Letter to all worldwide companies and recruiters

The most of us have had to create a Curriculum Vitae due to get a job. I say “the most of us” because I already know some people, depending of the profession that they have never needed it or because they have been all their lives in the same Company.

But for all that people who has to create a CV to apply for a job, I think that you will be agree that the administrative job that we must do in order to have the chance to be a candidate is quite tedious. 

Above all, when the web hast a technical failure in the middle of the process application and we have to start from the beginning.

Is it familiar to you?

If it is, you will also get used to the recruitment team’s behavior. How many times have you received a call from them to inform you that they are not interested in you (even after you got a face-to-face interview) explaining why your profile is not adequate for the requirements which you thought you were perfect for? And how many times have you received an email where they give you a feedback (no mention a “detailed feedback”. That’s unthinkable!!) explaining the reason to reject you?

I dare say that the most of us can count it with the fingers of one hand.

And because of it, I have decided to write this letter to all people who are in charge of recruiting processes.

Letter:

Dear Companies, HR Department and Headhunters,

I write you because I feel quite disappointed about the way the most of you carry out the selection processes.

I will explain to you what we need to do in order to apply to those open positions in your companies.

Firstly, read well the job description to understand which your needs are by ourselves, because in the most of the cases, no contact details are provided to check the requirements with any of you. And to call to the company is not worth it, because the Lady who answers on the phone tells us that she is not allowed to transfer our call to HR department or that she cannot help because she is unknown the contact person and cannot help us. But that for sure there is a link and we can apply via it.

Secondly, going to the Company website to investigate a little bit more about the Business.

Once that we have decided that we can satisfy your needs and it is also an interesting job for our professional growth, we are forced to go to a web site where we have to fill many many tabs with many and many fields with the same data that you can easily get if you read our CV document. 

Beside copy what we have in our CV in your website, we will be requested to add the CV document (and of course, all sizes are not allowed! That means, that sometimes we need to re-write our CV again and change several times the type format), cover/motivational and reference letters and certificates. If we are lucky and we are in the last step: “saving”, during the saving time we pray. Yes, we pray and cross our fingers for not getting the error message which says that “the web has had technical issues and it is not available at the moment”. Some other times, we are “lucky” and that just happens 2 or 3 times when we jump from tab to tab. “At least, it did not happen at the end! Thanks God!!” – it´s what is supposed that we should think.

When everything went according to the plan and our documentation is stored in your database, we get the automatic email giving thanks. I´ve to say, that it´s a nice gesture from your system. At least the 45minutes minimum that we spend filling all your website data were worth.

Then, we wait for your feedback… check the website to see the process status of our candidature. Sometimes during weeks till we see that it´s rejected.

Yes, we are in the “rejection phase”, because if you are not rejected, needless to say, you will personally call us.

So, “rejection”… why have we been rejected? Good question but the most of the times no answer from you. I mean, a standard and automatic email cannot be considered an answer. Can it? Be careful with the answer, because if it can, then why cannot all of us can have a standard CV, cover/motivational letters for every position? For sure that your answer here comes outright: “because although you are interested in different positions, the motivation cannot be the same” (for example…). Then, you cannot expect that we accept a standard email. Different people, with different CVs, different motivations cannot be rejected for the same reason. Can they? Mmmm… Well, when the reason is: “we have candidates whose profiles fit better to this position”, then it can be. But it is not enough for us.

For a generic answer, we shouldn´t spend quite a lot of time filling an unnecessary website with the data that as I have already explained, you have in our CV document, just because of helping you with your statistics (age of the people who are interested in this offer, source where they found this ad, etc.).

And if you decide to provide your feedback with a standard answer, why don´t you just simplify our life sending you only our CV doc. instead of having us about 45min minimum filling customized fields for you?

Sorry but we deserve a personalized answer.

And if you decide to send the personalized answer, why do not you just take 30 sec before you send the email just to check if we are a Mr. or a Ms.? It goes without saying, that every time that I receive an email with “Dear Mr. Rodríguez”, I get quite upset because it shows me that you have not even open my CV document or check the field of your website where I have already specified: “Ms.” or “female”. Please, simplify our life and don´t make us filled data that u do not read. Or not tell us that you have better candidates when you have not opened my documents (then, you will know that I am not a man!).

I would say that it´s easy to understand that we would appreciate a little bit more of courtesy from your side and give a personalized feedback about the reason of why our profile does not match your requirements. Because obviously, when we have applied for it, it´s because we think that we perfectly fit them.

In the exceptional cases where contact details are provided or you give your answer via email identifying us correctly with “Mr.” or “Ms.” and we decide to call you due to verify some info before applying or to check the reason of our rejection, and you are happy to be our contact person for future open positions which we can be interested for, please, be nice when we call/write u a second time for a new position. Otherwise, do not offer yourself.

If we are currently working and we apply for a position in your company, do not think that we do not have issue at our work, email to answers and calls to attend. And if we are unemployed, for sure, we have also a life and things to do. And one of those things is to find a job. Or do you think that our time is not as precious as yours? The difference is that you are working in “Human Resources” (although sometimes it could be called Un-human Resources). Shouldn´t you take care of you workers and people who is willing to work in your company? If you are not, maybe it´d be good that you also start to apply to some other position because it seems that you do not fit very well with the one that you have at the moment.

I always thought that it was a vocational job… but I am not sure about it anymore.

I would also like to make a mention to all headhunters who contact us with job offers that we have not even applied for. They tell us that we fulfill requirements for that vacancy and that we can be the perfect candidate. They will contact the client and they will come back to us. And then, as if by magic, they disappear. Please, I request to all of you who are working like headhunter not to contact me in the first place if they do not think in giving me the final feedback.

All of you, Recruiters, should think in it, because maybe, next time, in this small world, it´s you the one who needs me (not for being one of your worker, but because there is a position in the company where I am that can be interesting for you) and for sure, you will not like that I treat you in the same way as you currently do.

And also for all of us who do not agree with this system and have a job and at the moment are not willing to change. We are the ones who can also contribute to change this way of “impersonal-recruitment”. We will help ourselves because maybe, one day, we stop to be just a simple number in the company, and to all people who are currently searching for a job.

Your sincerely,

Pilar Gil Rodríguez