Thought for the week
by Brad Brighton, Geek-in-Residence, February 11, 2005 (You can get the first feedback post!)
I'd like to know who exactly is benefitting from this economic "recovery" that's been going on for the past few years. It sure as hell hasn't been me. The soft economics have created a situation that is terrible for professionals job hunting. Companies are downsizing, leaving thousands of experienced professionals out of work and enabling companies that are hiring to not only be hyper-selective in their search (not necessarily a bad thing) but, well, rude, in the process (a definite bad thing).
With the expanded candidate pool, I can understand not getting a detailed, personal response to every applicant, but if my experience is any indication, personnel organizations now believe it is perfectly acceptable to allow an email-autoresponder to supplant a human; if the auto-responder answers the applicant, no further contact is required. Funny, but as an applicant, I would like to know a human has at least seen my resume, especially since I am a technology professional and I know how filters, responders, and such can be used (or misused) to avoid contact and in some cases, ignore work.
Do companies owe anything to applicants? I think they owe common (uncommon?) courtesy, which means that auto-responders are fine, but follow up with at least a form letter that was not "automatically" sent but initiated by a human. It means quit relying on an email screen to avoid the people who want to work for you. It means that you (the company, the personnel department, the recruiter) need to treat the applicants as humans. But then again, that's been a growing problem with personnel departments for many years, hasn't it?
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