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What do job seekers and astronomers have in common? Dumping your résumé into a corporate receptacle is like plunging into a black hole in cyberspace.
Okay, not always, but often enough to be a problem. In a fit of Christmastime career-ennui a few years ago I submitted my résumé to a market research company known for mapping the vendor universe and never heard from them again.
My theory about this process, never verified, was that my résumé lacked the requisite keywords such as graduate degrees. Several weeks later my follow-up phone call was never returned, nor was a follow-up e-mail. Come to think of it, though, the company’s voice-mail system couldn’t have been looking for keywords. The downstream impact on me: I journeyed from feeling admiration to humiliation in about one week.
A recruiter will tell you that I should have given my résumé to a contact inside the company and asked him to walk it over to a hiring manager. I thought of that and opted not to because I didn’t want my contact to know that I wasn’t committed to my current job. (Granted, that’s beginning to sound like a Catch-22.)
In retrospect, these were my choices:
- I should have added better keywords into my resume like “briefly considered M.B.A.”
- I could have gone back to college for a more impressive, presumably higher degree
- I could have tried to meet someone at the firm who didn’t know me
- Or, I could have tried to figure out whether the company used a third-party recruiting firm and sought them out
The truth is none of these ideas would have worked very well. Although I knew people ‘inside’ I didn’t want to play that card. Lesson learned.
But as I look back upon this experience, I am kind of convinced that the corporate site should have come with a 36-point bold type warning in red that says: If You Insist.
Perhaps I can sue them for some form of delayed stress syndrome related to the lost résumé? “Well, you lose control,” explains Mark Mehler, co-founder of CareerXroads, a staffing strategy consulting firm Kendall Park, N.J.
Mehler says the important thing to do is just ask someone with whom you may have an affinity, like someone who went to your college or high school (not necessarily when you did). “People are generally friendly about helping each other,” he says. “So you ask there’s nothing wrong with that. The magic clue is to ask. Most people won’t ask.”
Tell me about it. This is how I parse the whole episode now: The corporate site seduced me into sending my résumé and I fed it to them. And frankly I don’t want it back.
I like this blog, that is a funny story but I think it is very true. I think everyone loses a resume in the black hole sometimes.
Sincerely,
Eric Castaneda
http://www.actionmentality.blogspot.com
P.S.
Check out my blog.
I am a student who will be looking for a career in a semester or two. What can I do to not have my resume lost in a “black hole?” How do you feel about digital resumes/portfolios? I want to stand out, but I have no connections.
I am a proponent of using social networking sites and referrals to achieve introductions to hiring managers or recruiters at companies you are targeting for employment. LinkedIn and Facebook are the top (general) sites at the moment for accomplishing this realistic goal. For example, let’s say your research tells you that you would be happy working at General Electric - but you don’t know anyone in your chosen division. First, build a free, professional looking profile on one or both of these sites. Second, make connections with people who can and will recommend you, including professors, internship colleagues, etc. Third, join interest groups on the subject matter that appeals to you. This will help bring you contacts and possible introductions. Fourth, depending upon your facility with these sites get help as needed for your company/people searches. Once you identify targets (and they’re there for many different professions), see if you are connected via someone you both know (LinkedIn depicts this) and seek an introduction. Once you know the right person’s name you can always mail (or if you’re clever and can google their email) or send them your resume. ;-) All that said, you should also be on job boards such as ours - which helps employers/recruiters to find you. That’s a passive approach however so you can’t rely strictly upon that.
[...] Recently, I read a post on myglobalcareer.com titled How Resumes Find Black Holes. The post talks about how often people send their resumes to companies and never hear from anyone again. I commented on the post, asking what I could do, as someone who will soon be entering the workforce, to make myself stand out to companies. This is what the author of the post, Rusty Weston, replied: [...]
The “black hole” into which resumes disappear is really not much a mystery. People erroneously think that an invitation to submit a resume is tantamount to a company saying “tell me about yourself.” Trust me, it is not. The real rquestion on the table is something quite different. Companies are really asking you to let them know how your background and skills solve the problems they have relative to the position they are trying to fill. In other words, a resume is not about you; it is about the hiring company and the translation between their problems and your skill-set. Applicants misunderstand that and submit resumes that are summaries of their experiences rather than of the linkages between those experiences and the problems companies are trying to solve.
That point of view, notwithstanding, it is good to know others see the black hole as well. Collectively, mabybe we can figure out how to get out of it–or perhaps better yet, how to avoid it all together.
Bill Holland
http://www.rwilliamhollandconsulting.com
[...] In reality we experienced something that most job seekers endure. Our resume simply fell into a black hole. This blog post from My Global Careerlooks at how resumes find black holes and how to avoid the experience all together (the key is networking). [...]