You Are Wasting Their Time . . .

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy of “You Might Be a Redneck” fame . . . (Please imagine his voice saying this)

 

If you apply for a position that requires IT security experience and your only experience with security is at the front door of a nightclub, you are wasting their time.

If you own a laundromat and apply for a position as Director of Human Resources with a $750 million manufacturing company, you are wasting their time.

If you are applying for a position as a Java developer and the word Java does not appear anywhere in your resume, you are wasting their time.

If you are a third party recruiter who submits a resume to me against a requirement that clearly says, “NO THIRD PARTIES,” you are wasting their time.

If you live in Pakistan and apply to an ad that says, “No overseas resumes,” you are wasting their time.

If your last job was in 2008 and you provide no explanation for what you have been doing professionally since before Barack Obama became President, you are wasting their time.

If you apply to a position as a Ruby on Rails developer and your sole qualification is that your first name is Ruby, you are wasting their time.

If you apply to a position where the key skills are in the headline and you do not have experience with them, you are wasting their time.

If you work in a warehouse and apply for a developer position and show no evidence that you have even taken a course in what the client is looking for, you are wasting their time.

If you are a third-party recruiter who submits resumes to me for consultants against position descriptions that clearly state that they are full-time jobs, you are wasting their time.

If you repeatedly misspell the skill you claim to be expert in, you are wasting their time.

If you submit your resume for an IT Delivery Manager position and work for (brace yourself) a Chinese restaurant doing deliveries, you are wasting their time.

If the job description says, “telecom experience required” and your experience is only with banks, you are wasting their time. The reverse is also true.

If you submit your resume 4 times in 10 minutes for the same position, you are wasting their time.

If you think a daily phone call to ask, “so what’s going on,” is a good thing to do, you are wasting their time.

If you are a security guard applying for a job as head of IT data security, you are wasting their time.

If your response to “please forward a copy of your resume in Word” is to forward the url to your LinkedIn profile for which you have only completed a four-line summary, you are wasting their time.

If you have never done anything in the job description but would like to do it, you are wasting their time.

 

There are many more ways job hunters waste a recruiter’s time.

 

P.S. At the suggestion of Claudia Niemeyer who commented that she would have appreciated it if I spent time describing what someone can do, the simplest things I can suggest:

1. Never submit a resume to a company’s applicant tracking system. Find the hiring manager through networking. I know this takes effort but sending your resume into the ATS doesn’t work. Want to keep doing it? You’ll get the same results as you always have.

2. If you submit a resume to the hiring manager or recruiter, try to make the fit obvious. Pretend that your resume is being read, or your call is being taken by someone who you are interrupting or is very busy. In fact, you are interrupting someone who is very busy. At a minimum, make your resume seem like it vaguely fits the requirement quickly. If you call them, get your point across about how you fit the job you’ve heard about apparent within 30 seconds of starting your pitch.No one has time for B. S.. Get to the point.

3. If you are sent to the applicant tracking system then, follow the directions to do so but ask, “From what you’ve heard so far, does my background superficially fit what you’re looking for?” Oh! Remember that if you used some flim-flam to disguise the fact that your experience with what they were looking for was sometime around the turn of the century, you are wasting their time!

 

 

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2014

 

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