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Title:
The basic etiquette of e-mailing résumés
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.
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