E-mail resumes

[melodrama]

I love that our applicants e-mail their resumes.  It makes it easy to sort them by department, makes it easy to print an extra copy if we misplace or spill coffee on the first one.  And with PDF writing technology easily accessible, people can put together a really nice looking, well formatted resume that I can open with no trouble.

And then--sometimes--I get this:


"Attacked you will find my resume. Let me it was received. Thank You. Bob*"



*Name changed to protect the clueless

I try very hard not to let someone's terrible e-mail skills reflect on their ability to perform the job, but...it's difficult.  I have the same problem with people who think it's OK to send a job application e-mail written entirely in lower case.  Sometimes without punctuation, just spaces between the sentences.

Would they make these same poor choices if they were actually mailing a hard copy of their materials? 

[Shoo]

"Attacked you will find my resume. Let me it was received. Thank You. Bob*"
 

I'd be sorely tempted to reply to this email with something like this:

Dear Bob,

Fortunately for me, I haven't been attacked in quite some time.  If that's what is required to view your resume, I will have to decline.  Good luck in your job search.

[HogwartsAlum]

*spits granola bar onto monitor* Oh man, that was HILARIOUS! 

[EvilAlice]

I try very hard not to let someone's terrible e-mail skills reflect on their ability to perform the job, but..

I don't.  But then, the jobs I hire for involve writing e-mails to customers.

Even if it didn't though, I'd be no more willing to disregard that than a badly done resume.  They're trying to get a JOB.  If they can't put their best foot forward at that point, I don't see why they would suddenly be more motivated after they land it.

[dietcokeofevil]

Oh that's horrible.  I'm bothered by typos in resumes, and those are know where near as bad.  To me it demonstrates a lack of attention to detail as well as the possible poor language/communication skills.  Even if the resume was the best I had ever seen, I would hesitate hiring the person....after all they might have had someone else write their resume for them.

[blarg314]

I'd definitely include their email writing skill in my evalution. If I received the above email attached to a job application, the job application would go straight into the garbage.  There's always the possiblity that they've had their resume professionally done, and what you see in the email is their real writing standard.

[HogwartsAlum]

Ah ha ha ha ha....we just got a resume today in the regular mail - that came POSTAGE DUE.



*to be fair - a lot of people don't know that a 9x12 envelope is .63 (oversize) instead of .39 postage.  But it was still funny.

[Brentwood]

I love that our applicants e-mail their resumes.  It makes it easy to sort them by department, makes it easy to print an extra copy if we misplace or spill coffee on the first one.  And with PDF writing technology easily accessible, people can put together a really nice looking, well formatted resume that I can open with no trouble.

And then--sometimes--I get this:


"Attacked you will find my resume. Let me it was received. Thank You. Bob*"



*Name changed to protect the clueless

I try very hard not to let someone's terrible e-mail skills reflect on their ability to perform the job, but...it's difficult.  I have the same problem with people who think it's OK to send a job application e-mail written entirely in lower case.  Sometimes without punctuation, just spaces between the sentences.

Would they make these same poor choices if they were actually mailing a hard copy of their materials? 

Depending on what the job is, I might very well let their terrible e-mail skills reflect on their ability to perform the job. If there's one case when spelling, grammar, and typos should be scrupulously checked, job searching is the one! What if "Bob" sent an email to a client like that?

[NotCinderell]

Okay.  I did get peeved at the employment agency woman who said she wouldn't send me out on jobs because of my poor handwriting, but bad grammar/spelling/typing is just inexcusable.

[kareng57]

I love that our applicants e-mail their resumes.  It makes it easy to sort them by department, makes it easy to print an extra copy if we misplace or spill coffee on the first one.  And with PDF writing technology easily accessible, people can put together a really nice looking, well formatted resume that I can open with no trouble.

And then--sometimes--I get this:


"Attacked you will find my resume. Let me it was received. Thank You. Bob*"

IMO - good reason to ditch this person's resume no matter what.  If he/she is sending it by e-mail he/she ought to know how to do it correctly.  I know that many people will disagree with me, but personally I think proper spelling/punctuation is pretty basic.  If an applicant doesn't have a good grasp on this, he/she ought to at least vet the resume/cover-letter by someone who has.



*Name changed to protect the clueless

I try very hard not to let someone's terrible e-mail skills reflect on their ability to perform the job, but...it's difficult.  I have the same problem with people who think it's OK to send a job application e-mail written entirely in lower case.  Sometimes without punctuation, just spaces between the sentences.

Would they make these same poor choices if they were actually mailing a hard copy of their materials? 

I do think it matters, even if they're never going to go near a computer as part of the job.  If they're not confident about their e-mailing skills, they could simply mail the resume by regular mail, or hand-deliver it.    FAXing is of course an alternative but it can be a bit iffy - depending on the quality of the machines at either end, the resume can come out looking less-than-great.  But sending a resume (by whatever means)  should be demonstrating  the ability of the applicant to express him/herself accurately.

[Yarnspinner]

This is a scream.  We spend lots of our time at the library helping people post resumes on line or create resumes they will then attach to an e-mail.  That's fine.  What makes us all run into our staff room and giggle is: nine times out of then, the patron can't even figure out what the enter key is for, can't bold face anything, doesn't even realize they need an e-mail account to send e-mail and the job they are applying for (and claim to have the skills for) is computer tech/trouble shooter.

Call me mean, but if you are applying to be a computer engineer, oughtn't you to at least know how to handle the mouse to point and click?

[weber06]

The resumes we've been getting from HR are horrible and it's not the candidate's fault.  Whether they attach it or cut and paste it into our website it looks awful.  Everything comes out centered to the left, nothing is bold or underlined so at all runs together.  I've taken to highlighting them.  And the cover letter is sometimes smooshed in as well.  I feel so bad for people who put a lot of time into their resume and the I get something so hard to read.

[Slartibartfast]

That's why I'm not a huge fan of resume "templates" like you find in some word processing programs, that give you fancy fonts and little page dividers and whatever.  90% of the time, it won't come out correctly on the other person's machine - the alignment will be messed up, the font will come out as all squares, images are in the wrong place, sometimes there end up being typographical marks in the middle of the page.

I think that for most people, a clean-cut and professional resume can be made just using basic text layout - different size fonts (but all in the same normal font any computer would have!), spaced appropriately.  That way if your resume ends up in .txt format, it's still readable.

[melodrama]

That's why I'm not a huge fan of resume "templates" like you find in some word processing programs, that give you fancy fonts and little page dividers and whatever.  90% of the time, it won't come out correctly on the other person's machine - the alignment will be messed up, the font will come out as all squares, images are in the wrong place, sometimes there end up being typographical marks in the middle of the page.

I think that for most people, a clean-cut and professional resume can be made just using basic text layout - different size fonts (but all in the same normal font any computer would have!), spaced appropriately.  That way if your resume ends up in .txt format, it's still readable.

That's why I'm loving that the college and post-college kids are savvy enough to send their resumes as PDF's.  They open with no problem, there's no worry about the formatting being all wonky...they're lovely.

And, for the curious, "Bob" from the OP was not applying for any position that would require writing skills, or interaction with the public.  He was also, from looking over his resume, quite a bit older and way way way over-qualified for the position. 

Something about the job title "Audio Engineer" makes the 50 year old roadies, who've been touring with Metallica for the last 20 years think that this is the job for them, despite being a) not full time, with no benefits either and b) paying a weekly salary clearly aimed at the lower-mid level of the job market.