As many of you know, we’re short one staff member Chez Auntie EM’s Job (long story short, MC has not called us (though she did send an email request that her paycheck be deposited into her bank account) but has spoken with countless other people–including her lawyer, whom she told that she was “wilderness camping”, one of her (ex-) clients, whom she told that she was in the hospital, and one of our Board members, whom she told that she quit this job because she was being mistreated–so we know that she’s alive and well).
So for the past week, we’ve been wading through the 100+ resumes we received in response to the employment ad. for MC’s old job. My boss’s main focus has been job experience–namely whether or not the applicant appears (based on his/her previous experience) to want this job, or just a job. My coworker’s focus has been job history: if the applicant has had more jobs in five years than he (at retirement age) has had in a lifetime, he raises a critical eyebrow.
Me? I’m all about presentation. Applicable experience and apparent “staying power” are important as well, of course, but I just think that a good cover letter (or lack thereof) can tell you almost as much about a person as the content of his/her resume. If s/he didn’t bother to write a cover letter, or wrote a lame, four-line form letter that could apply to any job, I was decidedly unimpressed. With scads of appropriate experience, the person might still make my “B” list, but overall I gave “A” list status to people with applicable experience who’d clearly made an effort to sell themselves for this job with well-conceived and well-executed cover letter/resume combos.
Once the applications had been narrowed down, my boss and I had a pow-wow to discuss the applicants who’d made the preliminary cut, mainly in terms of what we did and didn’t like about them thus far. We both agreed that one particular applicant, though she had decent experience, should be taken out of the running because she submitted the weirdest cover and resume I’ve ever seen! Not weird in a fun, “Notice Me!” kind of way, but weird in a deadly-serious “I Worship At The Altar of Oprah, Where Professionalism (Not to Mention Proper Spelling and Grammar) Takes a Backseat to the Bare-Breasted Heralding of My Inner Goddess” kind of way.
The damn thing was FIVE PAGES LONG and the first two of those pages were dedicated to enumerating aspects of her personality with the use of words like “Empowered” and “Vivacious” (see what I mean about the Oprah?). I do give her an “A” for effort, but a five-page submission that’s replete with errors, lacks dates of employment and makes no mention of the particular position sought ain’t gonna make my “A” list.
Had there been no other applicants with better (or at least equal) experience, I could see calling her in. But dude, we had over a hundred resumes, so this was hardly the case.
Imagine my surprise, then, when my boss let me know this morning that Oprah-Woman was among the people he’d chosen to interview! No, he’s still not particularly interested in hiring her, he said, but he can’t NOT interview her, because her experience (once you get to that part after wading through 50 pages of Iyanla Vanzant-isms) leaves him without a good excuse to exclude her from the pool of interviewees.
In other words, if she should call to ask why she didn’t get an interview, he won’t be able to use the “you didn’t have appropriate experience” excuse. So basically, he’s just trying to cover his ass so that he won’t get into trouble if she gets upset about not having made the cut.
(I personally call “bullshit” on this one, because when he was hiring for my job–which is basically Finance–he had numerous math, econ, and accounting folks who applied, yet he hired ME, an English major who couldn’t rub two sticks together, because she could barely count two sticks!)
And the truth is, who knows . . . ? She could come in here, wow us all, get hired, and do an incredible job with her empowered self.
I suppose I’m a little biased, because I am currently in the market for a job myself (so that I can actually live with my husband), and I am a former English teacher, so Spelling and Grammar are my special friends (and are often the hills on which I am prepared to lay down my life)–but it’s frustrating for me to know that taking the time to craft a good cover letter and resume basically means bunk in the face of the possibility that someone might get pissed off if she doesn’t get an interview.
(How’s THAT for a run-on sentence? Hey, I said “Teacher”, not “Grammar Nazi” . . . . ;))
And how fair is it to her that she’s taking time out to come and interview for a job when the interviewer has already decided that she doesn’t really have a shot (barring the possibility that she really is Oprah)?
