Monday, April 21, 2014

Dear applicant

I wrote up a series of overly honest responses to job applicants a few years ago.  Didn't send them, of course, it was purely therapeutic writing.  Now that the job posting itself is stale and I don't even remember which company I was at when I wrote this, it's safe to post...

Dear applicant with broken links,

Thanks for sending your resume in regards to our open position.  Unfortunately, we're looking for the experience we asked for in the job description.  I appreciated the personalized cover letter but it would have been even nicer if it weren't formatted so oddly in HTML.

Dear applicant with 20 jobs in the last four years,

Thank-you for your interest in our position posted on craigslist.  At least I think you're interested, but since you just cut and pasted your resume into email and didn't reformat it, nor did you add any personalized cover letter, I'm not sure I really feel the interest.  You might like to know that your portfolio site has nothing on it but three static pages with a purple background.  I'm sure that was an oversight?

Dear new-grad applicant,

Thank-you for your interest in our position.  I feel at this time we're looking for somebody who has the experience they claim -- your "ten years experience" summarized in your cover letter looks more like four small short-term, part-time contract jobs in the last four years when I look at your resume.   Also, anybody who feels "proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite" is a skill worth listing for a technical position has too little of substance to say about their skills.

I was intrigued to see that your portfolio site looks like it came from the nineties.  Is Web 2.0 passé now, and retro static sites are the new white canvas?  I find it fascinating that you recreated that limited, static feel with CSS and Javascript!

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