Then they should do so before sending in their resume.
If they don’t have a pen, they can very, very easily buy one. And they’d probably use a pen on the job anyway. But that doens’t mean they should fill out the resume in crayon.
Jesus, you won’t even mail out an application?
Did it ever occur to you that an applicant may already have a job, and might not be able to visit your place of work during office hours?
Or that the applicant may be unemployed and live on the other side of town, so making it much more difficult and expensive for him or her to get all the way over there than it would be for your lazy ass to put the form in an envelope and stick a stamp on it?
Or that the applicant may live out of town or in another state altogether? “No, i’m sorry, you’ll have to fly in from Florida to pick up that application.”
I can assure you that none of the offices I have managed have ever mailed out an application. Actually, a resume is the preferred media anyway. We still have you complete an application if we bring you in for an interview (mainly for legal stipulations).
I agree with this, as long as you’re pretty close (i.e., they require 5 years of experience and you only have 4, or you’ve done something similar but not quite what they’re looking for). I’m thinking back to a couple years ago, when my company needed to hire an industrial designer. Since he would be reporting to me, our HR director had me sort through the resumes and at least 1/3 of the ones from monster.com weren’t even close - that is, didn’t have the right degree, didn’t have the right experience, and the “Objective” line of their resume listed a completely different occupation. I think they did keyword searches and then just applied to everything that was a hit without reading it.
The ‘pen’ thing may be a problem. As a job applicant I want to know what the people I am going to work for are like. I might well ask the front desk secretary to borrow a pen or some-such whilst in the lobby filling out forms (as often happens in job interviews) so as to get to talk to the secretary and from this get an indication of how well the company deals with their staff. A surley defensive secretary is a very bad sign.
And a few more from the other side of the fence.
If you are looking for a full time employee:
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Pay a living wage. Any job that requires you to work full time should pay enough to keep you from qualifying for federal help.
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Don’t take advantage. I know the economy sucks but remember that if you underpay people and don’t give them decent benefits they’re going to leave the second it picks up.
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Don’t keep interviewing if you’ve already filled the position. Yes, that actually happened to me. I have better things to do with my time than rush into NYC wearing a nice suit just so you can “see what’s out there.” :rolleyes:
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Don’t put people through four interviews for one position. If you haven’t figured out if the person is right for the job by the third time you’ve seen them you’re doing something wrong.
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If you get sick on the day of the interview, CALL THE INTERVIEWEE and let them know you won’t be there.
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I’m thirty three years old. Don’t ask questions about what I did for three months when I was nineteen. It’s not relevant to what kind of job I can do right now.
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Don’t make me wait five weeks for an answer while you interview a gazillion people.
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Don’t eat lunch when doing an interview. It’s rude.
Here’s my two cents worth:
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If you’re going to insist that I “apply in person”, at least do me the courtesy of calling me and telling me that I didn’t get the job since I went a considerable distance to be rejected for your convenience.
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If I’m going to pretend to be something I’m not for your edification by putting on a suit for an $8.00/hr. job or some other production job, you can pretend to care by actually giving me some face time instead of palming me off on your secretary.
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If you advertise the damn job and I apply for it, don’t tell me three weeks later that the job is filled when you still have the “Help Wanted” sign out.
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If you advertise the damn job, don’t change your mind and “Hire from within” and waste my time and everyone else’s time who desperately wanted a job. Hire from within before you advertise.
I would just say, “I am too ecologically responsible to countenance such a long commute” unless it was a job worth moving for.
I’ve been on several search committees for positions which require a Master’s degree or higher. My favorite applicants (and I swear I’m not embellishing):
1- The applicant who mentioned her “excellent eye for detail” in the cover letter… which she forgot to sign
2- The applicant who evidently had some form of “mail merger” accident and didn’t proofread. Her cover letter was very well written except for one little thing: it was addressed “Dear Mama”.
3- The applicant who misspelled her major (Psycology [sic]) consistently throughout cover letter and application.
Then there was an applicant who was well spoken, well qualified, but wore a nose ring and tongue stud to the interview. The job involved liaison duties for a very conservative college. I don’t care if you want to hang hubcaps from your nipples when you leave here, but LEAVE THE TONGUE STUD OUT IT’S UNPROFESSIONAL. (She didn’t get the job, but I can honestly say it had nothing to do with the tongue stud, though had all factors been equal between her and the applicant who did it might have swung the difference.)
When I was hiring for hotels I had at least two applicants whose first (or one of their first) questions for me was “Does Marriott do drug tests?” Next. (Point of fact, no they didn’t when I worked for them, but…). Another responded when asked “Why do you want to work here?” (now yes, I know this is a BS question for a job that doesn’t pay that much above minimum wage, but it is a customer service job and the question shows the ability to smile and BS), responded “cause if I don’t get a job doing something somewhere my bitch ex-wife- excuse my French- is gonna have me throwed in jail for the child support I owe her”. Honest answer. Next.
DAMN YOU job givers!
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Don’t ask me if I like sports in an interview. Ididn’t freaking get a degree to discuss fucking baseball. I’m sure you can stand to ask questions relevent to my experience or the job. Who the fuck are you, Hank Hill?
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Learn to write rejection letters for people you interview. I wasted my time driving sometimes hours to see you and then right you a freaking thank-you note the least you can do is tell me I didn’t get the job.
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Strict behavioral scorecard are stupid. You aren’t a robot and neither am I so lets stop pretending we are.
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Just because I’m there to impress you doesn’t mean you can dress like crap. Why would I wan’t to work for a company where people can’t iron their shirts or tie their own ties? Turquois shirts dont match. You wouldn’t hire me if I dress like that.
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Remeber someday the labor market will change and you will actually have to compete for talent.
Should have said turquois shirts don’t match olive green pants.
Slight hijack
My uncle once had to hire someone. He found a man with a great resume so he called him in for an interview. The man showed up in a t-shirt and jeans and a bushy beard. My uncle interviewed him, liked his answers and loved his resume so he decided to hire him.
The guy showed up the first day in a suit and clean shaven. He told my uncle he wanted to see if he was hiring a man or a suit of clothes.
By the way, I don’t recommend this approach, my uncle is retired now.
From the applicant’s side (from personal experience):
When you tell an applicant they’ve been hired (which you know will involve said applicant moving halfway across the country) and set a starting date for one month later, do not wait 3 weeks (enough time for the applicant to give notice at his current job, tell his landlady he’s moving and start signing papers with moving companies) before then calling him and saying “oh, the guy you were going to replace changed his mind, we won’t be able to take you for at least another four months.”
The person who called me to mail her an application lived in the same town as our place of employment. Her reason? She didn’t feel like driving over.
In any event, one could always mail in a resume. Filling out an application, particularly at my place of employment, was not necessary.
BlackKnight I don’t think you quite understood the post. It wasn’t referring to the e-mail you’d use once you’re hired, we’re referring to applying for a job using “suck_me_hard@hotmail,com.”
Chances are, with an address like that, I’d never get as far as finding out if you were a qualified applicant or not. BayleDomon’s reply was spot on. If I get e-mails me from “buttplug@hotmail,com” and “jane_doe@yahoo,com”, who do you think I’m going to call?
Would you show up for an interview in your S&M leather outfit? Presumably not, so if you’re going to use a free e-mail account from Yahoo or Lycos for job applications, aim for something neutral.
This makes me a little crazy. I’ve worked for a company that needed a Program Director (broadcasting).
85%-90% of applicants were computer programmers.
It was really hard to craft an ad that did not result in a deluge of computer-related applications.
A message to potential employers: Don’t waste my time by telling me that you’re going to interview me, then having me come in to work on spec for you. One example - a marketing manager interviewing me wanted to give me a writing test. Fine. I’m a copywriter, and I’d think there was something wrong with a company’s quality control if they didn’t test me. But the “test” was to write up a press release based upon research I was given when I arrived, then to write out a story and spin it so the local newspaper would find it interesting and want to publish it. On the phone the HR person said the interview would take me about an hour. When I got there, the marketing manager told me that the work might take me 3 hours, perhaps more. When I offered writing samples, he refused them and told me they’d really rather have some work “on spec” rather than writing samples.
What? You brought me in here to work free for a few hours, and you didn’t tell me? Why did you have me bring in writing samples anyway? I’d understand a writing test or even an essay, but three hours of work and you only actually talk to me for five minutes? How is this an interview?
Whoever you want to. Me, I’d not worry about something like that.
No. I don’t own an S&M leather outfit. 
If I did, I would not wear it to a job interview because I know that it would cause people to not give a darn about my skills and to judge me based solely on appearance. (Well, that and it probably wouldn’t be very comfortable.) If I were an employer and someone came to an interview in such a garb, I would do my best to judge them based just on their skills and qualifications for the job they were applying for. And if I did consider hiring them, I’d make sure they understood any dress code that was in place.
I think this is a good idea. I’m just saying that if it were me making the decision, the email address on the application would not be something I’d worry about.
Hey dumbass, I’m trying to determine if you have any interests outside of work or if you’re going to fry yourself out in a couple years. Plus, I want to hear you talk about something that you enjoy and know well, so I can judge your overall communications abilities. It doesn’t have to be sports, but you should at least have a hobby we can talk a bit about.
And I wasted hours talking to you only to discover that you’re not the right guy or didn’t have the skills I thought you did (or the skills that somebody with you’re resume should really have). We’re even.
On the other side, it’s also quite possible that you didn’t get this job, but another will be opening next month, and I don’t really want to start the candidate search from the beginning. So I won’t tell you that you didn’t get the job. Or you could be the #2 choice, and we discover that the #1 guy’s a flake who interviews well.
Because we’d pay you. And if you don’t want the job because your interviewer’s shirt and pants don’t match, there are 80 other people who wouldn’t care, of which at least 5 will do as good a job as you.
That will not always be the case, but it’s the case now, and now is when you need a job.
-lv
Sorry, but I’ve got to disagree with you here. I’d much rather be told I didn’t get the job and then be surprised three weeks later with a phone call saying “Hey, the job is open again and yours if you still want it” than not hear anything at all (in fact, I have a Pit thread open on that very subject).
Zev Steinhardt