No Cost - Please Apply!
Subtitle: The Opposite of Post and Pray
Yet another post where someone will say, "wow - is he old" after they read it.
I remember, not so long ago, when applying for a posted or advertised position actually took some work. You had to at least personalize a cover letter/e-mail. You needed to perform some research to see if you could find a name so that the letter could be personalized. (Don't get me started about actually snail-mailing letters and using bond paper - and buying stamps.)
In our recent Post and Pray Blog post (see the May 16th post), we talked from the company perspective. Companies will post a position and hope (or pray) they get the right people looking and applying. Well - getting people to apply may have just gotten easier. Getting the right people to apply - no change!
"LinkedIn Introduces Universal Resume Apply Button"
This was the title of an article posted on ere.net (July 25th - by John Zappe). As the title and article state, LinkedIn is "offering employers a button to include on all their job postings enabling candidates to use their LinkedIn profiles to apply for the position." Many of the searches we are now conducting have started as employer postings. In some cases, we have had a chance to see some of the responses the employer received before they chose to use a search firm. Our favorite - a Bus Driver that felt he had the customer service skills (clearly stated in his cover e-mail) to be a Finance Manager (the position requires strong Project Finance and International Finance experience). The person wanted to get out of his current career and, it appeared to me, he applied for every job he could find. Is that a bad tactic? The career experts that I know would say YES!"That was easy!®"
(Thank you Staples!) It really depends on the perspective you come from. Annie Fisher, a contributing editor to FORTUNE, once put out a listing of what she considered wrong with resumes. On the list:- Applying for a job for which you are not qualified