Dopers,
I’m going to try to keep this short:
I’ve recently relocated to another state, and I’m looking for employment. I’ve responded to a job listing on a career site, and when I received the email confirmation that I’d applied for the position, I noticed that when the site imported the data from my resume and auto-filled the data fields, it substituted some of the characters on my resume with ampersands, pound signs, etc. The site did not allow me to edit the data before I could click the submit button, and it did not allow me the option of sending my resume as an attachment.
Is it bad form to call the company in question, explain what happened, and ask for an email address of the HR person or someone I can email the document to directly? The company who posted the job listing on the career site doesn’t mention that calls directly to the company are frowned upon, and though they list the name of the HR contact, they do not list an email address or telephone number for them. If the consensus is that a call is acceptable, should I ask for the HR person who is listed on the site, or not bother them and just see if the receptionist will give me the info?
So I guess I’m looking for advice from hiring managers or human resources people, and what their perception of a candidate would be who did this. Would you be offended by what could be seen as a waste of your time, or would you be more prone to see it as someone who’s very interested in the position, and is willing to do what it takes to get noticed?
If it makes a difference, the job is NOT an entry-level position; it’s for a position on their executive team, and I’m currently unemployed. I’ve got one foot firmly planted in the “what do you have to lose” camp, but I really think I’d be a good fit in this company, and don’t want to jeopardize my chances.
Thanks all! Any advice/suggestions you can offer are appreciated.
It’s possible that the site substituted html characters for certain characters in your resume, but I don’t think there is any problem at all with using this as an excuse to submit your resume directly to a person. It shows you follow up and are concerned with details, and given that the company may have gotten a flood of submissions, it might move yours to the top.
I’ve been following a thread on another board about job seekers, hiring managers and recruiters. My takeaway from that thread is that HR is unlikely to help or care much no matter what you do. They receive 1,000 applications for every position and most positions are not filled via resumes coming in through these channels. It’s a little better, but not much, if a recruiter is involved.
It may still be worth the effort to call the company and bug the HR person – they won’t eliminate you for being persistent, and you never know, it might get you special attention.
Better is to go to your network of contacts to see if anyone knows anyone at this company. Even a second-hand connection is better than the one-in-a-thousand chance that an online resume application gives you. This is a good time to increase your contact base and re-connect with former colleagues via LinkedIn, Facebook and Plaxo.
If you have not looked for a job in the past 10 years, it is entirely different now. The Internet and social media have completely changed the rules.
I disagree you don’t want to bug an H/R manager. You’re not helping her/him. Your making more work for her or him.
Trust me you’re not the first person to have a resume with substituted characters. H/R can read through those and if it’s confusing enough they will call you and say, "Your resume didn’t format right, please resend it in XXXX format.
So don’t worry about it.
I also put a copy of my resume on a website (passcoded of course) and include that website on my paper resume, (for a copy of my online resume see: XXXX.COM)
This way you ensure that you will always have a decently formatted copy in case something goes wrong.
Now is also the time to redesign your resume in .txt (MS Notepad) with the simplest possible format so it retains a good structure.
Gone are the days of flashy resumes, color and such. Now an H/R manager is just as likely to hit CTRL+F (for find) and seek out words in each resume to get their choice. So make sure your words in your resume are the same kind of words an H/R manager would look for on a search
IMHO, and I have worked in HR, if the HR person’s name is listed as a contact, they have this kind of thing coming. They should be more careful about that in the future :).
If you’re a legitimately qualified person for an executive-level position, don’t hesitate to contact them.
My one hint would be to be ready to provide your resume in a really easy to use format, like .pdf, or plain text if it needs to be re-uploaded, so this doesn’t become something that goes around in circles.
Great info, all. Thanks for everything so far.
Substitution of special characters and loss of formatting is no big deal when initially reviewing a resume. Typos and grammatical errors are big deals, but these are seldom the result of import / upload errors. 
If you do get an interview, bring extra copies of your resume printed as you intended. The interviewers may still ask questions off the older version with which they are familiar, but they will most likely stick the nice version in your file as well (and appreciate your professionalism).
Best of luck.