Craigslist Rant, Long Overdue
I’ve been mulling a post on how people post resumes to Craigslist for some time, but the post I saw today inspired me to sit down and write it. The title of the post is “Posting in Vein- Employers Do Not Read These Resumes.” The poster goes on to complain that he or she sees the same highly qualified people posting over and over, so clearly they just aren’t getting read.
A few things ran through my mind when I read this.
First, if your résumé shows the same attention to detail that this post displayed, it’s no wonder, what with “Posting in Vain” being misspelled and all. Seriously, the number of postings that show no fundamental grasp of written communication in English is just astounding.
Second, I check CL for potential candidates at least once a day. Some of my very best people have come from Craigslist, but then there are people like this guy, who we’ve contacted a number of times and who consistently fails to get back to us with even so much as a “Thanks, but I don’t work with recruiters.” Now we just shrug at each other and laugh every time we see that he’s still looking for a job- we could put him to work pretty quickly, if he’d just return our calls and emails. Other notable CL flameouts have included the guy who disappeared in the middle of the application, never to return, and more than a few other candidates who blew off their interviews.
And then there are the “wishful thinking” résumés- the “I want a receptionist job three days a week (because you don’t need to have your phones answered the other two days)” people, the “I have no experience but I want a really awesome job!” people, the people who don’t tell you what it is that they do in the title of their post, the people who post two sentences about their experience and expect you to contact them to get their résumés (as if!), and the list goes on and on.
Do not even get me started about the people who list entirely inappropriate personal details in their Craigslist postings. We have this thing in the US called the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. EEO laws are complicated things, and rather than get yourself all embroiled in it, it’s easier to skip over ALL postings that include any reference to a person’s sex, sexual orientation, race, level of attractiveness. Besides that, aside from showing me that you’re a “young, gay, black man,” or an “attractive, blonde female,” you’re just showing me that you’re not terribly bright and have no idea what’s appropriate in a professional environment. Note to jobseekers: The whole point is that it shouldn’t matter if you’re gay or attractive or male or whatever, but if you mention it, you put the employer in a position of having to prove that it doesn’t matter, so you’re better off not calling attention to it.
So yes, employers do read Craigslist résumés, it’s just that most of them aren’t terribly useful to us.
(Update: I’ve submitted this post to the Monday Morning Linkfest at Recruiting.com.)
March 2nd, 2006 at 12:01 pm
“Seriously, the number of postings that show no fundamental grasp of written communication in English is just astounding.” Hi Tiffany - couldn’t help but both laugh and nod knowingly to myself when I read that. I work with a staffing agency now, but prior to that owned and operated a writing and editorial services company. Essentially, we took rough copy and polished it to gem-like luminance (or tried to anyway). I’ve grown a bit more lax since then, but I used to maniacally check my spelling and grammar even in the most inconsequential e-mail to a friend. Now, even though I’m only marginally involved in the recruiting end of our business, I cringe when I see some resumes. I think that sometimes IT professionals feel that their writing and communications skills are unimportant, but having also worked with such individuals, i.e. - highly talented “techies” without good communications skills - I know that this is just not true. Perhaps I’m hard on applicants or potential employees, but I always have felt that, at a minimum, an applicant should be able to effectively communicate.