In Defense Of Companies That Don’t Respond To On-Line Résumé Submissions

I have a confession.  Occasionally, I post jobs on one of the job boards, almost always anonymously and always very specifically describing the background we are looking for.  I am shocked at the responses we get.  Most are totally irrelevant.  

When we do a listing and say people must have recent advertising agency experience, 90% of the résumés received have zero agency background; another 9% might have worked at an ad agency back in the early 1990’s.  Our listings always post the salary, yet when the résumés we receive have some  relevancy, most will be too senior or too junior.

I have written before about people who are too senior stepping back to take a more junior job.  Generally, these people are desperately out of work.  Stepping back rarely happens because most of the time the person applying for the job is more senior than the person they will be reporting to.

A few weeks ago, someone came to see me who had a great advertising background. In the course of her conversation with me, she complained that she applied for several jobs listed on the job boards and received absolutely no responses.  She was very angry about the rudeness of companies.  I went back and looked in my files.  She had actually applied for one of my few listings about five months prior, but there was nothing in her background that had anything to do with what I was looking for at the time, so I had not responded.

And why should anyone respond to an irrelevant submission?  We all know that the candidate simply presses "submit" on their computer and hopes for the best.  When a company gets hundreds of responses, a polite auto-response, "we have received your submission and if your background is appropriate, we will get back to you" might be in order, but failing that, responding individually takes valuable time.  In addition, it is disruptive to work flow and takes time to answer each person who sends a resume; especially if the resume is irrelevant.  

Unfortunately, screening résumés is a job given to the most junior person in the human resources department.  It is difficult for them to make connections to determine the relevancy of the responses, so they are only able to put exact square pegs into exact square holes.  If someone is looking for a summer intern and the job listing asks for specific experience, it is difficult for the résumé-screener to determine the relevancy of experience at companies they may not know.  (I always advise people I meet who are working at a company that may not be familiar to put a descriptor after the company name on their résumé.)

Now, in fairness, some companies do job board listings that are so generic that they invite a huge response.  I can only assume that in those cases the screener knows what he or she is looking for. On the other hand, job descriptions on the job boards are perfunctory at best;  and just because the listing asks for specific background doesn't mean the candidate actually has what the company is looking for.  I remember once looking for someone who worked in advertising who had soft drink experience.  I received a response from a sales person who had worked for one of the major beverage companies, but had no ad agency experience.  He must have sent me three or four follow-ups and was very angry at my lack of response.

However, when applying on line, I understand that the people who submit resumes are playing the odds and hoping that there is always a chance that it might result in an interview. It is easy to press “send” whether one’s background is appropriate or not.  But when one does that, they have to know that the chances are slim that there will be a response. 

That said, there is absolutely no reason to be angry at the lack of response.