We announced hiring 10 good testers on Naukri, one of India’s largest job search portal. We got more than 6000 applications to our careers mail ID over the last month. We are overwhelmed with the response and interest people have to our posting.
We want to bring out some of the bloopers from the responses we have received so far. We also want to help people on what impact such bloopers have on considering people for an interview or hiring them. If any Moolya testers looking out for a job and reading this ( 😛 ) please ensure you avoid such mistakes. It creates a bad impression on the organization who has hired and retained you if you do such mistakes. The following are some of the many hundreds of bloopers that are on top of my mind from what I saw and experienced.
Covering letter bloopers (just some of them)
- “I will be waiting to here from you” / where? here? /
- “Kindly update my resume” /We should update your resume?/
- “Dear Hi” /wow, never heard of Dear Hi/
- “plz,kindly considering me,i m joining in ur company as much as u want.” /head spins/
- “Notice Period – 30 days but I can join in 15 days and if really urgent I can join in 10 days” /period/
- “ By virtue of my ability, knowledge and qualifications, I am looking for a suitable job” /virtue leads to job search?/
- “If you have testing opening find my testing profile and if you have development work find my development profile” /smart in unnecessary proportions/
- “i like to have a head-on interview at your convenience” /head-on?/
- “please Find the attached Resumeaa” /wHy cApitalize?/
- “Please ignore my previous mail.” /we did, including this one/
- “with referance to ur mail, i here by attached my cv……….” /please refer to dictionary for reference/
- “Kindly forward this to your company and schedule an interview with me” / 🙂 /
- “I have enfolded my resume along wit this mail. pls, have a view on it.” /enfolded? /
- “Hi, I need 30% hike” / great, why not 50%?/
- “i am attching my updated cv for testing position” / also please update your vocabulary /
- “Hi dis is XXXXX. Have attached ma cv along” / K, ma cmpny dsnt hyr ppl lyk u/
- “If my resume for your requirements please let me know” /and the sentence completes after…/
- “I am interested get this opportunity” /sure, why not? get it/
- “ I have learnt certain values such as integrity and respect for people and swear by them now” / dizzy /
- “Please find out my updated profile” /ok, how do we find it?/
- “I am attaching my upgraded resume please help me out ” /upgraded with what?/
- “i know bug traking tolls bugzilla” /yes, you know bugzilla but how would you report spelling mistakes in it?/
- “Please” (just that in the mail) /excuse me/
- “Am i sending my resume plz kindly go through it” /are you sending?/
- “Notice Period:15days,I’m Ready to join in an 2 weeks.” / wow, 2 weeks not equals 15 days, it is 14, great/
- “Please attach my resume” /sure, if I have yours, I will try/
- Also please check my LinkedIn profile with this link http://www.linkedin.com/profile” / oh man, that link? /
- “Kindle find attachment” /Amazonnnn /
- “Notice period is 20 dais” /How can anyone in the world get spelling of ‘days’ wrong?/
- “Hire me please” /So desperate?/
Resume Bloopers (again, just some of them)
- “exxcellent in documentation skills” /this is like telling, “I no inglish grammer/
- 12 pages resume /sorry, we didn’t ask for autobiography/
- Clients my companies work for /Hey Ram! That list must be confidential/
- Project description of one page with so much of confidential information /Wow, you forgot the NDA?/
- “I worked for Google as a tester and they paid me XXXX as salary”… snip … end of resume: “Client Google Parent company: XXXX” /If you are not proud of your parent company but take more pride about the client you worked for, you probably would do the same to us. /
- Career objective /Most of them are copy paste. Most don’t appear to have a real career objective/
- /Personal details: PAN Card number: XXXX XXX XXXX / ( Why would anyone need that to interview you?)
- “mannual testing” /Wow, that’s new to us/
Interview Bloopers
- A guy walks in to interview just after a heavy dose of Pan Paraag and it takes a while for us to get the Pan Paraag smell out of our office. It would be hard for people to work with such Pan Paraag addicts and we recognize that they paint the wall red 🙂
- “Moolya: So, why are you wanting to move out of your current organization? Candidate: The company is closing down. Us: Really? We heard a news they got funded recently. Candidate: Well, uh, hmmm, well, ….”
- “Moolya: What do you know about our company? Candidate: This company is into helping children in their education. Us: Anything else? Candidate: No” /Just having read one blog post?/
- “Moolya: What kinda websites on software testing do you refer? Candidate: Google.com Bing.com” /Yes, yes, agreed/
- “Moolya: You say you have done usability testing but your resume is full of red and green. Candidate: Sorry, I keep spelling and grammar check disabled to type fast.”
- Some candidates don’t turn up for the scheduled interview. We even come on Saturday’s to make it flexible for some candidates to attend interviews but if they don’t turn up and bother to inform us, we black list. We think there should be such global black list.
- Some candidate, “I was fired” : Pradeep: “Wow, me too. I am open to hiring people who were fired but curious to know what happened” Candidate: “My manager is an ass hole” Pradeep: “Hmmm” Candidate: “He didn’t give good hike to me so I yelled at him” /Jesus, I wish he had told, “He didn’t allow me to run the tests I wanted to” Marked as Red/
- Shaking hands after having come out of the washroom and still having the wet on your palms is a little irritating.
Test Report Bloopers
- “I can’t share my test report because my company doesn’t allow that” /Good but where did we ask you to do that?/
- “Please find attached all the bugs I have reported in my current project” /Jesus, you make us feel guilty although we didn’t ask you to commit this sin/
- “Please find screenshot of my automation test report for the current project I am working on” /Doh!/
- “Sorry, can’t send” /What?/
- We get a mail, “Yes, I do test reports in office” /Did you really read our careers page?/
- Another mail, “Test Reports: I am confused” /Well, thank you for the test report/
- Some two intelligent testers googled for test report and sent us the sample test report template as test reports and are asking us did we get it and when they’d be called for interview
- Another mail: Can you please help me in telling what you want in test report? /Well, good question. We want you to test and send us the report of your testing/
- Another mail: “Test Report: Yes”
- All test cases pass, nothing to report /Wow, whata tester 😛 /
Some tips:
- The way you apply to a job could matter to get you to an interview. The way you conduct yourself in an interview could matter to get you an offer.
- If you need to prepare technically for an interview, you could be under skilled.
- If you don’t know about the company to which you are applying, you don’t deserve the job.
- If you haven’t tested (and bug fixed) your resume, you shouldn’t bother applying to testing work.
- If you want a specific salary which is thrice or twice as much as you are currently earning, you need to be a rock star.
- If you have a different career plan than the job you are applying to, you won’t be happy with the job and the career.
- Get a professional resume written. Don’t be stingy, pay money to get it done.
- Don’t lie in interviews. At least in the testing circles, we are well networked to find out things, if we need to.
- Be professional /You know what that really means?/
- Don’t fake. For God’s sake.
- Don’t put your current employer down, they are at least helping you have a living.
- Never, ever, never, ever make a jump to another company just for money.
- If your covering letter is poor, we don’t go to open you resume/CV.
- Moolya asks for test reports, not from your current or past work. We want you to test an open source project and send us that report.
- We are tired of Akel Pad, Gmail and Google test reports unless you have something interesting or different.
- If you mention a technology in your resume / CV , ensure you really know it. Otherwise you are losing out your own chances.
- Your first impression (and successive ones) matter a lot for us to consider you for an interview.
- If you pretend to have passion for testing, it is easy to find out you are not.
- What organizations really look for is “Can you learn?” and again it is easy to find out if you don’t belong to the category.
- In case Moolya rejects your application, it doesn’t mean you aren’t good, it means, you don’t fit our current bill.
- Organizations like to maintain a culture at work. If you turn out to be a Nana Patekar of Angi Sakshi , you won’t fit most good cultures.
- Please understand that every company is different. The way it works in Moolya could be lot different.
- The kind of colleagues you work with matter much more than the salary of your colleagues.
- If an organization is hiring a lot of bad testers, please don’t join them, even if they offer you more salary.
- Don’t put all email ids in TO when sending your profile / resume / cv. Put it in BCC. We hate to be spammed by others.
- If you practice testing (like how Dravid does with Cricket even off the matches), we would be happy to hire you.
- Ask yourselves if you are another head to be counted or you are a brain that’s needed for the organization.
- To be hired by Moolya and become a Moolyavan there should be some moolya you already have and some moolya you could bring to in future because of your moolyable ability 🙂
