<p>Hello, I'm currently a junior college student with a 3.6 GPA majoring in accounting. At the start of the school year, all of the firms came to campus to recruit, so I went out, bought my first suit and wrote my first resume. I had my mom proofread and edit my resume for me since she used to work in the headhunting field and used to help people with their resumes for a living. She ended up changing a few things on my resume like the description of my duties at my previous part time job to make them sound like more than just dish washing (what I thought was just descriptive language she had come up with). Everything went well with the networking and the month went by without any hiccups.</p>
<p>In late September in a writing course I'm taking, our assignment was to make a resume and a cover letter for a job posting we found in class. I asked if it was okay to add to our current resumes to tailor it towards the specific job posting, it was. The other day, I was looking at my grades for the 2 assignments, the cover letter was great, well written and I earned a 98% on it. I went to look at the resume and the grade space was blank, so I checked my email and was told to visit my teacher's office hours to discuss a 54% match on the plagiarism checker to my former employer's website under the job posting for the job that I previously held. My mother had used some of the same words to list the duties the job entailed.</p>
<p>What are my options? My current grade in the class is a 95% and the we've done in class writings that she has seen me write in class, as well as homework writing assignments, all of which I did well on. I'm very shell-shocked as this situation really blind sighted me. What should I say when I go visit my teacher?</p>
<p>This is the type of language that my mother plagiarized from my employer's website (not exact for identification purposes).</p>
<p>"• Organized and cleaned kitchen and dining areas, trash disposal areas, elevators, storage areas, equipment, cookware, dishes.
• Helped stock/maintenance staff with inventory, receiving, verification and stocking."</p>
<p>I can obtain consent from my former employer to use the text if that helps anything, I am on good terms with them and have them on LinkedIn.</p>
<p>Ask her what’s “fair use” when describing a past job on a resume using the text from your old job’s position posting. I would assume many, many, many people pull text from their job descriptions, employer’s marketing material, etc. Make sure to focus on resume writing conventions. </p>
<p>I don’t see this as plagiarism. I work for the government and when they post a position, they want to see a direct match on your resume. If you cleaned the kitchen, you cleaned the kitchen. In fact, I’ve had some returned with the direction to show exactly what they asked for. They didn’t want ‘was responsible for the food prep area’ they wanted “cleaned the kitchen!”</p>
<p>I think it is very different than direct copying other things. I make a resume for each job, specifically using the words from the posting.</p>
<p>What would you do in my situation? I don’t want to show up and have her present the evidence i’ve already seen and have no response to it. I sent an email to my former employer explaining the situation and asking for written permission to use that particular chunk of text. I also printed out <a href=“U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index”>http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html</a> for reference. What more can I do?</p>
<p>If the charge is as you suspect, I think the truth and honest confusion may be your best defense. As this was a resume, you worded your experience in accordance with the job you performed as described by your former employer. Further, you did not think that would constitute plagiarism because you did the job duties as described. Is the issue that you didn’t properly cite that you took the job description from the employer’s web site? That would not seem to be something one would do on a resume. Not sure you need to bring up mom. But this is just my opinion with no experience in these matters, so take it for what it is worth. Good luck. I hope this works out. </p>
<p>Agree - don’t bring up mom and do bring email or letter from employer. I don’t really see this as plagiarism either. Apologize for the confusion and explain that since your duties were as described on the website, you didn’t realize it would be considered plagiarism since you didnt believe it would count as using someone else’s ideas as your own. Ask if you can revise it.</p>
<p>sorghum, the rest of the matches were to other student’s resumes in the class (major, college name, college address) and my address was a match to my current employer’s website. The only one that was an issue was the one in my post. </p>
<p>If this results in a charge of plagiarism, I would be absolutely horrified. It’s your actual resume, and matching a job posting from a prior employer is not stealing the work of that employer. The job posting is not copyrighted, and you did the work that was described. It would be a ridiculous charge, and I would fight it tooth and nail</p>
<p>However, with the professor it is probably best to be diplomatic initially. I like your approach so far. I would just explain that this is your real resume, and that you really weren’t considering it in the same vein as a regular writing assignment. I would probably offer to rewrite it. I probably would leave the fact that your mom did it out of the discussion because her doing the work for an assignment sounds worse to me than using a job posting as a basis for a real world resume. </p>
<p>Do you have an advisor at the college? If your meeting with the teacher doers go well, you may want to discuss the situation with your advisor. I think most people are going to understand that this just is not plagiarism.</p>
<p>Everything you have said seems to be very reasonable. Go in see what the teacher has and take it from there. Do not assume there will be a problem with your explanation. Also, I see nothing wrong with saying you asked your mother (because she was a headhunter) for tips and she suggested looking at the posting for your old job. (Of course, don’t say your mother prepared the resume because then the teacher could flunk you on the spot since you didn’t so the work.)</p>
<p>Plagiarism is not a synonym for “copying” (it’s much more complex), and I agree with other posters that it is not even a relevant concept here. Resumes are by their very nature formulaic, and they will often repeat terms of job descriptions. They don’t qualify as intellectual property or works of art.</p>
<p>The main problem is that you had your mother write the resume instead of performing the task yourself. I would not share that information with the professor. I would also ask if I could redo it.</p>
<p>I agree, this is not an issue. You are just putting the most accurate job description possible on your resume. Moving or changing a word or two is not important in this case. You are not “stealing” someone’s thoughts, opinions etc.</p>
<p>I do feel for you OP, but I am not sure that whether or not the job posting was copywrited is relevant here. First, I do think it could be possible for a job posting to be copywrited depending on how creative and sort of ‘meaty’ it is (not saying whether the one at issue is or not). Second, to me the issue is not whether the posting has copywrite protection and/or whether or not you had permission to use the language in your resume. To me, the issue is whether you committed plagiarism in using this language that was not your own in your resume without giving credit to the source. In other words, I am not sure your prof is going to be swayed by the fact that the language either is or is not copywrite protected and/or whether you had permission to use the wording. The issue as I see it, is whether you should have cited its source or not and if by not citing the source, did you commit academic dishonesty. I mean, you’re not being sued for copywrite infringement–you are being questioned about plagiarism. So, while you can gather your info and demonstrate that you had permission to use the text and even try to assert fair use, just be prepared for your prof to be unswayed and possibly assert that you committed academic dishonesty in submitting your resume containing content that was not yours without the proper citations. I have to respectully disagree with the above posters who say that plagiarism is not the issue here. It is an issue. If nothing else, your prof is making it an issue. And she may not care whether one would legally consider the posting to have copywrite protection or not. She may think of it as wording that you used in your resume that were not your words, without giving proper credit to the author. Truthfully, one would hope that she has bigger fish to fry and that she ultimately will let it slide since it does seem a bit much to take you to task over a job description contained in your resume. </p>
<p>Having said all of this, I really hope that she just going to give you a warning and let you rewrite your resume. Please let us know what happens. </p>
<p>Also, have you done an Internet search of whether or not copying a job posting verbatim without citation is plagiarizing or not? Have you investigated what exactly constitutes plagiarism? It might give you some ideas on what to assert if you are placed in the position of defending yourself. I wonder if this has come up before and if it has been addressed. I searched whether a job posting is copy protected and found interesting opinions. It would be great if you could get legal advice on this but I know that’s not always practical to do…good luck OP…keep us posted…</p>
<p>This is dumb… sorry your professor is being an idiot. This is not a research paper or an essay… I would think nothing of using a description I found on the internet or in a company’s brochure to describe something in my resume or in a cover letter if it was appropriate to the situation.</p>
<p>Definitely not plagiarism. Many, many people utilize the job description from their employer on a resume. It is the most accurate representation of what your duties were and shows you did not try to embellish the job you held. I have to agree with another poster - this professor is an idiot for even bringing something like this up.</p>
<p>Even having your mother help with your resume isn’t a problem. Some people go and have this professionally done for them. This teacher is being ludicrous.</p>
<p>I hate these plagiarism tools, anyway, for various reasons I won’t go into here.</p>
<p>Go to your teacher with your explanation. If your teacher does not withdraw, start to go up the ladder to the dean and keep going to the top if you have to. A resume is a formula and has to conform to a formula and is the opposite of original writing. Heck if a resume doesn’t have a lot in common with the other resumes? you’ve done it wrong.</p>
<p>@PurplePlum, you are making a classic mistake of youth. You are assuming that something is a mountain before finding out whether it is a mountain or a molehill. Plagiarism is taking someone’s idea. Plagiarism is not writing a job description on your resume that mimic the job description of a prior employer who seeks to replace you. They are by definition one and the same.</p>
<p>Plagiarism is an act of fraud. It is using someone else’s original ideas and work as your own. A job description is not an original idea, and the OP didn’t defraud anyone by using it. </p>
<p>If he used someone else’s resume entirely, that would most certainly be academic dishonesty, but this situation is nothing like that. This is the OP’s actual resume, and there is nothing about it that is fraudulent. </p>
<p>It concerns me that this professor is even calling the OP in for a meeting on this topic frankly. It suggests a complete lack of understanding of the real world. The assignment in and of itself seems weak for a writing class. A cover letter is writing. Writing a great resume is a skill, but not one that necessarily dovetails with being a strong writer in general.</p>
<p>Please keep us posted, OP. I feel for you. If you were my child, I would be infuriated if this results in anything beyond asking you to redo the resume using your own wording.</p>