If you work with hiring managers and recruiters, you will hear all kinds of horror stories about receiving resumes and samples. It appears that job search can impede common sense, and living out loud online has made us less concerned about how people perceive us as we rush from email to blog post to get the word out.
In many ways, the personal computer has made it easier to look foolish to a hiring manager or recruiter because computers make it possible to work faster without necessarily checking what we are doing. It has become too easy to send a resume at the click of a mouse or post material on the web to use as a reference, whether that material is a fit or not. One recruiter recently posted to her Facebook page that she had just received a cover letter directing her to a blog site for writing samples, and the blog site bears the disclaimer, “not suitable for readers under 18.” What was that job seeker thinking?
The computer age has made it easier to reach out to prospective employers via web, e-mail, e-forms, Twitter, LinkedIn, you name it. And that’s the problem, it has become so easy to reach out that the proprieties and protocols are suffering as a result – candidates don’t take the time they need to think and review before they hit “send.”
I recently saw a blog post from Peter Shankman, social media expert and author, and founder of Help A Reporter Out, who was seeking to hire an assistant editor. His experience is all-too-typical what recruiters and hiring managers are seeing today:
- He received 481 resumes, of which 33 were sent to the wrong email address so were disqualified for failure to follow instructions.
- Of the remaining 449, 184 had the resume attached to an email without a cover letter, note, subject line notation, nothing. They were immediately eliminated. As Shankman says:
“We didn’t specifically ask for a cover letter, but come on – Nothing? That doesn’t give us much to go on. That’s like a guy walking up to a girl in a bar and just screaming “SEX!” It doesn’t work. Give us some reason to look at you – This is your first introduction to us. “JOB!” doesn’t cut it.”
- Another 52 were immediately eliminated for spelling or grammar errors, or because they were addressed to the wrong person or the wrong company (the curse of cut-and-paste in haste).
- 213 resumes left, and 28 were eliminated for their email addresses (e.g. poopiepants47@hotmail.com)
- Of the 185 left, 20 were selected who matched the job criteria
So nearly half of the resumes he received for this job were eliminated for stupid errors and because the candidate did not stop to think or check his or her work. Maybe computers don’t make us dumber, but they do tend to make us more careless, and those mistakes will eliminate you from the running before you can even show your value.
