|
 We
still have a long way to go before we learn the basic e-mail etiquette
of applying for jobs, says MOHAN BABU. Most job seekers are
so busy beefing up their bio-data that they do not really pay attention
to some of these basic best practices of sending e-mailed résumés
A few weeks ago I received a mail from an irate
friend of mine who was having a bad hair day because of the endless
résumés he had to screen through while helping his
company look for suitable candidates in response to an advertisement
in a newspaper. His mail went on to describe how his company had
placed a very specific advertisement in the paper asking candidates
to respond to various categories of job profiles—programmers,
architects, project managers, etc, the company was looking for.
The advertisement clearly mentioned that the
candidates were to have the following in the subject of the e-mail:
“Area of expertise, preferred location of interview, years
of experience, technology.” Even with such clear instructions,
apparently over half of the candidates responded with the following
in the subject. “Area of expertise, preferred location of interview,
years of experience, technology.” How dumb, or careless can
one be, my friend asked in his mail? If a candidate is unable to
read a simple advertisement and respond intelligently, an incorrectly
drafted e-mail alone should be grounds for disqualification, he
added. I couldn’t agree more.
A few years ago, during the height of tech-boom,
when I was assisting my company in Colorado with one such résumé
screening exercise, I watched with horror as the HR manager mercilessly
tossed away a résumé of an otherwise perfect, technically
competent candidate because he had misspelled the company (our company’s)
name. While this may be an extreme case of screening, in today’s
tight job market, one would expect candidates to use every tactic
to stand head-and-shoulder above their peers. However, from my friend’s
mail, I gather that we still have a long way to go before we learn
the basic e-mail etiquette of applying for jobs. This, even though
most techies of our generation are expected to be extremely comfortable
in the use of e-mail and Internet technologies.
Candidates, especially Web savvy techies, do
not lack in guidelines for posting their résumés and
profiles using e-mails. For instance, wetfeet.com, a premier site
that contains interesting articles for jobseekers recently ran a
series of articles on “Ten Tips for Submitting Electronic Résumés”
and “Five dos and five don’ts to keep in mind when sending
your résumé and cover letter via e-mail.” (http://www.wetfeet.com/asp/article.asp?aid=195&atype=Résumés).
Apparently, most job seekers are either too busy beefing up their
résumé or don’t really pay attention to some
of these basic best-practices. Going back to my friend’s example,
his company obviously wanted to screen e-mails from candidates based
on their area of expertise, preferred interview location, etc, and
a candidate should have ideally given “Area of expertise=.NET,
Preferred Location of Interview=Boston”, etc, or “.NET
// Boston // 7 years” instead of blindly copying the suggested
text in the advert.
A very common and annoying tactic used by candidates
is to “cc” about a dozen or so companies while applying
for jobs. Do you think any recruiting manager is going to take kindly
to you also applying to the competitor’s advert in the same
mail? E-mail does not cost anything to draft and send, so why scrimp
on drafting and e-mailing a dozen times exclusively instead of saving
a few minutes? Another common error candidates make is to use their
company’s mail to send the e-mail with the résumé
attachment to their personal (yahoo/hotmail) id and then forwarding
it to the employer. While forwarding such mails, the first mail
becomes an attachment to the second one so the employer has to open
two attachments before he can actually see the résumé.
How many employers would have the patience to do so? This tactic
of the candidate also shows that s/he used the company mail to draft
the mail (so, it was done during working hours?). Another really
ridiculous error many candidates commit is to “password protect”
the word document that contains the résumé. Do they
think that the prospective employer is going to be intrigued by
the content and write to them asking for the password before opening
the mail or is going to click it to the thrash can?
Having seen the “other side,” that
is, having spent endless hours sifting through e-mails of candidates
and talking to friends and peers who have done the same, I can only
empathise with fellow hiring managers and HR people who have to
screen through thousands of résumés that flood the
inbox after every advertisement. Given the fickle human nature,
and also the fact that the person looking at the inbox is going
to spend at the most a few seconds scanning the mail before moving
it to the “to be screened” or “reject” folder,
your odds as a candidates improve greatly if you follow some common-sense
and of course adhere to the instructions given in an advert to the
tee.
I remember a few years ago (or maybe a decade
ago), candidates had to have the résumés typed and/or
photocopied on bond paper before physically mailing them to employers.
Then covering letters, the format of the résumé, etc,
played a big role. Perhaps some candidates in the current e-world
started feeling that just because e-mails are convenient and free,
they are also informal. How untrue!! The same formality that one
would use while addressing prospective employers while physically
mailing résumés will have to be applied to e-mailed
résumés too.
The lesson here, at least for me, is that I know
for sure how I am going to be drafting my résumé (as
and) when I am ready to hit the job-market.
Mohan Babu is a US based software consultant
trying to find the ‘sweet spot’ where IT meets business. E-mail:
mohan@garamchai.com
|
