Dear Applicant, just ONE follow-up call is enough!

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, so we’re a small but busy office. Emphasis on “busy”. Scratch that, emphasis on “really fucking busy”. When we put a job posting for a part-time student and we specify “no calls”, we really, really mean it. We get so many applicants that we’d have to hire someone full-time just to answer the phone for all the follow-up calls.

But, dear applicant, I know that some career counselor has told you to follow up with a phone call after submitting your resume. So if you really must call, then call ONCE and leave a message if you get voice-mail.

As for you, dear fuckwitted applicant, you can consider it a “bad career move” to call thirteen times in a two hour period without leaving a single message. This makes the Baby Flying Spaghetti Monster Cry. And, if you’re adverse to voicemail, mayhaps you should avoid calling during the lunch hour.

We were having a luncheon meeting in my office. I could not answer the phone. After your 5th call, we put the phone on “do not disturb” mode, to send your calls directly to voicemail, but the phone still beeps with every “message” left, in this case, a series of hang-ups with my call display showing your number. By your 8th call, everyone in the meeting was curious to see when you’d stop. The betting pool currently ranges from 20-30 no-message calls before 5pm.

Listen fuckwad, we’re hiring because we’re understaffed, that means we are so busy juggling an enormous workload, that we can’t drop everything and pick up the phone for every student who saw the ad. That’s why the ad said “no calls.” I would have called you back when it was convenient (eg/ not during the meeting), but now I just want to send a sonic death ray through the earpice of your phone.

You submitted your CV Friday at 2:30 and started calling at noon today (Monday). I haven’t even looked at any of the applications, yet except to find out which stupid fuck was calling every 4.6 minutes. Hey, at least it got me to look for the email with your resume attached, right?

The first sentence of your cover letter says: “…and as my attaché resume indication, I am proficient in…”

I hate you.

2

I wish I had a resume attache. All I have is a folder with a cheap fake leather cover.

3

Well, his/her inability to follow simple instructions right off the bat tells you all that you need to do with that resume, doesn’t it? :wink:

4

Hear, hear. :mad:

May I pile on? I just finished hiring for a position for which I received about 250 applications, including:

  • People who posted salary expectations of $50k/year in spite of the fact it’s clearly described as an entry level job with the starting pay range posted right in the listing - $9 to $12/an hour based on relevant experience.

  • People who answered “yes” to the screening question Do you have at least six months experience working in a medical office setting, and then when I asked for elaboration, said, “Well, I haven’t ever worked in a medical office, but I just wanted you to know I’m certified in medical billing and coding from [insert name of shitty trade school here] in 1998.” I had like ten of those. Those “schools for (unskilled, gullible) working adults” merit a Pit thread all their own, by the way.

  • Germane to the OP, people who took the “shotgun approach” by: applying two or three times through CareerBuilder, faxing their resume to our office, and calling, through the regular customer service line, four or five times.

5

Shove it up his ass, yes?

Argh! And now I’m getting co-workers checking on the betting pool by calling to ask: “Is he still calling? What’s the current tally?”

6

It used to be that several calls or visits showed initiative and interest for the position. Today it is just a pain in the ass and a sign that the applicant cannot follow the instructions.

It’s sad, but recruiters would rather have a candidate who loads his resume with key words instead of a self-starter who can shake hands and look you in the eye. I’ll retire to the study for cigars and brandy now…

7

I dunno if he’s stopped calling at this point, but if he hasn’t, why not just answer it? A quick “Hi, I’m sorry, our ad said no calls. We’ll contact you if we decide to pursue your application. Thanks.” would save a lot of heartache and misery, it seems.

8

[Piling on]

Here’s one from today: Lying about experience and work history. Double threat.

Did you really think you could LIE about your experience and no one would find out? That you could FAKE your way past the interview process? That your pathetic attempt at double-speak at my most softball question (What’s an Array?) would work? Then what? FAKE your way through your assignments once hired? Write FAKE code that doesn’t work and check it in?

Oh, and here’s another tip: Mac development is not a big place. Don’t say you’ve worked somewhere when you haven’t. Odds are excellent (like this time) that your interviewer would know most of the people there and would wonder why you have not heard of any of them.

Thanks for wasting time I do not have. Idiot.

[/Piling on]

9

Call him back, let him see the caller ID number, then hang up.

10

You’re so busy that you have time for luncheons in your office, with your whole staff? Really?

I want to work where you work.

11

I’m not a recruiter and I don’t work for HR. I’m trying to hire a new junior assistant who will work with me directly at our corporate office. Someone who calls all afternoon every five minutes without leaving a single message is displaying a remarkable lack of common sense, corporate or otherwise, and suggests “stalker” rather than"self-starter."

There is a huge difference between reasonably following up, and unreasonable expectations. If you apply for a job in the afternoon, you might at least wait a full business day for your application to be processed. At the time he started calling, his CV hadn’t even hit my desk yet! Do you honestly think that calling every five minutes is “initiative”? I don’t see “interest in the position”, I’m thinking it’s more along the lines of “squirrel-bait-cuckoo-for-Coacoa-Puffs-crazy desperation”!

A single, courteous, articulate and professional message would have been perfectly fine and might even have bumped the inidividual to the top of the list. But calling every five minutes is not acceptable.

12

:confused: What do you think “luncheon meeting” means?

I don’t know what you’re thinking of, but here it means “you don’t get to go to lunch because you have to go to a meeting”. The VP and a director and I had to meet, so the three of us were sitting, crammed in my little office, with our brown bag lunches. It’s the only time our schedules matched long enough to be in the same room at the same time this week.

Were you thinking we had some kind of catered event for the whole business, or something?

13

This username and OP combo is giving me some very strange mental images…

14

Unfortunately, today was a day I spent mostly on the phone (which was annoying because my phone still makes an audible alert when another call is coming through, so his calls were still disruptive) or I was at another desk away form my little cubby hole of an office, so I didn’t actually have a chance to answer. Besides, if I’d answered it would have messed with the betting pool. :wink: Well… that and because given that his every-five-minutes-calls kept interrupting my meeting, my conference call, and my other business calls, if I had picked up, it would have been to unleash an obscenity-filled tirade.

His calls dropped off to once every fifteen minutes or so, according to the time-stamps on my call display. His last call was at 4:36 and the grand total of calls from 12:30pm to 4:36 pm was… :: drumroll ::… twenty-six calls and not a single message.

That means the director won the pool being the closest, having guessed 30.

I will answer if he calls tomorrow, if I happen to be at my desk. The thing is, I probably won’t be at my desk for most of the day. That’s one of the main reasons we asked for “no calls” and stated that “only applicants selected for interview would be contacted”, no one is available to take their calls right now. I have a time scheduled later this week to review all the CVs and will be making calls later that day. Between now and then, I’m not likely going to be at my desk and no one else will be able to answer their questions.

15

Could you share the pathetic attempt at double-speak in response to the “What’s an array” question?

16

Seems to me a more appropriate response would be “Hi, I’m sorry, our ad said no calls. You called. You lose.”.

17

I just want to point out that I know a few people who have gotten jobs by basically just calling multiple times until the place hired them. Heck, I’ve found I actually get an interview from places I call about 4-5 times, but never hear back from places I don’t call.

You don’t want applicants to call you? Tell your fellow businesses to stop encouraging us.

18

You’re breaking my heart.

Maybe if you knobbers would call the people you turn down to tell them that instead of leaving them hoping for weeks on end, you might not get people calling you back ad infinitum. Ask me how I know. Oh, wait, you know how I know.

Suck it up.

19

According to Robert Heinlein, you should tell him to fold it until it’s all corners, first.

Every now and then, I read about People in High Places who have lied about their experience, credentials, education, whatever. They seem to be able to function for years in a position that they have no ability to do…guess they know how to delegate. Or obfuscate.

20

So you really DIDN’T mean “no calls,” then?

I was wondering about whether it was better for me, as a job hunter, to ignore such request. Hmm. I’ll have to keep it in mind as a data point.