Stupidest way to apply for a job
-
don't be so cold... it's so easy to take the decision when you are from the other side (the side where people have a job already, in opposition with the other dark side where people search a job)... of course, some of them use a template and that's tiring, but hey, it's also tiring when you have to write/send quite 20 letters per day and still don't get any meeting after 2 or 3 months... i don't say i'm doing so :-D ; i say i understand a bit those who don't find something to do with their diploms when governments say their are tons of employments that are created on one or one domain and still don't find. either you don't have enough diploms, but if you continue you studies, you now are too "intelligent" for the job :(
TOXCCT >>> GEII power
[toxcct][VisualCalc]If you target who you are applying to carefully and treat them, the potential employer, with a modicum of respect and consideration, then you won't need to send 20 letters a day. No one likes a form letter. When someone sends me a resume that names the company, the site, and my name then I read their email and resume. If I get even an inkling that if I call up someone and have to explain who I am (after they have sent me a job application) then I'm not going to bother. cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
-
I can't believe it how so many candidates mail their resume with two dozen email addresses in the To: header [each of them a jobs@ or hr@ email ID for some company]. And the body of the mail is generic crap such as "really want to work in your great organization". That's pathetically stupid in my opinion - when I get such mails, I simply delete them. In fact I even delete mails where the To: is the same as From: and I am in BCC (since that's a sure indication that there must be several other IDs in BCC).
Nishant Sivakumar wrote:
Stupidest way to apply for a job
Well, my wife works in retail and they have caught a few shoplifting on the way out after submitting the application. X| "Simplicity is more complicated than you think. But it’s well worth it” (Ron Jeffries)
-
I only send one resume at at time, and only if I feel I'm qualified for the position. I have a smattering of VB, and I abhor the language itself, so I would never apply for a job that emphasized the use of VB, despite the fact that I know how to start up the IDE. I doubt I'd even apply for a C# position (unless the add stated a working knowledge of C++ was beneficial), despite having 15 years of C/C++ experience. Most companies want someone who can "hit the ground running", and I can't really do that with C#. For job applicants: I guess what I'm trying to say is don't waste people's time applying for work you know you're not qualified for. People don't generally want to hear "i'm a fast learner" - they want to hear about what you already know. For interviewers: Consider the applicant before sppouting off one of those cutsie little brain teaser questions. I taught myself Pascal, C/C++, CMS-2Y, MFC, development under proprietary WinCE devices, the finer points of estate planning (tax calculations), how to write DLLs, and the Windows API, and I've been coding for 25 years. I've walked out of plenty of interviews when they started asking stupid questions or wanted to give me a test. It's insulting to programmers who've been in the biz for as long as I have. Save that crap for college grads with no job history. ------- sig starts "I've heard some drivers saying, 'We're going too fast here...'. If you're not here to race, go the hell home - don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Why don't you tie a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt "...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I've been coding for 25 years. I've walked out of plenty of interviews when they started asking stupid questions or wanted to give me a test. It's insulting to programmers who've been in the biz for as long as I have. Save that crap for college grads with no job history.
Althought I agree with the cutsie questions, I disagree here. Anyone can put 25 years down on their resume. Jobs close and move on. I could easily claim job experience programming at a mine in Grants. Given that all but one closed, there would be no way to verify employment even if you wanted to. The only way is to ask questions. The larger the company the more often they have been burned by lying candidates, so you tend to find more of the questions for your knowledge. Although I leave those tests to the others here, I recognize the reason for why they do it. If you interview here, you run the gauntlet. One person likes test questions, one simple, one hard, and if you don't get the hard one, he runs one inbetween. It's not a 20 question timed test, but it is a test of your knowledge. If I am on the list of interviewers, I ask specifics about the projects you worked on. But even that, it could have been a room-mate and the applicant just over-heard a lot. With that in mind, I try to get deeper into specifics to prevent that. So even mine will start sounding like a test when I hit the details. Checking references is left for the person who passes the interview process, and is not always reliable either. So in the end it comes down to how much the interviewers get out of the prospective employee. At least if you were to apply here, you won't interview with HR first, you interview with the engineers and department heads - but there is a strong possibility of a quick test. The only interview with HR is if it is physically possible for you to work here (relocation, citizenship, income-desired, etc). _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
-
If you target who you are applying to carefully and treat them, the potential employer, with a modicum of respect and consideration, then you won't need to send 20 letters a day. No one likes a form letter. When someone sends me a resume that names the company, the site, and my name then I read their email and resume. If I get even an inkling that if I call up someone and have to explain who I am (after they have sent me a job application) then I'm not going to bother. cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Chris Maunder wrote:
...then you won't need to send 20 letters a day.
Agreed. This is nothing more than fishing and hoping for a bite.
"Take only what you need and leave the land as you found it." - Native American Proverb
-
don't be so cold... it's so easy to take the decision when you are from the other side (the side where people have a job already, in opposition with the other dark side where people search a job)... of course, some of them use a template and that's tiring, but hey, it's also tiring when you have to write/send quite 20 letters per day and still don't get any meeting after 2 or 3 months... i don't say i'm doing so :-D ; i say i understand a bit those who don't find something to do with their diploms when governments say their are tons of employments that are created on one or one domain and still don't find. either you don't have enough diploms, but if you continue you studies, you now are too "intelligent" for the job :(
TOXCCT >>> GEII power
[toxcct][VisualCalc]toxcct wrote:
of course, some of them use a template and that's tiring, but hey, it's also tiring when you have to write/send quite 20 letters per day and still don't get any meeting after 2 or 3 months...
Cold letters rarely do any good, in which case yes you will send 20 letters a day for a year and still might not get a single bite whether you use a template or not. Use a template for the highlights of your experience, but never for all of it, and don't cold-drop letters and resumes.
toxcct wrote:
but if you continue you studies, you now are too "intelligent" for the job
It's not about being too intelligent, it's about turnover rates and training costs. And even that can be argued in a good letter. It's called over-qualified which means you are at risk of moving right away to another job. Another reason to not use a template. Explain why you want the job, and why you are not a risk for taking another job in 3 months right after they finish training you (thus investing money in you with little in return). Recognizing the situation properly is the first step in writing a good letter. If you consider yourself more intelligent than your prospective employers... they will probably not hire you from the attitude, not from having too many degrees. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
-
I can't believe it how so many candidates mail their resume with two dozen email addresses in the To: header [each of them a jobs@ or hr@ email ID for some company]. And the body of the mail is generic crap such as "really want to work in your great organization". That's pathetically stupid in my opinion - when I get such mails, I simply delete them. In fact I even delete mails where the To: is the same as From: and I am in BCC (since that's a sure indication that there must be several other IDs in BCC).
Thats definetly stupid ! But then again it depends on the kind of job , if its an entry level / trainee job you can expect these kinds from fresh graduates (who are actually quite discouraged by the ratio of job applications and the replies). I don't mind that so much if the cover letter is simple good and to the point. for a professional job position with experience, these mails go directly to the recyclebin. "Not everything that counts can be counted..." -Albert Einstein
-
I can't believe it how so many candidates mail their resume with two dozen email addresses in the To: header [each of them a jobs@ or hr@ email ID for some company]. And the body of the mail is generic crap such as "really want to work in your great organization". That's pathetically stupid in my opinion - when I get such mails, I simply delete them. In fact I even delete mails where the To: is the same as From: and I am in BCC (since that's a sure indication that there must be several other IDs in BCC).
I agree. But the sad thing is, this applies to the recruiters also. I put my resume searchable on one of the job search websites few months ago, just to see what kinds of jobs are available in the market. And I started getting emails from recruiters everyday and 80% of them were without mentioning my name and any other details. just one template sent to every candidate they found on the website, whose resume matched one of the key words they were searching for. Lots of jobs were not even nearly related to my skills and the kind of work I do. I started directing those emails to junk mail folder....:rolleyes: I have just been working 3 years in the industry and don't have much experience to comment on how to hire somebody or to apply for a job. But as a candidate looking for a good company with great people to work for, I just didn't see how I could apply for those jobs. May be I would have, if I had been looking for a job actively.... :doh: Ankita
-
Giles wrote:
Also, throw away half the CV's as you don't want to employ anyone who is unlucky.
Is that supposed to mean that you disagree with what I am doing (as stated in my original post)?
-
Giles wrote:
Also, throw away half the CV's as you don't want to employ anyone who is unlucky.
Is that supposed to mean that you disagree with what I am doing (as stated in my original post)?
Heh, no, its a joke :D If you randomly pick half the applicants and discard them, they MUST be the unlucky ones, otherwise they would not have been chosen. So who wants unlucky staff?! I want the lucky ones! :D
-
I can't believe it how so many candidates mail their resume with two dozen email addresses in the To: header [each of them a jobs@ or hr@ email ID for some company]. And the body of the mail is generic crap such as "really want to work in your great organization". That's pathetically stupid in my opinion - when I get such mails, I simply delete them. In fact I even delete mails where the To: is the same as From: and I am in BCC (since that's a sure indication that there must be several other IDs in BCC).
Well I do the same, and believe me it works, as I have not forwarded my resume to you. Who has the time to make custom resumes for each company. Just throw your resumes to all consultants, and its their business to find the suitable company. http://www.priyank.in/
-
Also, throw away half the CV's as you don't want to employ anyone who is unlucky.
"Je pense, donc je mange." - Rene Descartes 1689 - Just before his mother put his tea on the table. Shameless Plug - Distributed Database Transactions in .NET using COM+
-
Well, I meant any of them. :) I've learned a lot of different things because the job demanded it. I think that demonstrates the ability to solve problems which is what the brain teaser questions are for. So there you (not dave, but a rhetorical "you") sit, as an interviewer, interviewing a programmer who has a long list of self-taught languages, and types of jobs that required almost intimate knowledge of various business types, you've talked with him for several minutes probing his knowledge to make sure he sounds legitimate, and then you rattle of a problem-solving brain teaser. When I'm the programmer being interviewed, I offer that the brain-teaser is a waste of my time condsidering my level of experience, and thank the interviewer for his/her time. If they want to ask me programming questions, fine. Oh, by the way, can I use a book or MSDN to look it up so I can give a precise answer? I've long-since forgotten the specifics, but I still know how to look it up, and I'm not at all embarrassed to admit that I need to. ------- sig starts "I've heard some drivers saying, 'We're going too fast here...'. If you're not here to race, go the hell home - don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Why don't you tie a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt "...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
Spot on. It is something that reall pees me off, being asked stupid questions about minute detail, when in reality, it is your ability to put together a working architecture that is the true value of a good engineer. Details are in reference books, and like any engineering discipline, they are at the disposal of the engineer. For example, here one of those silly questions: in a file you have ULONG val[]={1,2,3,4}; in another extern ULONG *val; is sizeof(val) the same in both files? Nunc est bibendum
-
It's an old joke... ;)
You must be careful in the forest Broken glass and rusty nails If you're to bring back something for us I have bullets for sale...
-
I only send one resume at at time, and only if I feel I'm qualified for the position. I have a smattering of VB, and I abhor the language itself, so I would never apply for a job that emphasized the use of VB, despite the fact that I know how to start up the IDE. I doubt I'd even apply for a C# position (unless the add stated a working knowledge of C++ was beneficial), despite having 15 years of C/C++ experience. Most companies want someone who can "hit the ground running", and I can't really do that with C#. For job applicants: I guess what I'm trying to say is don't waste people's time applying for work you know you're not qualified for. People don't generally want to hear "i'm a fast learner" - they want to hear about what you already know. For interviewers: Consider the applicant before sppouting off one of those cutsie little brain teaser questions. I taught myself Pascal, C/C++, CMS-2Y, MFC, development under proprietary WinCE devices, the finer points of estate planning (tax calculations), how to write DLLs, and the Windows API, and I've been coding for 25 years. I've walked out of plenty of interviews when they started asking stupid questions or wanted to give me a test. It's insulting to programmers who've been in the biz for as long as I have. Save that crap for college grads with no job history. ------- sig starts "I've heard some drivers saying, 'We're going too fast here...'. If you're not here to race, go the hell home - don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Why don't you tie a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt "...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I guess what I'm trying to say is don't waste people's time applying for work you know you're not qualified for.
What is so tough for the novice interviewer, though, is a frame of reference. For instance, I went to some job interviews where I was practically laughed out of the building, and other interviews where I was a God-Send and when can I start? All of this with the same resume, the same salary requirements, and through the same recruiter. The better you are, the more confident you are with your strengths and weaknesses. When you're a novice, you have no idea how good you are, or are not. I look on CodeProject, for example, and I feel like I'm 2 days old; I talk to others (who make more money than I), and they practically don't even know how to open up Visual Studio. One perfect example is what happened to me last night - at the VS 2005 launch, I ran into my boss from the last job I was at. He told me when I left, he lost his best asset. I was making $45 an hour there (contract of course), which I think is greatly inflated (for my skill-set and resume). So all I'm trying to say is, is that it's so hard for novices to know what to apply for.
