This posting is a guest entry from the Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD:
Mike writes:
No too long ago, I used one of your samples for resume and cover letter writing. I must say, they really helped me.
The Career Doctor responds:
OK. So technically there is no question here, but I wanted to address this issue because I had been recently interviewed on the subject of job-seekers borrowing too heavily from samples found on job-search Websites and books. And by the way, I am not saying that Mike did anything wrong; I am assuming he used the samples correctly.
Why do career professionals provide samples? I know I do so as a learning tool. I want you to be able to see what a good resume, cover letter, thank-you letter, etc., looks like. I have seen so much poorly written job-seeker correspondence, that I thought it important for you to see good examples.
But I do not expect job-seekers to copy phrases or sentences word-for-word
in academic circles, we call that plagiarism, and if I were a hiring manager, I
would call it a reason not to interview or hire you. Borrowing someone else s
work brings into question your ethics — and work ethic.
So, please use the samples you find as guidelines for what your resume or cover letter should look like and sound like, but do not lift whole chunks and use them as your own. And be sure to read the accompanying articles that describe in detail how to develop your job-search documents.
One final point. Someone raised the question of the difference between borrowing a sample resume versus hiring a professional to write the resume for you. The difference is one is stealing someone else’ s work (that may not even apply to you) and the other is paying a professional to develop a document specifically for you.
For those interested in samples, check out the many sample job-search materials we have in this section of Quintessential Careers: Job-Hunting Samples and Examples.
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