Over 25 years in my professional career I have gone through hundreds of resumes from eager applicants for various positions including administrative assistants, telemarketers, marketing management, creative and web developers. We just completed the hiring process for a new person and it brought to light a variety of fun tips I wanted to share to help you not get the interview.
Send a blank email
Don’t bother to write an email if you have attached your cover letter. That shows me how lazy you are and sends you straight to the NO pile.
Don’t put your personal information in the subject line
…Especially when you are responding to an ad from an online posting service like Monster or Craig’s List. Imagine 100 people responding to the same ad and everyone just clicks to submit the same email template. My in-box now has 100 new emails all with the same subject line. (See picture above). So if you don’t add your name into the subject line, it makes it really easy to accidentally skip or lose your emailed application.
Don’t provide all of your contact information
Make me work for it. I prefer to reach out by phone but if you only give me your email, make sure you don’t check it very often so I have forgotten about you in a few weeks. If you have an online portfolio or website, do not put that on your resume or cover letter. Put it in the email so if I only print your resume, I don’t have it. Then I have to go through 100 emails all with the same subject line and see if I can find it.
Don’t proof your resume or letter
…Especially if you are applying for a writing or designing position. Typos, misspellings, grammar and punctuation mistakes, misaligned bullets and paragraphs are all circled with a red pen as I scan your letter and resume. The more red, the quicker you jump to the NO pile.
Keep your file names generic: “resume” and “cover letter”
This concept is similar to the idea of the generic email subject line. Imagine hundreds of Word and PDF documents all with the same generic name. It makes it easy for me to lose and you never even make it to the NO pile!.
In a world when you see people graduating from college with student loans the size of a mortgage, unemployment rates of recent college graduates in the 8-10% range and watching 15-20% of those graduates ending up ‘under-employed’ I can see why. Follow these five tips and you can help all of these numbers increase -- the lazier the better.
Come on people! Seriously?! I am horrified! All of these examples are real and avoidable. If your college professors don't tell you how, Google will give you tips on anything you can think of for free: search ‘cover letter’ or ‘job search tips.’ Duh! You may have grown up where everyone gets a trophy for playing but in the real world only one person gets the job.
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