Why are you not getting interview calls?
A very large number of candidates while applying for jobs do not even realize the countless obstacles they create for themselves during the process of applying for jobs. These are some of the most common pitfalls.
• When you force hiring managers to toss out your own resume
I cannot even imagine that some well educated and highly experienced professionals can commit this common mistake across the board. I see this happening in more than half of the resumes I receive in response to all our open positions on a daily basis. Most of the prospective candidates name their resumes as “resume.doc” while sending resumes as attachments. Look at the problem we hiring managers have to face now:
Very first thing we do is right-click your attachment and click “Save As”, to save your resume, so that we can read it later. If you named your resume as “resume.doc”, that is what appears as file name when we click “Save As”. So, now your resume is saved as “resume.doc” in our records. An hour later, we open another candidate’s resume which is also named as “resume.doc”. Now see what happens. When we click save as, we see this message flashed on screen: "The file resume.doc already exists. Do you want to replace the existing file?" Now, look what have you done to your resume. If we click Yes, then the resume of the first candidate has gone forever. If we click No, then we have to provide a name for your resume. Ideally, we would like to save your resume as your_name.doc for future references but at this point, we do not even know your name. To find out your name, we now have to open your resume, copy your name, close your resume, click Save As, paste your name which we copied in above step as file name and then click save.
Are you realizing that you just wasted about one minute of hiring manager’s time. Now imagine how irritating it is for us when we receive hundreds of resumes every day and majority of these all named as “resume.doc”. The only way to not allow any one waste our time is that we just skip or delete all such emails with resumes named as “resume.doc” because most hiring managers, who are at the CIO, CTO, Director level cannot afford to waste one minute for every single resume to just save the file for future reference.
You can see how this little carelessness is costing you a job at the prospective company even though you could have been an ideal fit for the position you applied for.
• When you make it difficult for hiring managers to contact you
This is another very common example of the problem I face a lot when I try to reach a candidate. You apply for a job and email your resume. We find your skills and experience a reasonably good match for the position. In your contact information is your cell phone number and I decide to call you and plan to leave a voice mail with my phone number so that you can contact me later. But on many occasions, instead of option to leave a voice mail, I hear a recorded message, saying, “Voice mail box is full. You cannot leave voice mail at this time”. What do you think, I should do now. Call you every few hours with a hope that either you will pick up the phone or you might have deleted some old voice mails and I will be able to leave a voice mail for next time I call. No, I will not do that. I will just move on to the next candidate. In couple of cases, I actually sent an email to the candidate, with the news “Your voice mail box is full. Please delete your old voice mails, so that I can leave a message for you”. But I will be brutally honest with you here. Most hiring managers will not send you an email to tell you that your voice mail box is full.
If you are in the job market, please make it a point to regularly delete your old voice mails and make it easy for hiring managers to contact you.
• When you ask hiring managers to do what should be your responsibility
This is not too common a mistake but still happens many times. We understand that you apply for many open positions and sometimes it is not possible to remember the position description of every job you applied for. But when we send an email to you in response to your resume you sent to us while applying for our advertised job, it is inappropriate to call or email back the hiring manager asking to send you the job description.
It will help you to be a bit more organized and save a copy of the job description of every job you apply for, in a company specific folder on your computer. That way, even if hiring manager contacts you one or two months after you applied, you can always go to that specific company folder and look at the position description instead of asking your possible future employer to send you the job description. Such a request will not create a negative impression about long before you are called for the interview. And let me add that most hiring managers will put your resume on a side a minute after you make such a request.
For any career help during your job search, please feel to contact us directly.
I would like to hear view points of our readers. What do you think? Please feel free to reach-out and post your opinions here.
• When you force hiring managers to toss out your own resume
I cannot even imagine that some well educated and highly experienced professionals can commit this common mistake across the board. I see this happening in more than half of the resumes I receive in response to all our open positions on a daily basis. Most of the prospective candidates name their resumes as “resume.doc” while sending resumes as attachments. Look at the problem we hiring managers have to face now:
Very first thing we do is right-click your attachment and click “Save As”, to save your resume, so that we can read it later. If you named your resume as “resume.doc”, that is what appears as file name when we click “Save As”. So, now your resume is saved as “resume.doc” in our records. An hour later, we open another candidate’s resume which is also named as “resume.doc”. Now see what happens. When we click save as, we see this message flashed on screen: "The file resume.doc already exists. Do you want to replace the existing file?" Now, look what have you done to your resume. If we click Yes, then the resume of the first candidate has gone forever. If we click No, then we have to provide a name for your resume. Ideally, we would like to save your resume as your_name.doc for future references but at this point, we do not even know your name. To find out your name, we now have to open your resume, copy your name, close your resume, click Save As, paste your name which we copied in above step as file name and then click save.
Are you realizing that you just wasted about one minute of hiring manager’s time. Now imagine how irritating it is for us when we receive hundreds of resumes every day and majority of these all named as “resume.doc”. The only way to not allow any one waste our time is that we just skip or delete all such emails with resumes named as “resume.doc” because most hiring managers, who are at the CIO, CTO, Director level cannot afford to waste one minute for every single resume to just save the file for future reference.
You can see how this little carelessness is costing you a job at the prospective company even though you could have been an ideal fit for the position you applied for.
• When you make it difficult for hiring managers to contact you
This is another very common example of the problem I face a lot when I try to reach a candidate. You apply for a job and email your resume. We find your skills and experience a reasonably good match for the position. In your contact information is your cell phone number and I decide to call you and plan to leave a voice mail with my phone number so that you can contact me later. But on many occasions, instead of option to leave a voice mail, I hear a recorded message, saying, “Voice mail box is full. You cannot leave voice mail at this time”. What do you think, I should do now. Call you every few hours with a hope that either you will pick up the phone or you might have deleted some old voice mails and I will be able to leave a voice mail for next time I call. No, I will not do that. I will just move on to the next candidate. In couple of cases, I actually sent an email to the candidate, with the news “Your voice mail box is full. Please delete your old voice mails, so that I can leave a message for you”. But I will be brutally honest with you here. Most hiring managers will not send you an email to tell you that your voice mail box is full.
If you are in the job market, please make it a point to regularly delete your old voice mails and make it easy for hiring managers to contact you.
• When you ask hiring managers to do what should be your responsibility
This is not too common a mistake but still happens many times. We understand that you apply for many open positions and sometimes it is not possible to remember the position description of every job you applied for. But when we send an email to you in response to your resume you sent to us while applying for our advertised job, it is inappropriate to call or email back the hiring manager asking to send you the job description.
It will help you to be a bit more organized and save a copy of the job description of every job you apply for, in a company specific folder on your computer. That way, even if hiring manager contacts you one or two months after you applied, you can always go to that specific company folder and look at the position description instead of asking your possible future employer to send you the job description. Such a request will not create a negative impression about long before you are called for the interview. And let me add that most hiring managers will put your resume on a side a minute after you make such a request.
For any career help during your job search, please feel to contact us directly.
I would like to hear view points of our readers. What do you think? Please feel free to reach-out and post your opinions here.
1 comment:
I totally agree with your views posted as to why we dont get interview calls. Apart from that
1. when recuiter review his emails against a job posting make sure we are the earliest one to apply rather than you apply after few days, which reduces chances of a recruiter ever opening your email to read it.
2. Stay connected with known recuiters and let them know that you are still looking for positions.
3. Proactively email for position rather than recruiter call you.
4.Applying to the positions where we have most matching skills.
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