Stupid Job Hunting Tricks Make You Look Stupid

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Stupid Job Hunting Tricks
Make You Look Stupid

As the job market becomes more difficult, unemployed job hunters are trying all manner of techniques to get themselves noticed, including oddball tricks.

These tricks rarely help and most often cripple the job hunter. Almost everyone will think that if you do something weird before you are hired, you’ll be a weird employee.

Job hunters these days are pulling some strange stunts as unemployment rises:

Executives are showing up at companies, giving the name of a key executive, and saying that they are there for their 2PM interview, when no interview is scheduled.

Job seekers are pretending they have met the person to whom they are sending their resume cold.

A candidate sent a rubber ball to all of the senior executives at a company, with “Ask if Fran Whittlefield is on the ball,” inscribed upon it. She followed up with a phone call to the CEO, requesting an interview. Everybody there knew her name, but, not surprisingly, no one wanted to meet her.

Job candidates are emailing jokes and bizarre photos continually after sending their resumes to make sure the recruiter won’t forget them.

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I recently received a fax with a resume from an ad I placed on RiteSite. The fax said, “While I don’t want to be a pest, I already emailed my credentials; I was excited since it appeared to be a great fit.”

I hadn’t received an email from this candidate, so I emailed him to ask where he had seen the ad and to what email he had sent it, and then checked the RiteSite listing to see if they had my email address correct (they did). I then checked that email address to see if it worked (it did). I had also received other emails from the RiteSite ad, so I figured it had been a glitch, or, more likely, the candidate was getting sneaky.

I looked at the resume (I get few faxes in a world dominated by emails, so I give more attention to faxed resumes, a lesson all of you should learn) and decided his background made him at best an outside shot for the position. I then filed his resume, and sent him an email response, saying that we were reviewing many candidates, and would get back to him if, after we reviewed all of the applications, he appeared to be a good fit.

A few weeks later, I received an email from this prospect that said, “Am I in the running for the VP/Marketing position? We spoke & I faxed my credentials.”

I had never spoken to him (I keep careful notes, as does just about every recruiter). I figured out his game, the one which I had originally suspected he was playing. He was trying to attract attention to himself, working to pull himself from the pile, by pretending he had sent an email before his faxed resume.

When he mentioned that we had spoken and we hadn’t, I figured this guy was at best a gamesplayer, at the worst a liar, and most likely desperate enough to try goofy things to attract attention to himself. None of these are particularly appealing traits for a candidate, as I am paid by my clients to bring them people who are qualified, are of good character, and won’t embarrass them or cause lawsuits (as a competitor of my client had just undergone, due to some overzealous advertising claims).

Perhaps he was a solid person, and either misinformed or at his wit’s end to try to find something that would work. Perhaps he was a screwball. I saw little reason to gamble, and passed him up. A fax followed up with a phone call would have been a more effective tactic for him to use.

Don’t think you’re coming up with new ways to bust through the walls. Anyone who has recruited for any length of time has seen ‘em all.

Skip the stupid pet tricks. A retained recruiter isn’t going to be fooled or impressed by them, nor will the senior executives who will be hiring someone at your level. And if on the odd chance someone wants to hire you because you do something weird, the company is probably a ship of fools, and you don’t want to be their first mate.

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