I wouldn’t classify the title of your post as very professional.
#5) Using diacritics in your email or resume.
I don’t think there’s anything that’s too unreasonable in your list. However, since you are posting this job announcement at no cost, why not include this information in the ad? I mean, you’re looking for a medical assistant. Not an English professor. There are good, hard-working medical assistants out there who are not sophisticated enough to know that their email addesses aren’t professional or that “detail oriented” needs a hyphen. Lord knows there’s plenty of good doctors/lawyers/engineers and CEO’s who fail at these things.
This would be an excellent way of screening out people who can’t follow directions. I would think this is a much more valuable test of their worth as a medical assistant.
It would also help people to see why their job searches aren’t working out well. “I wonder if my email addy “sexualchocolate@hotmail.com” explains why I’m only getting offers from strip joints? DOH!”
Thanks goodness she’s not using this thread to apply for a job.
It would be interesting to see how the rejected applicants might have shown up for an interview. I’ve never been in the position of having to interview or hire anyone, but I’ve heard tales of people showing up in sloppy, torn, or dirty attire, or extremely inappropriate clothes (pajamas, anyone?) Somehow, I expect at least a few of the rejects would fit that mold.
Part of my process for hiring is to have applicants fill out a simple ten question form of open ended questions. “Who was your best customer and why?”, etc. It’s nothing complicated, but at least 60% of applicants resumes make the cut, never fill it out and send it back. Some fill it out and it resembles texting, no complete sentences, capitalization, or thought structure. Some lie, blatantly.
Last month, I had a guy recommended to me for a job supervisor position. He had applied to me a couple of times in the last three years, but had never been interviewed. His updated resume looked like he had the skills, and we interviewed on a Friday afternoon. Interview went very well, I really liked him, and he had the skills I was looking for. He was really enthusiastic, and it seemed like a good fit. I told him to fill out the questionnaire, get it back to me by Monday, then he would do another interview with a future co-worker, with the expectation of being hired.
He didn’t get the questionnaire back to me until the following Thursday, almost a week later. Did I mention that thisjob requires excellent time management skills? He was not hired. I wrote him a quick email, telling him I thought he had great skills, and interviewed very well, but I wasn’t hiring him for that reason. I felt bad, but I respected him enough to tell him the truth. Perhaps that’ll help him in the future, dunno.
Additionally, I think it’s a good litmus test on if they really want the job. Obviously, he didn’t.
Craigslist recruiting is kind of like scraping the bottom of the barrel in a lot of ways - not all the time, but it is a very open forum, I’m having trouble understanding why you would expect anything different than the responses you got.
I don’t the OP was surprised. When you have 40+ applicants you have to find some reasonable and practical way to narrow the pool. Communication skills, professionalism etc are perfectly reasonable things to assess when making those decisions.
If the employer genuinely believed that the prospective employee’s public behaviour would impact their job or their company, then I think Googling them is acceptable.
It’s a relatively new thing to do, so I understand why some people would question that, but it’s only going to matter more and more in the future, where as much as 80% of our private life may actually be publicly visible, sometimes even without our own knowledge, and so if a quick search can find anything potentially problematic, that’s a fair measure of what a deeper search might find.
It sucks, but it’s a reality we have to learn to accept.
Ivory Tower Denizen wrote:
The tone just sounds very complainy to me. I’ve used craigslist to hire in the past, I wasn’t surprised at the responses, it’s just kind of what I expected.
Job applicants would be well-served to read this essay by Paul Graham:
Shhhh! Be vewy, vewy quiet! We’re huntin’ Jobs…! 
I was gonna say that.
What’s with the beef with the selection procedure? If you’re buying a car, you either:
- Buy the best car in your budget, or:
- Buy the cheapest car that meets your needs.
Would you rather a lottery?
My ex worked at a regional bank - not a “mom and pop operation”, but also not a Bank of America. They pride themselves on customer service and professionalism. He was close with his boss and therefore was allowed access to the hiring process.
There was one applicant for a “teller” position, with the return email (in part) of “IEatToads.”
For whatever reason (it baffles my ex to this day), not only did they interview the guy, but they also hired him. It isn’t that the guy doesn’t do a decent job, but the ex was shocked that he was allowed an interview with an e-mail such as that.
I have two email “names” - my personal one that I’ve had for well over a decade (with some provider or another) and my “private / professional” one that is my full name. Whenever I sent in applications or conducted professional business, that is the one I used.
I feel it’s important for any prospective employer of mine to know that (1) I was born in 1969, (2) I am, in fact, a chunky lover, and (3) I still have an active AOL account.
At least the OP has the option to reject resumes for her specified reasons. I worked for a state agency, where you weren’t allowed to do that. Scrawled in crayon? Giant gaps in work history? No problem, as long as there is relevant experience on the application. And the further down the work ladder, the worse it got. I had to hire someone to answer phones and do filing; it was like someone unlocked the doors to the asylum and gave them all applications for the job. “Yes, I was fired from my last job because the boss thought I was stealing office supplies, but I like really really really wasn’t and I like really really REALLY need this job!” NEXT!!
I used to hire entry level positions and narrowing down the field is an important part of it. Having 40 or more resumes per slot is fairly typical. We can’t – and don’t want to – interview all 40, so somehow we’ve got to narrow it down a bit.
I think that most people simply do not get that as employers of entry level workers, first and foremost, we want dependable people. People who will show up on time. People who won’t quit after three weeks. People who can get along with others.
We don’t expect superstars and we don’t want flakes.
Having failed Mind Reading 101 (we were expected to know the assignments, who knew?), the only things we have to make our initial cut are the resumes and the cover letter.
Is this person going to actually work out? While the interview process itself makes the final selection, glaring mistakes and a lack of common sense are a quick way to not make past the first round.
Résume or resumé are wrong. Résumé and resume are accepted spellings.
I would object to being Googled (ooh, sounds dirty) only because there’s another person out there with my name who was into some shady stuff, and is now the subject of some low-level conspiracy theory stuff, and so pops up waaaay ahead of me.
Never send poop in a purse with your resume.
As easy as it is to open a free e-mail account, why not use one just for job hunting?