How to Make Sure Your Resume is Ignored

[Lance Anderson]

We HR people are curious lot, we�re expected to be the resident expert on a library full of local, state and federal laws; know where every form the benefits providers produce is stored and when to use it; referee knife fights between employees, provide a sympathetic ear to everyone with a perceived social injustice, and explain all the above to management while begging for a budget. Oh, yeah, and in our spare time we are expected to fill a long list of IT positions needed with just a hand full of alphabet soup for job descriptions.
Here are a few ways to make sure you don�t hear from a prospective employer.
1. Format your resume in small type to give us eyestrain trying to determine if you�re qualified. (Most of us have vision coverage)
2. Send your resume to every posted job opening you find without reading the requirements.
3. Don�t give any employment dates so we have to guess at how much experience you have.
4. Send lots of copies of your resume to us, we have plenty of hard drive space.
5. Ignore submittal instructions to show how clever you are.
6. Follow up with lots of emails and phone calls to show how interested you are.
7. Hide the important stuff like relevant skills somewhere near the bottom of your resume so we have to hunt for it.
8. Don�t tell us if you need sponsorship, we love those surprises later in the process.
9. Exaggerate your qualifications, what are the odds we�ll find out?
10. Don�t bother telling us where you are located or if you have specific geographic preferences. We can tell all that from our crystal ball.

The above is not intended as criticism of anyone, hopefully it may help some.

[This message has been edited by Lance Anderson (edited July 26, 2001).]

[Bartholemu Smith]

Lance,
This crystal ball you mentioned...were can I get one??
Faze

[John M. Gabriele]

Lance,
How 'bout simply including a plain text resume at the end of the email rather than sending an M$-Word attachment?
Do you mind plain text or are Word docs preferable?

[This message has been edited by john gabriele (edited July 28, 2001).]

[Mark Herschberg]

1) I lik to make typoes; along with grammatical errors in my cover letter, it helped to make me standing out.
2) Consider your email signature, a link to www.beer-is-fun.com may be cute when emailing your friends, but doesn't give the right first impression to a potential employer.
3) Always address the HR personal by his or her first name, they enjoy being casually addressed by stangers.
4) Don't bother mentioning for which position you would like a job (if you have a specific one in mind), it's more fun to guess.
Lance, you should make a web page about this...

--Mark
PS I, too, would like to get one of those crystal balls. I've been using a magic 8 ball, but think it's time to upgrade. :-)

[Cindy Glass]

Words of wisdom!

[Lance Anderson]

I have no problem with plain text resumes as long as they aren't too difficult to read. I'm looking for information not art work. Many employers are scared of attachments, so pasting it in the email text is your best shot. Look for specific instructions in the job posting as to the employer's preference.
I have observed however that some hiring managers do weigh the r�sum��s appearance. This isn't common in IT but it can happen. It doesn't hurt to offer a formatted resume in you cover letter or email text if you are submitting one in plain text form.
Good Luck

Originally posted by john gabriele:
Lance,
How 'bout simply including a plain text resume at the end of the email rather than sending an M$-Word attachment?
Do you mind plain text or are Word docs preferable?

[This message has been edited by john gabriele (edited July 28, 2001).]

[Daniel Dunleavy]

My only violation is using the addressee's first name.
A few reasons for this.
Last number of years have mostly been dealing in email and it tends to be more informal.
They usually reply using my first name, so I don't see how they should be the one's to drop the formal salutation first.
Any company that is so hung up on that I probably wouldn't like anyway. I like a more informal/casual atmosphere at work. So if they don't reply because of this, it would save me time. To my knowledge it has never hurt me. Mostly people are looking for the right skills and the ability to at least create a sentence.
Dan