My wife's company advertised three new job positions; admin. assistant, tele-sales person, Sales Manager. Applications to be sent to their e-mail eddress.
Within 48 hours there were over 2,000 applications sitting in the In-Box. Nothing special, that's the norm these days.
To digress from what I was going to say for a moment, just think about that. Suppose you spend even only 30 seconds on each, opening it up, speed reading the application letter, opening the attached CV, speed reading that, closing it. Suppose you do literally nothing else, no other work, no conversations, no breaks for coffee, lunch, toilet, anything else. Even in that unlikely scenario you will devote nearly 17 hours to simply scanning the applications.
Then you have the problem of most of the applications being identical. They obviously have them prepared by a typing office, identical layout, wording, language. Perfect English. Only the detail of experience differs. Some seem worth pursuing, so you get on the phone to them. At best, their English skills are very bad, absolutely nothing like their application. More wasted time.
Back to the story - an applicant for the Sales Manager position looked suitable from his CV. Wifey had gone into the office on Friday so that she could plough through the applications without interruption. She called the mobile number matey had given, introduced herself, said: "You applied to us for the position of Sales Manager."
He responded: "I'm watching a movie. Would you call me back later."
That's where the shaking my head in disbelief comes in...
Let me add a postscript to the story. Last time they advertised for a tele-sales person they whittled it down to five people and arranged interviews.
Three were no-shows. Simply didn't turn up. No phone call, nothing. Just didn't bother.
The fourth turned up on time - drunk. That didn't go down too well but he became quite aggressive over the rejection.
Fortunately the fifth one was good and has proved himself in the job.
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4 comments:
Unfortunately I think we have to blame the internet for a lot of this . . . it's just too easy to spam resumes around every job ad in the paper.
I wonder what would happen if you advertised a job and said all resumes had to be delivered by hand? Might weed out the film buff!
'A room full of champions will not beat a champion team, which is what you try to do do when building a sales team. Pointless having a room full of prima donnas all working to their own ends. What suprises me is not only the obvious lack of talent, but the number of replies, one can only presume a very high rate of umemployment. Having dealt with a number of salespeople here on the Central Coast in New South Wales, one can only wonder where these people did their training. Casual and cavalier of manner, very much a take or leave it Jack, attitude. But I suppose that standards in everything have been deriorating for some time. Do you remember when Policemen and British Guardsmen were around 6 feet and more, tall.? If many of them are above five feet six inches I would be suprised. Just another example of where the standards have dropped.
Seabee: I think Trailing Spouse has hit on a truly winning idea. This is quite an eye-opening story, and confirms that we were right in not advertising for jobs when we started up but relied on word of mouth and referrals.
HMHB
caz, no not high unemployment. They're either here on a visit visa to look for a job (a big percentage of our 'tourist' arrivals I suspect are job-seekers) or are employed and simply want a change.
HMHB, yep, I think that was the answer - if you can't fill the position by recommendation then make the applicants turn up in person to hand in ther CV.
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