Today brought what can only be described as the worst appeal for work experience with a newspaper I've seen in two decades of working in a newsroom. It is a genuine application - in case you were wondering - and I wanted to share it, verbatim, missing caps and all, because I still can't quite believe someone thought this would be sufficient.
Names have been removed to spare blushes (honestly, I am too nice sometimes):
When I was a junior reporter, a long-suffering and kindly sub gave me my own spelling book so I could note down and correct my many errors. I suspect even he would be a bit thoughtful at the prospect of tackling this applicant's shortcomings.
Names have been removed to spare blushes (honestly, I am too nice sometimes):
hi my name is *** i will love to no if i can do my work X there at the [newspaper title] will u ask your boss for me if i can cal u get back to me plzz asap thank u m8tThe email address was equally great - an abbreviation of the applicant's favourite football team, with the phrase 'badboy' tacked on the end.
When I was a junior reporter, a long-suffering and kindly sub gave me my own spelling book so I could note down and correct my many errors. I suspect even he would be a bit thoughtful at the prospect of tackling this applicant's shortcomings.
10 comments:
What is the world coming to. Oh dear I'd never dream of writing something *that* awful.
Heheh, that is a corker! I sometimes get emails from wannabes asking for work experience (they seem not to realise that, as a freelance, I work from home and am not insured to have them in my house) and I'm frequently shocked at the poor quality of their English. I get a fair few in txtspk but I've never seen one quite as bad as that, though. Gobsmacking.
wow, that is like amazin. U shud give them a job now dude, they iz da future
And we wonder why there is youth unemployment.
I once worked with a hotshot video editor (in his opinion) who subtitled a film in this style. Coming soon to a cinema screen near you...
I get an alarming number of comparably illiterate requests from people who are taking, or have recently received, media or journalism degrees. Which is one of the many reasons why I automatically distrust media and journalism degrees.
Shocking. What annoys me is that this guy probably WILL get a media job somehow. Amazing.
It does annoy me though that people like this sully the degree I worked hard at for three years. For shame...
Meh, let's just give him Jan Moir's job!
Someone once tried to get a reporter's job on the newsdesk at the Morning Star newspaper (I was news ed at the time) by sending in a tatty envelope covered in scrawled, barely-legible left wing slogans, and supposed qualifications ("was once friends with a local NUJ official") with an even-less legible address on the back. It contained two stamps. Nothing else.
Despite such thinking outside the box, he was not added to the shortlist.
That is quite appalling. To give them some credit, it does stand out - but presumably not in the right way! And Jon - not all of us with journalism degrees are completely illiterate (though I have, of course, run this comment through a spellchecker...just to be sure...).
When I applied for my current job, one of the other applicants had turned in a canary legal-pad resume, with one of their strengths being their "attenton to detale." At least it was in production rather than copy editing...
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