A Good Man is (not really all that) Hard to Find

Thank you to everyone who responded to my hiring notice; I’ve selected a can­didate and am looking for­ward to being able to tackle new pro­jects in the very near future, including the much-anticipated (by myself) and much-required over­haul of my web­site. More details to come soon!

I received an abso­lutely phe­nom­enal response, and was able to meet with a number of really fant­astic people. (I wish I could have hired everyone!) That said, it was inter­esting being on the other side of the hiring pro­cess, and I think if I’m ever in the pos­i­tion of applying for a job again, I’d do things a little dif­fer­ently as a result.

In about a week’s time, I heard from around 60 dif­ferent applic­ants. This was a LOT for me to pro­cess, but from what I can tell of the industry, this is actu­ally quite a small number. So while I would have loved to pay very detailed atten­tion to each applicant, most people didn’t even get their resume read. This, I sus­pect, is prob­ably not at all uncommon. If someone’s busy enough that they need to hire, they’re too busy to spend forever finding that per­fect someone to hire.

A few tips & hints for job-seekers:

1. Never, never, never use “to whom it may con­cern”. Ser­i­ously, it’s there in the hiring notice, and it’s all over my web­site. I can already tell when you’re copying-and-pasting a gen­eric cover letter into your email, but it’s just plain offensive if you spell my name wrong or omit it entirely. (As a side note, I know that my long-lost cat is presently listed as CEO and chairman of the board on my web­site…. but please stop addressing emails to her. I can’t tell if you’re trying to be cute, or if you’re just deranged, which I’m guessing nobody can tell about ME, either.)
2. If you’re applying for a design pos­i­tion, your resume should prob­ably be nicely designed. You should also have an online port­folio of some sort. If you can’t figure out how to upload some images to a web­site or create a pdf, you’re unlikely to find work in the graphic design industry.
3. “LOL” is not an appro­priate term for use in a cover letter. Also, please use cap­ital let­ters. And form your sen­tences prop­erly. And spell things cor­rectly. Ser­i­ously, what are they teaching in schools these days? Damn kids.
4. Follow instruc­tions! I cannot stress how important this is. If you’re a lacklustre can­didate, I’m skim­ming your email looking for a good excuse to toss you into the “no” pile and move on to the next applicant. Neg­lecting to send me any of the items I’d expli­citly requested in the hiring notice (in bold, no less) gives me that excuse.
5. Your resume is prob­ably too long. I didn’t read any of these fully, so the more scan­nable it is, the better. There were a lot of resumes that listed design work, which is great, but then went back as far as customer-service type jobs. Working at McDonald’s may grow char­acter and an irra­tional hatred of ham­burgers, but it doesn’t make you a better designer. Unless maybe you’re designing the cheese­burger wrap­pers, but even then, I have my doubts.
6. Your port­folio is prob­ably too big. And please don’t attach it to your email; my com­puter goes into ana­phylactic shock when it needs to down­load 12MB of attach­ments all at once. Restarting my machine makes me cranky.

And of course, chances are good that if you’ve made someone cranky, you won’t be get­ting an inter­view, no matter how lovely your port­folio is or how well-rounded your resume. A cranky employer is an employer who’s going to hire someone else!

Tags: business, diatribes, industry, jobs, misc