I have a tech support position open. I have posted an ad on Craigslist. The posting clearly says to go to our website and apply online. It specifically says “no phone calls.”
So far, in under 5 hours, I have gotten 12 resumes via email and one phone call. The cream of the crop thus far has been one woman who not only responded via email, she misspelled the word “sincerely” in her email. And, on top of that, when I opened her resume, it was a blank template! Yes. You read that right. The resume had no information. It was a Word template that still contained the place markers saying things like, “[Type objective here]”.
In this economy why in the name of all that is good and holy would you do anything other than triple check to make sure you are making the best possible impression you can? I am bloody flabbergasted.
I once received a resume from a woman who typed her entire resume in strikethrough. [del]It is mind boggling that she thought anyone would be able to read something like this![/del] I threw it away. Other jewels in that batch included resumes with cover letters for completely different companies and resumes with objectives like, “I would like to write for television someday” when applying for a health insurance position.
Hey, [Your name] is doing the best she can. The skills needed for [Describe your career goal or ideal job] probably have little or no correlation with the skills needed for creating a perfect resume. I say bring [Your name] in for an interview… you just might discover she has the experience in [Professional or technical skill], [Professional or technical skill], and [Professional or technical skill] that you are looking for.
Was this a word document or a .pdf and not a paper resume? The reason I ask is that I have noticed on rare occasion visually the text is correct on the word document, but when I print to .pdf I will get the strikethrough thing happen. Not sure why, but perhaps that explains it…or maybe she was just an idiot
One more reason why “apply online” is for losers. I’ve never met anyone who did so and actually got the job, unless the job was either an entry level cattle-call or they were overqualified.
Personally, I find it insulting that any employer thinks I should spend my time filling out their generic online application. Obviously, they don’t want to bother actually looking at resumes, so they shift the work of sorting potential employees into a computerized format that allows them to eliminate people based on pre-determined criteria. I’m sure this works out quite well for them, but not for any intelligent person out there looking to get ahead by learning something new, or trying a different field than the one they’re in. Companies looking for people this way are sending a clear message at the outset: Our employees are interchangeable, and we don’t care to work very hard in finding them.
They probably think (usually correctly) that the ‘online application’ is simply going to disappear into a black hole, so they figure, “What the hell, let me TRY to make some human contact”.
My last job search taught me that ‘apply online’ is about as effective as taping a sign to my chest and walking around the grounds of whatever company I was applying for.
Saying you are familiar with ‘Aparche’ is just stupid though. lol.
I applied and actually got an interview with a local cable company once. The ‘interview’ consisted of 2 tests. One was a technical knowledge test. The other was some version of the Keirsey temper test. Aced the tech side but was dismissed because my ‘personality profile’ was of the wrong sort. So idiocy comes from both directions.
