Where's Waldo?

I'm sure most of you have heard of Waldo, correct? 
If not- here's a Wikipedia link to help explain the whole "Where's Waldo?" phenomenon... 
Here's a picture of him, which I'm sure you will recognize, even if you weren't aware of the entire background story of Waldo:

My sister was 4 when the first "Where's Waldo?" books came out.
Age 4 is prime "I can't find Waldo in the picture Sissy, can you help me out?" time.

Many hours I spent trying to assist her in her determined Waldo searching endeavors, until mom and dad had purchased all the books they could find in town, and she had them all memorized.

Then she cast poor Waldo aside.

In a heap on the bottom of her messy closet he went, along with all the My Little Ponies any 4 year old girl would be lucky to own.

Poor Waldo.

What does this have to do with resumes you ask?
Plenty.

More often than not, people apparently get "confused" as to where they are currently physically located. At least that's how it appears to us HR and Recruiter types as that's how they represent themselves on paper.

If I were to believe where 50% of them say they are, they'd be involved in some pretty impressive parallel universe crap.

And we all know that that's the stuff that the Red Hot Chili Peppers sing about (here) and that quantum physics dudes like Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory spend hours drooling and dreaming about.

(As a side note, did you know that BBT has nabbed Stephen Hawking? Yup, he'll be on their show soon! And as a gal with a lot of super nerdy (yet lovable) housemates, I know how exciting this is!)

Back to my point (man, I get side tracked easily, don't I? LOL)... as of right now, as far as we KNOW (or think we know?), you can't be in two places at once.

And yet job seekers I stumble upon are constantly trying to convince me otherwise.

Yesterday, some charming dude named Tyler came at me wanting to be interviewed for one of our positions. Fine, I'll give his resume a looksy.

It became very clear to me in a matter of seconds that Tyler was pulling off some pretty impressive alternative reality crap.

Get this- he was not only here, working 3 different jobs in 3 different FAR FLUNG cities in southern California, but he was also in Spain, at the Universidad de Cordoba.

Wow.

And I thought I was busy.

That's downright impressive.

I only know this because he put the word "Present" after every entry.

So it said "February 2010-Present"

and

"June 2010- Present"

and 

"December 2008- Present" etc...

With each city (and country) listed after the entries.

Dude.

That ONE WORD "Present" will screw you up SO BAD on a resume.

It makes all us Recruiter types out there scratch our heads and say ..."Wait a minute now, where's Tyler?"

I call this the "Where's Waldo?" effect.

So I sat there contemplating taking six minutes of my VALUABLE time to construct an email to Waldo, err, I mean, Tyler, asking him "WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? ARE YOU HERE? ARE YOU IN SPAIN? ARE YOU REALLY WORKING 3 JOBS RIGHT NOW IN 3 DIFFERENT CITIES TOO? FESS UP!"

Well admittedly, I would have said it much nicer if I did decide to take the time to email him and ask.

But guess what?

If you had seen my desk yesterday and the explosion of tasks all over it, you would have been with me on my decision to shred him and move on.

So the moral of the story today is this my little chickadees:

If a job seeker can't take the time to LOOK and see if their dates are updated and completely accurate?

Then forget it.

They don't DESERVE to have a potential employer call them.

It's absolutely asinine if anybody out there looking for a job thinks that we should be taking our time to try and figure out exactly where they are on the planet and what the ACTUAL story is about what they've been up to the last 4 years. 

I don't have time to play "Where's Waldo?" anymore.

I did enough of that with my sweet little sister in 1987.

Peace out.