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[octoprof]

Maybe these people come from institutions that insist on a particular format? Mine does, and my CV is, as a result, both very ugly and very long. On the other hand, I do have a separate (much shorter, and I hope, prettier) version of it that I use when communicating with the outside world, because I _know_ that my institution's format is ugly. It might be that these people have been inside their systems for so long that they've lost the ability to see what their CVs would look like away from their own institution.

If you were applying for a job at another institution, you wouldn't feel bound by your institution's silly formatting.  I don't think these folks are so institutionalized that local formatting is the issues.  I'm not sure what is going on but they are all uniformly bad, but in different ways.

[pollinate]

Dear applicant,

If you have no teaching experience (as in:  zero; zip; nada; never stood before a class in your life much less had full responsibility for one; etc.) please do not bother applying for full-time, teaching-intensive jobs.

Doing so wastes your resources (time, toner, paper, postage, etc.). 

It also wastes our time (responding to you, reading your CV, setting it in the NO, NEVER pile).

The fact that we sometimes get a shared giggle out of your attempts to look like you want to be a teacher instead of a high-powered researcher does not adequately offset this.

If you really want to teach, you should have been getting some experience already - as an adjunct, for example, or in one of the teaching-focused post-doc programs.

Sincerely,

A tired, cranky SC member who still has about twenty more files to read.

[sirkdn]

I have to say, octo, I find these problems are even worse when you move up the food chain:  I've seen materials for a senior faculty position and a major administrator during the past year, and those materials are even more unpredictable and inexplicable than stuff from the newbies right out of grad school. 

Indeed - I am sitting on my third search committee for senior academic administrators - some things I have seen are mind-blowingly bad (I suspect it is ego related)

[johnr]

Dear applicant,

   Please DO send us a poorly formatted C.V., complete with confusing sub-headings and all manner of subterfuge so as to thinly disguise your deficiencies.  The majority of our applicants are well qualified  and send us stellar applications, it's makes it very difficult to narrow the field.  Anything you can do to make that task easier would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

A humble SC member who is happy to already have a job and not have to compete with you.

[asa_phelps]

Please for the love of Athena, read the job ad!

If the ad says that we need an expert in freshwater stream underwater basket weaving with a required subfield in small freshwater ponds, and you don't have any pond expertise, don't apply.  It'll just waste your time and ours.

[merinoblue]

<furiously taking notes>

Please, keep it coming. Disaster stories? Memorably bad applications?

[taxidea]

Aha, now I understand why it is taking search committees so long to phone me.  My neatly organized CV and mastery of the job requirements caused so many tears of joy that my phone number and email address are smudged and unreadable.  

I feel much better now.

[anthroid]

If you are a high school teacher with a BA in Ancient Pottery and you have three years' experience teaching high school Etruscan pottery who also coaches volleyball, and you have a master's in shallow water basketweaving, and you notice our job ad for someone with three years' experience teaching Etruscan pottery at the college level, and you also notice that we have a volleyball team, do not be offended when we do not take your application seriously.

Or, be offended, but don't tell me about it.  It will not help your application, which is already doomed, and it will just piss me off, maybe enough to mention something to your principal when I run into him at the Y, which I do now and then.

[glowdart]

Maybe these people come from institutions that insist on a particular format? Mine does, and my CV is, as a result, both very ugly and very long. On the other hand, I do have a separate (much shorter, and I hope, prettier) version of it that I use when communicating with the outside world, because I _know_ that my institution's format is ugly. It might be that these people have been inside their systems for so long that they've lost the ability to see what their CVs would look like away from their own institution.

If you were applying for a job at another institution, you wouldn't feel bound by your institution's silly formatting.  I don't think these folks are so institutionalized that local formatting is the issues.  I'm not sure what is going on but they are all uniformly bad, but in different ways.

n=1

I have to admit that I've always seen a direct correlation between word-processing & tech skills in everyday life and CV functionality. (These are all senior people I know.)  I know a couple of grad school faculty who finally moved to computers, OCRed their CVs, and then just kept adding to it that way.   

Thus, when a CV from a senior person comes in and is a horrible long list in Courier, I assume it's because they haven't reformatted since typewriter days or aren't particularly adept at the flashier aspects of word processing these days.

[mountainguy]

Anthroid, I recently saw a job advertisement that said "high school teaching experience not relevant to this position." My field isn't normally offered at the high school level, so I'm guessing that they must have been getting a lot of applications from high school teachers in vaguely-related subjects looking to jump ship.

[asa_phelps]

Here's another one.

Research the school!  If it is a BA terminal institution with a 4/4 teaching load, we don't particularly care how great your research is, we want to know about your teaching.  The opposite holds true for a R1 with a 1-1 or even 0-1 load.  One size fits all doesn't work for your cover letter.  Develop a couple different versions for different types of institutions if you can't customize one for each application.

For teaching, we know you can teach your dissertation topic and can probably teach a survey course in the field.  What else can you teach?  What sort of upper level courses not directly related to your dissertation can you do? 

[canuckois]

For teaching, we know you can teach your dissertation topic and can probably teach a survey course in the field.  What else can you teach?  What sort of upper level courses not directly related to your dissertation can you do? 

Or, more to the point, what are you both willing and able to teach?  Every institution needs people who not only can teach certain things, but also are willing to branch out and teach different things. 

[embitteredhistorian]

If you are a high school teacher with a BA in Ancient Pottery and you have three years' experience teaching high school Etruscan pottery who also coaches volleyball, and you have a master's in shallow water basketweaving, and you notice our job ad for someone with three years' experience teaching Etruscan pottery at the college level, and you also notice that we have a volleyball team, do not be offended when we do not take your application seriously.

Or, be offended, but don't tell me about it.  It will not help your application, which is already doomed, and it will just piss me off, maybe enough to mention something to your principal when I run into him at the Y, which I do now and then.

I hope that last bit is a joke. Even then, it's an incredibly cruel one.

[anthroid]

If you are a high school teacher with a BA in Ancient Pottery and you have three years' experience teaching high school Etruscan pottery who also coaches volleyball, and you have a master's in shallow water basketweaving, and you notice our job ad for someone with three years' experience teaching Etruscan pottery at the college level, and you also notice that we have a volleyball team, do not be offended when we do not take your application seriously.

Or, be offended, but don't tell me about it.  It will not help your application, which is already doomed, and it will just piss me off, maybe enough to mention something to your principal when I run into him at the Y, which I do now and then.

I hope that last bit is a joke. Even then, it's an incredibly cruel one.

No, it is a reality.  Of course, I would never violate confidentiality, though I don't think that  a job applicant has confidentiality once he has applied for a job. I do try to maintain it.  But I have had enough people from the local high schools, who do not have the minimum credentials nor the experience, who apply for TT jobs at my SLAC, that, in fact, I do get pissed off.  I also wonder about the reading capabilities of those applicants and just what they're doing in the high school classroom given their (apparent) reading skills.  I don't need an uncredentialed high school teacher.  I need a Ph.D. who can teach at the college level.  Sometimes the two are the same; but far too often, in my pretty vast experience, they are not.

Mainly, no, it wasn't a joke.  Don't apply for a job in the small town in which you live if you are not actually qualified for the job.  Ours is a small town and we all are in each other's backyards all the time.

[embitteredhistorian]

If you are a high school teacher with a BA in Ancient Pottery and you have three years' experience teaching high school Etruscan pottery who also coaches volleyball, and you have a master's in shallow water basketweaving, and you notice our job ad for someone with three years' experience teaching Etruscan pottery at the college level, and you also notice that we have a volleyball team, do not be offended when we do not take your application seriously.

Or, be offended, but don't tell me about it.  It will not help your application, which is already doomed, and it will just piss me off, maybe enough to mention something to your principal when I run into him at the Y, which I do now and then.

I hope that last bit is a joke. Even then, it's an incredibly cruel one.

No, it is a reality.  Of course, I would never violate confidentiality, though I don't think that  a job applicant has confidentiality once he has applied for a job. I do try to maintain it.  But I have had enough people from the local high schools, who do not have the minimum credentials nor the experience, who apply for TT jobs at my SLAC, that, in fact, I do get pissed off.  I also wonder about the reading capabilities of those applicants and just what they're doing in the high school classroom given their (apparent) reading skills.  I don't need an uncredentialed high school teacher.  I need a Ph.D. who can teach at the college level.  Sometimes the two are the same; but far too often, in my pretty vast experience, they are not.

Mainly, no, it wasn't a joke.  Don't apply for a job in the small town in which you live if you are not actually qualified for the job.  Ours is a small town and we all are in each other's backyards all the time.

Ahh, yes, endangering someone's livelihood because their application offended you just feels so righteous, doesn't it?

Well, maybe some day you'll apply for a job somewhere else and they'll be so angry that you dare apply to their university that they tell your Dean.