Dealing With Grad Spam
from the it's-an-avalanche dept
Apparently, HR directors are getting increasingly tired of grad spam - where soon to graduate college students start firing off emailed resumes to every online job posting they can find. These usually aren't targeted, and they do little to distinguish themselves from the thousands of other grad spam resumes that are showing up at the same time. In fact, many are poorly written and filled with typos (or "txt" speech). In many cases, HR folks are simply (properly) junking the resumes as spam. Sometimes, the person applying for a job didn't even bother to send the message individually, so the recipient could see the twenty other companies the applicant had fired their resume off to.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
Everywhere-else-in-the-world-speakfor a resume.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
Hah.
Having seen the inside of a placement agency as an IT director, I can tell you I don't have a whole lot of pity for either these agencies, or the HR directors looking to fill jobs who throw away many applicants with anything less than ivy league pedigree.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
So there's no pity here.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
mentally challenged HR people
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Boo bloody hoo!
I once went on an interview for a tech job where the agency guy told me to meat him at the pub before going for the interview. At the pub he offered me a beer (that would have smelled good at the interview!) and proceeded to tell me that last week he was an estate agent!
Personally I don't care if they get spammed with CV's, I mean isn't that their purpose?
And you'd have thought that graduates would have learned to use BCC....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Thats thair job for christ sakes!!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
HR *is* clueless
There's always the unreasonable expectations (like needing 10 years of windows 95 programming experience back in 96 and the like) and the total cluelessness of their questions.
The challenge had always been for me to get by them to the real people.
My current job I got because I was interviewed by my actual boss BEFORE being interviewed by HR (It was a personal reference). We had established (she had tested me at actual tasks) that I could do the job very well, but the HR person was extremely hostile from the get go (first question: How can you possibly have me believe you can fill this position since you don't have 10 years of experience with COBOL? Second question: When you saw our posting, what arrogance led you to apply? note: I had seen no official posting, I was refered by a person I had done programming contracts for who knew I could do the job). It took my boss and HER boss to step in forcefully (they were present at the interview) on my behalf to get him to back off. Considering the fact that I've been here now many years and have had nothing but success and great evaluations, I'd say they made the right choice :)
The HR person has since been downsized.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
get real
[ link to this | view in chronology ]