Recently, several of us at our firm noticed a large block of job hunters who submitted their resumes to firms (or completed their online applications for positions) and never heard from them.
A week. Two weeks went by; no contact from the firm. We qualified the person, spoke with our contact from the firm and was greeted with the words, “Sorry. They are already in our system.”
The candidate still didn’t get a call and the company wouldn’t let us schedule the candidate for an interview with them because it would show them up as having missed someone in their “system” and obligating them to pay us a fee for something they could have done themselves.
There are many reasons why it has happened but recruiting at most large firms has become another factory. It doesn’t make anything (OK, they help make new hires) but use automated systems to track resumes and all information you provide them with, ostensibly to manage the recruiting process from initial contact through to what is called “on boarding.”
It doesn’t seem like a bad thing until you realize there is a hole in the systems that most companies have deployed that you can drive a 777 through that hurts most job hunters. To understand the hole you have to understand what recruiters do at most firms.
All day long they are interviewing job applicants (every 30 minutes for many of them), talking to managers who are trying to hire to undertand the requirement, schedule interviews, debrief after interviews, construct offers that are accepted, talk to 3rd party recruiters and screen resumes.
Screen resumes.
How do you have time to screen resumes that are in the system when you are doing 8-12 interviews a day plus all these other things, too?
Because recruiting is seen as the low end of the food chain of HR and treated as an expense, HR tends to be populated with people who are stretched too thin. Screening all thoses resume that are uploaded doesn’t wind up being the “A” priority on their schedule.
So your resume sits in their data base.
And when there actually is someone looking at resumes, it tends to be an inexperienced person in the department who is finding and evaluating resumes and may be little more than an intern or an administrative assistant.
Think they know what they’re doing?
Don’t send your resume directly to firms unless someone is handing it directly to a hiring manager.
Along the same lines, here’s something else you shouldn’t do.
NEVER PUT YOUR RESUME ON A JOB BOARD WITH YOUR ACTUAL NAME AND CONTACT INFORMATION ON IT (This includes your email address).
Instead, pay the extra money and have a private resume posted with one of those 30 character email addresses that forward to your real email address.
Why?
Slightly different reason than before– companies are paying to download resumes from job boards but often don’t have time to actually read resumes and act on them.
So a third party recruiter like me calls up and tries to present your resume only to discover that it is “in their system” . . . and because they are too busy, they rarely make contact with candidates about jobs.
The result is you don’t wind up getting the interview that you could have had had you not had your resume harvested from the job board.