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PR Fuel: Help Wanted - Mental Health Professionals OnlyIf my head could actually spin it would have fallen onto the floor already.I've spent the past month going through over 300 resumes for two different job openings. One of the jobs is at my company and it is not public relations-related. The other job is at a large financial services firm where a friend of mine works and it is public relations-related. I agreed to help my buddy vet resumes and eventually the candidates. I regret that decision now. It's not just that going through resumes and interviewing people is time-consuming. It's mind-numbing and aggravating because you end up dealing with people that not only would you not want to hire, but you wouldn't even want to sit next to on a bus. There are people who simply don't understand the job hunting process, or who refuse to accept that you may just not want to hire them. Then there are those who only get as far as the email inbox. For example: 1. The Illiterate (and no offense to those people who are actually illiterate) The advertisements I posted for both jobs were crystal clear on a number of points. A certain level of experience was required for one job, while no phone calls were to be accepted by either hiring parties. Directions about what materials to submit and what subject line to use in the email (so that my email program could parse them into a specific folder) were so simple that a child could follow them. Despite what I felt were very clearly stated parameters, only about half of the job applicants followed directions. I don't think it's going overboard when I say that if someone can't follow directions on how to apply for a job then it's someone I don't want to hire. 2. The Future Superstars It's one thing to apply for an entry-level job when you have no experience. It's another thing to apply for a Vice President level job when you have no experience. My friend's company is hiring for a Vice President of Communications and you wouldn't believe some of the applications we received. My favorite was the person who was a year out of college with a physical education degree. The only paying job on the applicant's resume was working as a counselor at a summer camp. Why the person felt compelled to put the time in to apply for a job as the Vice President of Communications is beyond me. 3. The Gappers I haven't shopped at The Gap in years, but I saw plenty of gaps on resumes. One applicant's most recent work experience was 1994. His cover letter failed to explain why he had not been employed for fourteen years. My guess was prison; my friend guessed "won lottery, spent all the money." We didn't bother to find out why. 4. The Passengers I've read about them, but I didn't really believe they existed until now: The Helicopter Parent. These people earned their nickname because they hover over their children's lives, exerting tremendous influence well past an age when most kids are already shopping for mortgages. Well, one of them called my friend after her "precious snowflake" (as the kids say) applied for the VP of Communications job. She wanted to know why we politely declined to interview her son. After telling Mrs. Chopper that the job is for a senior-level executive with over ten years of experience in the financial services field, she proceeded to tell my friend that her son has had a brokerage account since he was 13. My friend told the high-flying parent that her son should look into a job at Bear Stearns. 5. The Best Worker in the World The position I was hiring for (we literally filled it last night) involved writing about securities regulatory filings. It's a job that many seasoned financial journalists couldn't even handle because it's so specialized. One of the requirements of the job, as stated in the ad, is, "Demonstrable ability to read and understand Securities and Exchange Commissions filings related to insider and institutional ownership disclosures (Form 4s, Schedule 13s, Proxies, etc.)." Thus, when people whose only writing experience has been for yoga websites and art magazines applied, they got a quick rejection letter, even the one who told us, "If I can write about early Twentieth Century American Impressionists, I know I can write about Wall Street." ___ Writing this, I realize that I may come off sounding a little angry. If nothing else, it just shows you how frustrating the experience has been. Part of being a good public relations person is conducting yourself professionally, even when you're just applying for a job. You're representing yourself, and in a field like public relations, that means you're already on trial.
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