Posted on 12/28/2002 1:15:10 PM PST by Rodney King
Resume black hole
BY ADAM GELLER Associated Press
Doug Ecklund totes up 11 months of job searching with these figures: about 1,000 resumes sent out via e-mail, just two interviews in person, one over the telephone, and zero offers.
But if the lack of success is discouraging, what irritates the systems analyst is the overall dearth of return communication. Only about 50 of his resumes drew a response, the rest netted nothing at all.
"We grew up in that era of where a courtesy was nice," said Ecklund, of Huntley, Ill. "Most (recruiters and employers), if they do respond will send you back an automated response. 'We got your resume, thank you for your letter, by the way, check out our Web site.' That's it."
Ecklund's frustration is all too familiar to the ranks of job hunters, now swollen by the recent economic downturn and waves of layoffs. More employers, deluged with resumes and increasingly leaving it to computers to sort through them all, are abandoning the courtesy letter and the polite callback as quaint, but outdated customs.
Who's to blame?
When the obituary is written for the courtesy note, technology will be listed as the cause of death. Many companies now use computerized resume management systems to scan, store and auto-respond to inquiries. Internet job boards like Monster.com and Hotjobs.com lets jobseekers spot and instantaneously reply to dozens of listings in just a few minutes.
But the decline of the courtesy note is about people as well as machines. The economic downturn has left many more people searching for work, and corporate cutbacks have included reductions in the very personnel and recruiting departments charged with handling the tide of resumes and cover letters.
"This is how rude the workplace has gotten," said Robin Ryan, a Seattle-based career counselor, who blames the lack of responses on corporate cost-cutting and the tide of applicants.
"You come in for an interview and they ... just leave you hanging. You usually have to call them back," she said. For many companies, "I really think it's the 37 cents. It's gotten so expensive that they choose not to do it."
Too many resumes
But some employers, who note that they do try to respond to all inquiries, point out that they're swimming in resumes.
Abbott Laboratories, for example, says its personnel department has received about 200,000 resumes so far this year, roughly double the number for all of 2001. Microsoft Corp. says it is getting 45,000 resumes each month, up from about 20,000 a month two years ago and 30,000 a month last year.
Both companies say they have policies of replying to all resumes with at least an automated response sent by a computer via e-mail.
The sea of applications has deepened because many job seekers have turned into what Peter Weddle, author "Weddle's Job Seeker's Guide to Employment Web Sites," of calls "graffiti applicants," sending out multiple electronic cover letters and resumes to employers, frequently for jobs they're not qualified to do.
"Everybody can just press 'send,' 'send,' 'send,'" said Kate Wendleton, president of The Five O'Clock Club, a New York career counseling firm. "You have to assume you're not going to get called in. You have to find some other way in."
That advice is repeated as gospel by career counselors and the people they advise. Jobseekers increasingly assume that, without a personal connection, they're not going to hear anything from many employers, even in the form of computer- generated "thank you" notes, said Kathy Andre of The Career Place, a publicly funded employment office in Woburn, Mass.
Working contacts
Many jobseekers, frustrated that their resumes are being swallowed in a black hole, are flocking to networking sessions, looking for someone who has a friend who knows a manager who might be hiring.
At the Barrington, Ill. Career Center, a single Tuesday morning networking meeting used to draw about 15 people. But on a recent Tuesday, back-to-back sessions drew a combined 104 jobseekers.
Networking has its own frustrations. Ecklund says when he's called people inside his former company on behalf of friends looking for work, he's been told five times that they should just send their resumes to the company Web site.
In an environment where employers can afford to be picky and take their time, even an interview doesn't guarantee communication.
Bob Creech, an unemployed credit manager from Arlington Heights, Ill., said after an interview six weeks ago, he immediately sent "thank you" notes off to the people he met with.
"I never heard 'boo' back from them, not even on e-mail," Creech said. "I think the trail's gone cold by now."
What a god dammned waste of time. Anyway, presumeably they have since gotten creamed in the market. Good. This was in early 2000.
You seem to be stating that an illeterate with a phony degree can do the same job that an American with many years of education and experience can. If so, then they should be doing the job. Geez, just to think that American companies are paying a hundred grand a year and more to for employees that are doing jobs which can be done by illiterate forigners. People who can't even read or write. No wonder we can't seem to compete in the world market anymore! But ... why don't we just hire our own American illiterates? They're not as good as Foreign illiterates?
Well, if you are out of work, and there is none available where you live, the mortgage problem should take care of itself. As for nobody promising you a job? Well, there are no guarantees in a free society. Try one of the socialist countries if you need guarantees. Otherwise make your best analysis of the future job market and be versatile.
Oh, poor you. You had to pay for your own parking.
THIS COUNTRY IS FRICKING OVER.
Who puts their birthdate on a resume? I don't. I got laid off last week and I have received half a dozen calls from recruiters, with at least one interview scheduled for the day after New Year's.
I don't know what the problem is with the guy who claims he has sent out 1,000 resumes and had no response. I get plenty of response for far fewer applications. But, I have been contracting for 5 years and it's been "musical chairs" ever since the Y2K heyday was over.
The last recruiter I spoke to, asked me straight off: "What's your status to work in the United States?"
I said, "I'm a U.S. citizen. I was born and raised in the U.S.A."
She said, "You are the first person I have talked to all day who is not here on H1B visa." Then she went on and on about "why don't more Americans apply for these [high-tech] jobs?"
He's had several phone interviews including one from Trident, BUT no offers. 29 years experience keeping 2 way radio/base stations and transmitters equipment on the air.
This is the ugly truth. And many are forced into dead end, no pay jobs. Very sad.
This is a common practice in the East. Phony professionals with phony degrees and phony titles are the rule rather than exception. The foreign companies in this part of the world frequently give employees impressive sounding titles such as "Director of Maintainence" when in fact they are a taxi driver escorting the expatriates from job site to job site. The expat makes $180k and the director about 5k.
It is still the 3rd world out there although things are changing fast. One thing every Indian and Pakistani engineer wants is out of their mothers country.
Or you can format your resume based on background/education/experience.
No dates required, but if you have too much experience it is obvious you're not new to the workforce.
Yes - except that is a theoretical situation. It is unlikely that 2 people would be "equal in all regards" except age -- unless you are looking for a very low-skill job.
Reality is that the older workers generally have more experience. Experience is important. Some fields respect it, some don't.
I have made the point on other threads that in civil engineering they far prefer some guy with 10 years actual experience building bridges to some guy straight out of school or with only a couple years of experience. The reason is liability. You build a bridge that falls down, you are going to jail.
However, in IT the HR department is given a list of buzzwords, and the hiring managers are usually hiring based on budget, not experience. They change jobs every 6 to 12 months anyway - so if they hire people in for a job, and the hired person isn't so great -- well mostly no one will know until quite a while later. So the managers have no downside. Plus, it is "expected" that most software projects fail - so they are never punished.
Amazingly, companies don't generally fire executives and managers for failed software projects. I don't know why. But they don't. So the managers hire based on price, the "cheapest" folks are hired (and you get what you pay for), and so the projects which are increasing in complexity continue to fail. Oh well, write it off. No bonus for the CIO this year. Musical chairs for the executives and managers. And the shareholders are the ones to get hurt, and the multi-million dollars a year are wasted and "written off." But who cares about the shareholders anyway?
Now, the situation with respect to age is something of a reflection of the throw-away society we live in. Buy something, use it for a while, get what you want out of it, then toss it and get a newer one. It's the same for workers.
As is obvious from some of the comments on this thread, people are simply commodities. Mere pawns in a game.
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