, you've been in the game too long. You're jaded. Go on a cruise, get a massage, whatever centers you - just try to relax a bit. You're always attacking the younger generation. They aren't perfect (hell, I'll agree that many aren't even good), but did you start out perfect in all your soft skills or did you have a mentor somewhere along the way?

Ha yeah. Something is going on with that guy at work or home. He's got a generally negative attitude/disposition on every subject he comments on.

Essendon

I dont think Packet's got a negatively geared mind, he's just blunt and says things like they are.

tprice5

Essendon wrote: »

I dont think Packet's got a negatively geared mind, he's just blunt and says things like they are.

Me neither, he justs seems on edge as of late.

docrice

Many of us who have been in the industry long enough develop a sense of impatience where we'd rather get to the point to save time instead of explaining it with soft euphemisms. Or perhaps we're just jaded. I can understand being the latter.

CCNTrainee

xenodamus wrote: »

I graduated from a public school in Mississippi with a 4.0 GPA and went on to do the same in college after scoring a 31 on the ACT. I think it's more about parenting and motivation than the teachers. Garbage in...garbage out...ya know? Do you live in MS as well?

I don't agree that Parenting has to do with a Damn thing, even if they are our biggest influences in our life, not like any kid is asked if they want to be brought into this world. My parents were drug abusers and criminals; I ended up being the total opposite... It took me a long time to fit into this world since I was an Anti-social reject that didn't know how to act around people in a work environment. None of it changed until I was 21, got fed up and decided to kick my family to the curb. A few years after that, I joined the Service and took a part in Uncle Sam's conflicts... I was blown up, did some fun Action, got to play with a few dead bodies and body parts.

Our Life experience define who we are, the Service has molded me to the person/worker that I am now. If you were spoiled with an easy life growing up, I don't expect anyone's work ethnics to pull much weight when it comes to the job. Frankly if people don't have a passion for IT in general, they should get out and find a different job because they are only hogging up the space for the people that actually want to be in it. I am sick of people that are blind to the fact that they were raised in a world of "Rainbows and Ponies", spoiled yet they think they are owed something in life... Sorry but you have to work for it, know your stuff, and know how to sell your skills that you have acquired. Having a Degree doesn't mean you are owed anything as well especially if your some fresh graduate right out of college... /rant

zrockstar

If you are primarily recruiting from one tech school, then maybe that is your problem. There are a lot of schools where you can pretty much just buy a degree, or at least obtain one without having a solid general education. Sounds like this is one of those schools and your company is drinking from the well when you know the water is bad. If you want better candidates expand your recruitment efforts, pay more, or increase the appeal of your company. You can't keep going back to the school of idiots and wonder why you are getting resumes from idiots.

CCNTrainee

tprice5 wrote: »

I should punch my college resume seminar instructor in the face. I was told to include hobbies bc it let the employer know more about you and that you might connect with them via a shared interest. After my first job I deleted that off my resume so fast... "hobbies include: water skiing, cycling".. embaressing, ha.

::sigh::
At least it's off now.

HAHAHA, I have to laugh at this part, because I was told the same thing by a "College-Level" Resume instructor and others "Post" high school years. I already knew that was wrong from the start since I took a "Career Guidance" class at my HS, it was actually a mandatory requirement for our Jr year. We had an excellent guest instructor that advised us and did mock interviews with the class. He assigned individual interviews where we had to dress in professional attire. Funny how I got from the HS level compared to someone that is from a College. Lol

CCNTrainee

Polynomial wrote: »

While its another generalization this forum tends to not respect higher education at all. I don't know why.

Higher ed is undoubtedly the number one recruiting pool for the top tech companies.

Well is depends on where you stand when it comes to Higher Ed, since a lot of people like to argue that Online schools don't compare to B+M schools and look down on degrees that were earned online. Some even go as far as to act like elitest and claim they got their degree from an "Actual College", thou WGU is promoted heavily on this site.

My 2cents on Higher Ed, is that I will get my degree when I am good and ready. Since I don't plan on going into debt for a degree, I am not in a rush to get one because people "Advise" that I need to go and get one...