Recruiters are mostly scum. A couple of months ago I had an exchange with a lady who was trying to push a job on me. I went back and forth with her a couple of times, I wasn’t sure it was a fit, she practically begged me to send my resume. I sent it… then nothing. Not even an acknowledgment. I politely mailed her back asking should I re-send it, then I got this testy mail “sorry you didn’t see my reply”. Bitch, I gave you an unfiltered private gmail account dedicated to employment correspondence. It didn’t get eaten on my side.
Can I second this in a HUGE way?
When I was preparing to graduate with an Engineering degree in 2001, my roommate and I had a contest going to see whose pile of rejection letters would be bigger before we landed a job. It seemed that everyone you interviewed with would send one if not interested and 3/4 or more of those you sent resumes to, but who didn’t select you for an interview, would as well.
Now? I hardly get an email, let alone a letter, and a reply to a query is still unbelievably rare.
I had a nasty experience a few months ago.
I’d taken a couple of online tests in order to apply for jobs at a regional bank. I passed one but failed another. 
Anyway, the recruiter called me back, we did the phone interview, and I was passed onto the next stage of the process.
The recruiter told me about an opening at one local branch, but I never heard from that manager. Instead, I had a face-to-face interview with the managers at a different branch. They wanted to hire me, but because I’d failed that first test, they couldn’t. So I wasted a lot of time and energy interviewing at the wrong branch for a job I shouldn’t have been contacted about. Oh, and it gets better. Not long after that, I went to my local branch to deposit a check and the teller, whom I didn’t know from Adam, knew about it because the regional manager had asked her about me. If I ever have the opportunity to speak to this guy, I plan to because this whole thing was just unprofessional. If the hiring process is such a clusterfuck, how bad would it be if I needed something important from HR?
You’ll note that I’m not holding my breath waiting to hear back from them about any other jobs.
Robin
Kaio,
I was in the same position from August till Dec 15.
I had a bunch of interviews that went really well with the recruiter, only to find out a few days later that the government agency looking to hire “already had someone in mind” for the position and were only advertising it in order to comply with federal regulations!
I say “give them the job” and shut up about it! i’d rather not hear about an opening than go through the interview process for no reason.
The MarComm market is horked. I’m actually debating whether to apply to a junior-level opening… the company sounds pretty cool, but I’m waaaaayyyyyyy over-qualified, so I’m wondering if it would do anything helpful to submit, or if they’d just go “WTF?” and chuck my resume in the bin.
I’m pretty sure I couldn’t afford to live on a junior-level salary (and I wouldn’t want to), even if the lower-level job duties didn’t drive me batty (and they would… boredom and me are not friends). But I’d certainly look at working for them at a more senior level. I just don’t know that submitting would encourage them to think in that direction, or just write me off as a moron who didn’t read the job description.
I don’t know. A lot of people I know use LinkedIn.
Recruiters are scum though. I had one recruiter who was pressuring me to take his bullshit client’s job. I’m like, “ok, let me see the offer letter”. He’s like “well, I don’t really want them to go through the whole formal offer process unless you are committed to taking this job.” I’m like “wtf?” I barely even know what the pay r benefits are. So I’m like “ok, looks good, I accept.” They send the offer package out and it’s like barely any vacation, shitty benefits, expectations to travel all over the freakin place, all kinds of other bullshit no one talked about. So I just send an email back saying “sorry, I’ve accepted another offer.”
Every time we have a job opening (chemical, engineering industry) we get tons of resumes that are waaaayyyy over-qualified. In today’s economy, there’d be even more, if we were hiring.
We don’t chuck them into the bin – we also get tons of resumes that make us go “WTF?” for other reasons. These other reasons are so many and so whacky that overqualified doesn’t even rate a raised-eyebrow on the screening. That’s something you ask about in an interview.
Go ahead and send your resume in.