When a big corporation has a career page with a “shopping cart” feature for hundreds of job listings, tens of which you may be qualified for, do you pick one or do you apply to all the positions that could fit?
On the one hand, recruiters know better than I do where I could fit into the company; giving them the options I’d be interested in seems like it would make it more likely they’d be interested in me for a role.
On the other hand, resume spam is a big problem in HR. I don’t want to give an impression that I’m applying for everything I’m remotely qualified for; plus, it’s much harder to tailor a resume and a cover letter for multiple positions.
In my experience, despite claims that they use their database to look for candidates for future roles, I’ve never had a company ring me up and say “hey, we saw the resume you uploaded last month, can you come talk to us?” I’ve been told they do that, but I have NEVER experienced it, despite uploading my resume to a few companies that always had many posted openings that sounded like me.
What I do is apply to each individual job posting. But only if they are really close fits for my skills. I also wait a month or two between each one to avoid being seen as a resume spammer and also so that if they do call me I will know which job it was for.
This is pretty much my experience. It will say very clearly that a database of resumes is kept and that if similar vacancies open up, they will contact folks.
Never happens. I’m curious why this is. I’ve seen jobs come up within a few weeks of applying for a different job that I am very qualified for and I’ve never received a call/email about it. And these are sophisticated, multinational companies. And I’ve done this over many years at this point as I’ve been laid off a few times over the years.
Now, I’m not an HR professional, but I would recommend against sending in resumes for everything remotely interesting. However, if you see a handful of jobs that you feel qualified for and are interested in, apply for them all.
Yes, we do keep resumes, applications, letters of inquiry, etc. for several years. It’s the law. We have to be able to prove non-discriminatory solicitation for job vacancies in case we’re audited.
No, we rarely, if ever, dig back through the files for a resume previously submitted. Two reasons for that: a - it’s tedious and time consuming and b - job seekers have largely found other jobs if the resume is older than a few weeks.
There are occasional exceptions to this. The most common would be if the job is typically hard to fill because it involves very specific and/or rare skills. In that case we would quite possibly go through the back files to see if anyone applied with those particular skills. I’ve done this twice recently when looking for skilled trade applicants which are rare and in high demand.
Therefore, the advice from my side of the desk is to apply to those jobs that most closely resemble your skills and experience. And don’t hesitate to re-apply later if you aren’t chosen the first time. There is no stigma to doing so and on the second attempt, you might be just what the hiring manager is looking for.
I hire for a big company. If we have a resume database (except for students) I’ve never seen it and wouldn’t know how to get to it, and the recruiter I worked with never mentioned it either.
Our job postings are often quite stale, so the ones you see might not exist any more, and hot jobs might not be posted.
By far the best method is networking. If you know someone who knows someone who works at the company, make contact and ask about the job or better, the department. They might be able to tell what the deal is, or ever direct you to a hiring manager. If you can arrange a chat, either he might be interested or if you impress her she might direct you to someone who has an opening. If there are no openings you won’t waste your time.
This is harder than filling out an on-line application and posting your resume, but you will be ahead of all those who did.
Don’t worry about your contact being flooded with calls. I’m pretty visible in my field, with my email on heavily visited web pages, and almost no one has ever done this. My equally visible industry colleagues never complain about being pestered either.