8 Ways a Job Applicant Can Screw-up Communication with a Prospective Employer by Todd Mintz

Many employment consultants write articles that give job applicants high-level resume advice that will, if followed, increase your chances of getting positive notice by a recruiter / employer.
This isn’t one of those articles.

I am the first point of contact for all the resumes / candidate messages that come through the S.R. Clarke website and the advice I have to offer you is far more rudimentary and fundamental in nature. Every communication you have with a prospective employer is important and you don’t need to give off many negative signals before your application gets tossed aside.
Here are eight ways you could possibly give an employer / recruiter negative “vibes” about your candidacy that might not be obvious to you:

1) Your email address. I do recommend that you create a new email address specifically for your job search and make it map to your desired job position (e.g. “superstar-estimator@”). Most people use their personal email address for their job search, which is fine. But, please don’t use racy email addresses. I’ve seen things like “iluvtofish@” and “vikingsfan@” which is OK. However, nobody is going to hire somebody who has a “drunk-as-a-skunk@” no matter their qualifications (and I’ve come across more than a few candidates who have used “adult behavior” terms in their email address).

2) Your resume format. Word or Adobe PDF are the only formats you should use for a resume. HTML works if there is a reason to use it (I can’t think of one). Rich text format works, but I’m not sure why anyone would use it instead of Word. I would never send a resume in Word Perfect or Microsoft Works…few employers will be able to open your documents. I’ve seen people send resumes in .txt format and I seriously question their professional judgment. If you can’t send your resume in Word or PDF format, either fax it to the employer or copy and paste the contents of the resume into the body of the email.

3) Your resume file title. A small but important point…many job-hunters use a date as part of their resume document title. If that date isn’t that recent or the last saved date of your resume isn’t recent, you are broadcasting to employers / recruiters that your resume is “old”. Savvy people will pick this up. Even if your resume hasn’t changed since you started your job search, open and re-save your resume every week.

4) Your spelling. Most people remember to spell-check their resume. However, most email clients have a setting which allows you to spell-check your emails…and I strongly recommend that you do so before emailing your resume. Employers will generally overlook a couple spelling mistakes in an email or a resume, but anything more than this would threaten your candidacy.

5) Your email etiquette. Outlook has a feature that allows you to automatically add each new person you’ve emailed to your address book. Make sure this is turned off, because if you are sending personal messages to all address book contacts as many people do, your prospective employers are getting your personal messages if you’ve inadvertently added them. Misguided job applicants have sent me the following via email:

a. Invitations to Poker Night
b. Elks Lodge Meeting Information
c. R-rated Female-Themed Humor (that I still get regularly)

6) Don’t use white-list spam control when job-hunting. Spam sucks and we all want to control it in any way possible. However, you don’t want to make it hard for prospective employers to contact you via email. If a recruiter emails you about your resume and you force him / her to be pre-approved before receiving their communications, you will likely (and deservedly) be disqualified from consideration.

7) Follow-up with the correct person. The person who answers the email correspondence regarding resumes isn’t generally the decision-maker for the position and won’t be able to help you. Email follow-up is generally worthless anyway…I would recommend telephone follow-up unless you have already established a relationship with the decision-maker.

8) The dumbest thing you can do. During the course of your job search, you’ve likely accumulated many employer email addresses. It is tactically smart to resend your resume to employers…especially if you’ve updated it. People want to save time and send the updated information to everyone at once, which I understand. To do this, put all the email addresses in the BCC field of the email, separated by either semi-colons or commas (depending on your email client). Put your own email address in the To field. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a few people put all the email addresses in the CC field instead of the BCC field which means everyone on the list knows that that the applicant is resending his/her resume to everyone else. Every CC’ed employer will chuckle at the foolishness of what you’ve done and make a note to disqualify your application.

9) The dumbest response to the dumbest thing you can do. So, I received one of these “Mass CC’ed” candidate mistake emails the other day. Not 20 minutes later, a recruiter who was included on the CC list spammed the entire list advertising his services, thoroughly embarrassing himself in front of a group of peers…which proves that employment industry professionals aren’t immune from making the same mistakes that candidates make.

In closing, there are some good high-level resume advice articles online that I encourage you to read and follow. However, make sure that you’ve mastered the nitty-gritty aspects of job-hunter communication as well.

Todd Mintz is the Director of Internet Marketing & Information Systems for S.R. Clarke Inc., a Real Estate Development and Residential / Commercial Construction Executive Search / Recruiting Firm headquartered in Fairfax, VA with offices nationwide. He is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon's Search Engine Marketing Association.
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