Techoculture. Progress or decline?

187 Posts

Specializes in EMT-P.

I for one am all in favor of technology, and the numerous improvements it has brought to our quality of life. Indeed, technology is a wonderful thing and I will never forget those days of filling out forms on an old mechanical monstrosity called a typewriter. I would be remiss not to remind the young of filling out forms in triplicate, that messy black paper (carbon paper) laminated between your 3 sheets of paper. I will not even bother to mention the one dreaded mistake that we all feared as we sweated over each pounding mechanical keystroke. Ahem...

I told you that story as a lead in to my real story and more importantly my point, or rant if you prefer.

As usual, Monday morning rolls around and one of my many duties is to sift through numerous emails with attached resumes. Now keep in mind this organization has a myriad of professional people working here such as, lawyers, cancer biologist, marketing, etc.

I received this one resume this week and would like to share with you the first part of the resume.

"Career Objective: Seeking a position that'll use my tuff quantitative, math n Coms skilz. prticulR areas of intrst r data processing n rsrch."

Am I kidding? Most certainly not, and if I have not seen this sort of resume before, I would have thought someone was kidding me. The sad part is that this person had a BA degree. I guess this particular grad student neglected to take Welcome to reality 101. Needless to say, this particular resume ended up in that little trashcan icon located in the corner of my computer screen. It is unfortunate, as this candidate may have some good qualities to offer but we will never know.

Now I can understand the limitations that a 2 x 2 inch keyboard on a small portable device may bring, and it may be inconvenient typing whole words or sentences, but let it end there my SMS using friend. With a full sized Qwerty keyboard at your disposal, do me a favor and spare me the aggravation of running your message through a SMS translator in order to comprehend what the heck you are trying to tell me.

So for those that this post applies to, the next time you are posting on a forum, remind yourself of this. You are not posting to you buddy or friend, rather a potential colleague and as such, conduct yourself accordingly. Instead of typing u, it is you, want instead of wnt. After all it is just a few more letters and will go a long way in helping you get the response you so hope to get. In addition, for Pete's sake, never send your resume using SMS text, and until the day comes that my email reader comes with an included SMS converter; I will not be reading yours.

For all you SMS aficionados, Remember this phrase as you go to sleep tonight.

Ill nt uz SMS spk n Ny 4rum or on Ny cv I wrt, Im nt laZ +I cn typ ful sentences.