QOTD #15

"But wait, your blog is based on quotes." -Adam

My office (read: Adam and I) has spent this week reading resumes for a position opening. Before you get too jealous, it is not as exciting as it sounds. Before we took our final crack at the pile (and yes, it was a pile because even though we cut was likely over 100 resumes to 40ish by using a master's degree as a baseline, it still took a while to weed through who is potentially qualified and who may not be), we took our semi-regular trip to Starbucks. During our walk back to the office, I commented on how one of my pet peeves is quotes. That's right. Quotes. Which led to today's quote.

Okay. So here is where I should probably clarify. I strongly dislike the use of extraneous, superfluous, pointless, fluffy, ridiculous quotes. I especially dislike them when used in a resume, email tag-line, or some other medium where the person is clearly using them in an attempt to be impressive. Now I will not say I have never been guilty of this, and one could argue that even Facebook statutes could be subject to the same scrutiny. However, I still stand by my rant.

My defense for my blog? Well, I try to use quotes that have a story and then tell it. I like quotes that hold a memory. A purpose. I want them to supplement the writing. Reinforce the person behind it or the person writing about it. I have been known to keep track of a number of quotes from trips, events, etc. because I like to hold on to the moments from which they came. Which brought me to this blog topic. Maybe not the best defense, but there it is.

I think some of my other colleagues at FSU learned early on my despise for quotes when I removed all the unnecessary quotes about leadership that were only used to fill space in the program for Leadership Awards Night (a major campus event that I coordinate). They all give me a hard time about it too.

And for future reference, I encourage anyone applying for jobs to keep in mind not only to not use outlandish quotes, but also: do not quote theory in your cover letter unless it truly ties back to something you are trying to say (we all took the class, thanks), be cautious of exclamation points (I get that you are excited, I hope you are if you are applying), make sure you are sending the correct cover letter to the correct institution (FSU is not Temple University, so I hope you impressed them instead), be contentious of your formatting (we asked for a resume, not a newsletter), do not overuse cliches (some will happen, but think about it), and make your experiences tie back to the job for which you are applying (even if you did not work in this particular area of student affairs, I am sure you could highlight the more transferable skills).

With that, I am off to edit my resume. Yikes.