The Resume Hunter has come out of retirement to critique the resume of terror suspect Faisal Shahzad. Never meant to be taken personally, the advice doled out by our resident resume guru is designed so that the masses can learn from the mistakes of an individual.
1) Longer Than the Qur’an. No 30-year-old on the planet, or anyone for that matter, should have a three-page resume. In fact no one should probably go beyond two pages.
2) Career Highlights. This section rambles on like a missive from the Unabomber. I think anyone looking at this resume would agree that Faisal is claiming experience in far too many areas. “Good team player” and “results oriented” are a waste of text, not true “highlights,” and in this case, blatant lies.
3) Attention to Detail. It’s the little things that kept that Pathfinder from blowing up and wreaking havoc in NYC, so thankfully for us, Mr. Shahzad was not bit on dotting his I’s and crossing his T’s. His resume uses inconsistent month abbreviations, choosing to shorten February but spelling out March.
4) Privacy, Please. Never include your home address, personal phone number and/or main email address on a public resume. Anyone can find you, and even use your information to assume your identity to carry out wicked plots, such as blowing up Times Square. Lucky for Faisal, he’ll never need that information again.
5) Tense Situation. Previous jobs are described in the present tense, which is a Resume 101 no-no. We now know that Faisal left his “Present” job back in 2009. No word on how he’ll explain the gap between gigs.
6) Weirdo. I understand that English is not Faisal’s first language, but if you want to feel warm and fuzzy, find one of those HotMonterBuilder blogs to read. This guy uses of apostrophes in odd ways, giving words like “contracts” and “operations” the possessive form.
If you ever needed more evidence that resumes are a totally outdated recruitment tool, here it is. Even a failed jihadi can pass himself off as an award-winning computer pro.
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