Most jobseekers agonise over their CV and pour their heart and soul into the perfect cover letter. They're determined to present their work history in the perfect light and sell themselves to potential employers with a beguiling combination of efficiency, charm and achievement.
Some people are different. Some people just don't want the job in the first place.
To prove that point, we once interviewed a chap for a position here at Coburg Banks that when asked what his ideal job would be, he said "bed tester". Needless to say he didn't get the job.
It appears that these people sometimes decide on a truly oddball approach to stand out from the crowd and manage to shoot themselves in both feet at the very first stage of the selection process, even before they get an interview.
Here are just a few of the craziest job applications we've found from around the web:
1. The fictional CV
Everybody embellishes their work history, some people even lie a little. Michael Martone, though, went the extra mile and created the laziest fictional CV in the world.
If he did indeed win the Pullitzer Prize for his time on 'The Newspaper', you'd hope he'd manage to spell the name of his award correctly. Moving from there to 'Vice President of Important Business Dealings' at Business Incorporated was a master stroke, but hardly a shock for someone that graduated from Yale, Harvard and Oxford University.
It's just a shame his references were 'burned up in a fire', they would surely have been amazing.
2. The insane profile picture
Vanessa Hodja worked hard on her application for the role of Administrative Assistant at York University. Then she went and spoiled it all by sending a totally insane picture of Nicolas Cage in one of his wilder moments as her profile picture. It was not the best start.
3. The Murky Past
Perhaps this applicant realised that a criminal check would expose his past, so he decided to deal with the problem head-on and list his drug dealing past as a period of self-employment that provided a number of career skills.
Describing himself as a 'Marijuana Dealer and Nefarious Dude' for this five-year period is a stroke of comedy genius, as is his intuitive understanding of supply and demand economics
4. The Superhero
This CV is short on actual work experience, but the applicant makes up for it by going big on the ridiculous claims.
This would-be Office Manager believes being Prom king two years in a row, being able to solve a Rubiks Cube and fighting crime on the weekend are the ideal qualifications for the job.
He's so confident he doesn't believe an interview is necessary, but the employer, sadly, did not agree.
5. The Child
We should always teach children to aim high, but this 6-year-old might have taken the advice a little too literally when he applied for the position of Director of the National Railway Museum.
He thought his ability to control two trains at once on his track at home would be enough to secure the position, but he might have to reapply in a few years.
6. The Outlandish Claim
Again, everybody embellishes their CV, but sometimes there are claims so outlandish that, just maybe, it looks like the work of a practical joker friend.
There's a lesson in here, if you ask someone to proofread your CV then make sure you read it through one last time before you send it out. See what happens if you don't in this compilation of the funniest things you will ever see on a CV. This Account Sales Representative probably did not 'accidentally invent the AIDS virus' in the year 2000, but it did cost him a job in 2014.
7. The Design Guru
It's tempting to go for an eye-catching design to stand out from a sea of standard format resumes. Then again, this person went way too far and stood out for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he didn't get the job.
8. The Exception That Proves the Rule
Sometimes, just sometimes, having an epic laugh on the application form works. This application impressed the management at McDonald's so much that they gave him a job, even though he admitted he would prefer to work two hours a day, three days a week, and ideally he'd prefer to take the job of company president.
On this occasion his application reached a HR manager with a sense of humour, on any other day Greg would still be collecting his Jobseeker's Allowance.
