Job Hunting
It’s Tough These Days
I was amazed this week when I ran an ad on Craig’s List for a successful client of mine that is hiring. The ad broke on Sunday and I was immediately bombarded with inquiries. By the end of the day on Monday the number totaled over 50. What amazed me more than anything were the sloppy e-mails and horrible resumes I got. You would think that someone looking for work would realize the importance of the first impression made via e-mail. I saw such things as blank subject lines, empty text boxes, attachments without labels, basic misspelling and poor grammar with no sense of punctuation rules. Most amazing of all were the college students and even graduates that were among the poorly worded applications.
Besides the bad imagery and poor wording, I had people applying for a clearly defined retail selling job with absolutely no relative experience. I got the feeling that they were just responding to every ad listed. I wanted to send most of them a copy of E-Mail Etiquette Made Easy, but I doubted if it would ever be read.
Diamond Diving
I have always been willing to dig through the garbage (not literally) to find the occassional diamond in the rough, and that was the case here. Out of the 50 responses, by Wednesday evening we found eight great prospects for three jobs.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
I think this is the product of the poor Hawaii school system coupled with high unemployment where the worst employees have been fired. It sounds like businesses can be pretty choosy.
May 10th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Mr. (or Ms.) Reality Check knows nothing at all about the Hawaii school system, which happens to be outstanding. The second part of his comment could be accurate however.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Oddly, finding a job and doing it well is often left out of the school curriculum. I suspect it’s something the teachers never learned.
May 17th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Many many people are living their life with little understanding of what it takes to run a business with employees, and so the emails they send reflect the mindlessness and lack of empathizing with small business people. Life becomes a self centered fantasy. Our kids have followed our materialistic ways, and so many expect the condo, the BMW and not much work ethic or appreciation for what it takes to support such a lifestlyle. The kids today reflect their upbringing. As time goes on, it gets worse unfortunatley. I was born in 1958, my parents were not materialists, they were not stressed out of their minds, most everyone i knew never divorced, i was not allowed to be self centered, lazy or to live in a fantasy world. My peers kids were raised in a different world for the most part. this bailout mentality is also toxic for kids to see happen. pretty soon everyone wants something for nothing, and deficit spending is ok so long as we can keep the party roaring for now. take a look at kids today- great sense of humor thank God, fun loving, but detached from reality in many cases due to the crazy world they live in. i think what would help them a lot is parents instilling a work ethic, a sense of responsibility and respect for others, a sense of seeing things as they are and operating from that standpoint, and letting them know that there are good people out there, but they need to be savvy and grounded, compassionate but not stupid, kind but understanding they can’t fix the entire world, and understanding that no one owes me anything, i owe everyone my respect.