Imagine yourself out of work and desperate for a job. What would you do? I would most likely scour the Gardner News and hit up Craigslist to find a position which meets my skills. The next logical step is sending a well crafted resume and cover letter specific to the position.
In preparation of my fourth store I put an ad on Craigslist looking for applicants in the region the store will be located. The ad listed very specific requirements and requested that only applicants meeting them will be considered. Basically, don’t waste your time if you don’t have the skills.
Within hours after the post going live I had received a hundred resumes and cover letters. Even though I requested only PDF, DOC, and TXT based resumes, I received many different file formats. My reason for requesting those specific files is my iPhone has somewhat limited ability to open odd files.
As expected I received many resumes from people who don’t meet any of the requirements. Retail and customer service skills are fairly high ranking on my list and most of the people didn’t list any customer service positions. In fact, the predominant number didn’t list any of the skills.
After a few days of disappointing results I decided to try a social experiment and post three more nonrelated ads. Each was for a specific profession and listed oddly specific requirements. I wanted to see if the same was true. None of my fictitious jobs were related to computers.
If you guessed a high percentage of unqualified candidates applied you are correct. Also worth mentioning: A high percentage of resumes and emails were identical to my ‘real’ position. People sent in everything from pictures of their resume to documents created in Microsoft Works.
Having been on both sides of the fence and being unemployed several times in my life I understand job seekers’ mentality. It goes something like this: The more resumes I send out, the better my chance of scoring an interview. Internet access and email makes applying for many jobs extremely easy. I can imagine sending hundreds of resumes a day isn’t too farfetched.
It occurred to me that preventing unrelated resumes is fairly easy and doesn’t involve technology. Forcing someone to meet for an interview and fill out an application is the best way to start the process. Removing technology from the preliminary search process may also eliminate hundreds of emails I need to delete later.
Technology makes finding and applying for jobs relatively easy and takes the burden of stuffing envelopes. On the other hand, it also eliminates the personal touch of applying for jobs. As an employer I would much rather receive a printed resume I can touch and a cover letter signed by the applicant.
Higher paying professional jobs still rely on printed advertisements to find employees. Scanning the employment section in the newspaper I see mostly skilled positions advertised. Larger employers filling specific jobs seem to only use print which eliminates resume spammers.
I flipped to the back of the Gardner News and picked a handful of employment ads then searched Craigslist for the same. Out of five ads only one advertised the job of Craigslist. That position was a general laborer for a local contracting firm.
So I suppose it all boils down to the type of position and employer whether the job goes in the paper or online. Higher paying jobs requiring a specific skill set are usually the ones found in the paper. No matter if the ad is in the paper or online, resume spamming is still very common and very annoying.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can text him directly at (978) 413-2840 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com
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