No More Email Rejections, Please!

GUEST BLOG: Michael Miller, Managing Director, Let Kids Be Kids Inc.

You see the perfect job advertised online. The job you could have created for yourself if you had had the opportunity to solicit yourself for the position. It's perfect!

First of all, let’s get this all in perspective! XYZ Company cannot find anyone internally to fill a position so they solicit from the great unwashed out there to save their bacon and solve their management challenge. If they were such a hotshot company, why couldn’t they solve their problems from the inside? So many companies are over-burdened with MBA grads who have little or nothing to bring to a company until they've been around long enough to actually realize how companies operate, which is really at the whim of the big cheese who runs the place. If they were smart, they would actually know how to go about hiring people or better yet not get themselves into a position where there is no one internally who they can brow beat or cajole into solving their self-made "crisis." Job hunters are in fact problem solvers–the other guy's problems.

I digress!

You take the time to complete an online-only application form that gives you no opportunity to explain why your skills are perfect for the job. As you fill in the endless, invasive form that asks you such woefully pertinent questions as your major in high school thirty years ago or questions you on your first job, you try to thwart their ability to figure out your age, marital status, race, religion, sexual preferences and how little you are actually willing to work for in today’s climate.

As you are completing the form, you wonder exactly who is going to screen your application. Is it going to be scanned by a computer program looking for all the key words you forgot, or, more likely, didn’t know to use? Will the lowest paid employee in the targeted company look it over not understanding why you listed such-and-such as examples of your expertise? Will it be a print out on some HR person’s desk that knows the least of all about line responsibilities? Who is going to read the bloody thing? You/we should be able to find this out, like we did in the old days–before online applications made us feel like less of a human being.

Now that you have successfully filled out the form, you have to write a cover letter. You have to go back a number of times as you keep forgetting to mark a box or radio button, swearing everything you said in the application was the whole truth.

Who do you write the cover letter to? HR, the company president, the vice president, or maybe a name you got online? What if it’s not the right person? What do you know about this non-person? In the good ol' days, you would wear the right school tie or pin to the initial informational interview and perhaps say something reflecting your membership in Rotary, Kiwanis, Moose, or Elks, or do whatever else it took to show some human connection with the hiring authority. Anything to get a conversation going, to reduce your anxiety and to endear yourself to your potential new boss. Those days are gone, my friend!

So, you write the cover letter to no one; "To Whom It May Concern." You try to guess what to say in a single page that will summarize your lifetime of experience, wondering if it is really reducible to just four paragraphs. Job seekers are told employers don’t want to read anything more than one page. Perhaps we should all boycott companies that limit their inquisitiveness to bullet points.

We need the money, so we write something–hoping it will garner us an interview.

Now we wait. And wait. And wait. The application forbade phone calls or any attempt to solicit a decision so we just wait, and maybe pray a little, as we are now thirty days from being totally broke.

Finally you get an email, with implied happy music playing in the background, telling you that the company was swamped with excellent applicants. Unfortunately, you are not one of them. They thank you for taking the time to send in your life story and they will hoard and guard it in their vaults for the next time they can’t solve an internal crisis.

Thanks for the additional insult! Please, XYZ Company; don’t tell me how too many excellent candidates swamped you and that it took you four months to sort through them. I don’t care that you have so many challenges; I just want a job.

Recently a friend applied for a position that was created for him. He went through all the above steps, hoping the application was submitted correctly. He had the advantage of knowing who the hiring authority was and tailor-made his cover letter to that person's experience with him as a volunteer, board member of a non-profit and fellow graduate of a large University.

Yep! He got an email telling him how happy they were he applied for the position. Nicely, he was told he was not one of the finalists in a field of billions who had more impressive credentials. They didn’t say that exactly, but you get the point. They did end it with a solicitation for their foundation and happiness that they would see him at an upcoming volunteer meeting where it was anticipated he would lead a subcommittee!

Please. We are people out here trying to solve your problem. Please remember you asked us for help. Please try to treat us like we actually matter.