Student Job Seekers; Online or Snail Mail Resume?

Parents Forum
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<p>Lake Jr. is drafting a new resume in preparation for applying for an internship or co-op for the coming year. I notice that most of the company websites I have looked at have a menu for submitting an application online.</p>

<p>Call me old school (but not hard-headed), but back in the age of dinosaurs we undergraduates and young job seekers were taught to try to address our cover letters and resumes to specific individuals, preferably a company's hiring manager.</p>

<p>With today's online submission, who knows where your resume ends up?</p>

<p>Question: is it reasonable for a student to submit a resume by snail mail to a VP of HR or a HR manager, in addition to using the online application? Ever since I watched a PBS news feature on how companies essentially ignore resumes sent electronically, I'm skeptical. Why the heck do companies bother with the online process if they don't really use it to fill positions?</p>

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<p>I actually got my current position because I had applied for a different position with the company a year prior and my resume was in their database. That being said, I definitely felt like my resumes did vanish into thin air–but that also happened when I physically gave out my resume to recruiters or whomever, so YMMV</p>

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<p>Online only. Many larger firms will even have their own system for submission.</p>

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<p>It depends. Some companies don’t even want the paper resumes and letters and have a system set up to deal with things on line. However, having some paper resumes are helpful when you actually meet with someone or you are being fast tracked, so some are should be on hand. It’s an additional reminder. My DH is recommending someone we know, and by having her resume in hand, which I printed out from her email to me, he can peruse it and actually hand it to the person in his office, rather than just talk about the person. There is something in hand that there is a likelihood the person would look at rght on the spot. But the days of mass maling paper are over in job searches it seems.</p>

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<p>Online except if you know someone in the company. If they are willing it’s totally appropriate for them to forward an e-mail with a short one line introduction and/or recommendation and an attached resume. I would recommend e-mail because a printed resume can’t be distributed easily and generally there isn’t a place to “store” a copy of a resume for future retrieval these days. I supposed someone could scan a paper copy but who wants to go to all that trouble? I haven’t seen many on-line systems that don’t have an option to upload a resume so no need to snailmail. Which reminds me I need to take a trip by the old “mailboxes”…haven’t been to visit it in a couple weeks :-)</p>

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<p>Call me crazy, but if a company has an online ad that directs applicants to apply online, shouldn’t you follow directions and apply online? </p>

<p>You can still include cover letters and you can still try to find out who the hiring manager is, but I doubt that paper submissions will help you that much.</p>

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<p>LakeWashington: you follow the company’s directions. If they want online, you can be sure your mailed resume gets shredded. Often, following basic directions is a first and very low hurdle. The fact is keyword searches of the electronic documents is a quick sort: e.g. check for keywords such as “MBA” or “engineering”, etc.</p>

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<p>It’s not just company websites. If Lake Jr. is applying to internships through his university’s career center, as he should be, he’s going to have to submit everything online.</p>

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<p>Another important note- Large companies with online submission have software that compares the key words in the job descriptions with resumes containing those key words before any human ever sees it. It is more important than ever to tweak your resume for the specific job you want based on terms in the job description. Those systems don’t recognize synonyms- use the terms in the job description in your resume as well. If a resume says fund raising and the job description says fund development, change your resume. A friend went to a workshop where they were told to copy the job description to a blank page at the end of your resume, in white font, so it appears blank. The software picks up the key words but anybody who views or prints it, thinks it is a blank page. I think that’s shady, personally, but I do think it is good to know to use the terms found in the job description. Otherwise, no human will even see it to review it.</p>

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<p>As a matter of fact, Lake Jr. was selected for an REU last summer and the application process was completely online and flawless. Worked out successfully. To me, the important difference between the REU applications and applying for company internships and co-ops online is that rarely are applicants to company positions directed to a specific person or office, whereas every REU application form included the name, brick & mortar address, email address, etc. of the REU program director.</p>

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<p>^^^It took me a couple of reads to realize what you meant by pasting the ad in white at the end of the resume. 2016BarnardMom. What a technique that has come out of our current age of technology.</p>

<p>I also naively thought that the cover letter should explain how the student’s experience/interest applies to the job. What you are saving is to change the words inside the resume to mirror the ad. Interesting.</p>

<p>LakeWashington, even if a resume is sent to a person’s name directly, that doesn’t mean they are actually the one reading and reviewing it.</p>

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<p>Why is this binary? Is there a reason that you can’t do both? If the snail mail gets shredded, so what? The likelihood that someone reviewing your online resume will remember that you submitted a paper resume seems pretty small. </p>

<p>The bigger question is can you even find the actual person that is hiring for the job? </p>

<p>I suggest building a strategy to network your way into the company with the internship. These days many internships get huge numbers of responses, having a warm contact on the inside can make a huge difference. That connection can happen through your school’s internship/career office or through talking to friends. </p>

<p>PS I heard about the white color font trick a few years ago. I recently heard that algorithms have been changed to catch the trick.</p>

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<p>Follow the directions. It seems so simple and yet it is so hard.</p>

<p>The reality is there isn’t “one person” at a company who is the decision maker. I run recruiting for a large corporation; there are dozens of people who screen resumes depending on the role, the geography, the business function, and the source/hiring stream.</p>

<p>Follow the directions. You don’t get more/better consideration if you manage to locate a human being, if that human being doesn’t get paid to review resumes. </p>

<p>Cover letters? If the posting asks for one, include it. But keep it short; you are not writing a doctoral dissertation. </p>

<p>My colleagues and I have been chuckling for the last few days about a resume submitted online, with a two page cover letter WHICH HAD NO CONTACT INFORMATION. None. No phone number, and no email address.</p>

<p>We found this hilarious. Are we supposed to call IT to go back into the system (which is maintained by a third party vendor, by the way) to try and figure out which of the thousands of resumes we receive every week this was, and to try and back-track to ascertain which email address it came from?)</p>

<p>Hilarious. So don’t sweat a cover letter if it’s not required. Much more important to include the right information. DON"T send a transcript if it’s not asked for. DON’T send a photo in the US (there are some countries where it is expected/required. The US, which doesn’t allow companies to make hiring decisions based on race, gender, or ethnicity is not one of those companies). DON’T include marital status. And a big one- DO NOT PUT YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER ON A RESUME. You’d think in the era of identity theft this would be a no-brainer.</p>

<p>Kids- clean up your Facebook and online presence before applying for a job. I don’t want to Google your name and see you in Daytona Beach at Spring Break winning the jello shots competition.</p>

<p>Kids- get a new email address if your current one is “Partygurl@************”</p>

<p>Kids- learn to proof-read.</p>

<p>Rant over.</p>

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<p>Blossom, your post about the silly mistakes students make brought to mind the words of one of Deans whom spoke at the Parents’ orientation at Lake Jr.'s college last month; “I shouldn’t have to remind students of the basic stuff but I do because some of your kids are knuckleheads.”</p>

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<p>Students need to learn to tweak their resume for every single individual job application; they need to realize that they are not applying for “generic job” but “this individual job.”</p>

<p>Also, realize that many times the initial screen of applications is done by software, not a human…so it is essential that the resume plugs in to and mirrors the terminology of the job description/qualifications sought…</p>

<p>As far as Facebook…my sons all have their accounts set to the highest privacy settings–and also have their accounts under their middle names, not their first names. And they do not put their middle names on their resumes. When one employer tried to “friend” my son, he simply told the employer that it was “family policy” not to friend anyone but family because the family used Facebook to communicate/keep in touch–and the employer had no problem with that. Son did not include the detail that the “family policy” was his fraternity brothers (and his real family too). He still received the job offer.</p>

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<p>Can I add to your rant? </p>

<p>Keep the formatting standard and with as little flourish as possible. It is about your skills and experience not the font , lines, and squiggles. </p>

<p>Keep the resume brief. If you are a new grad with a two page resume you do not know how to edit. </p>

<p>The resume should be easy to read. I spend about 2 to 5 minutes on each resume. It shouldn’t read like Dickens. </p>

<p>I am a hiring manager not in HR. I very rarely read cover letters. I do not have time.</p>

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<p>Nellieh, happy to have you on our joint soap box. Agree 100% with your comments.</p>

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<p>That idea with the white colored font reminds me of how so many webpages will have a billion keywords at the bottom of their page to try and help with search engine rankings. Also similar to how linkfarms nowadays have random keywords thrown into text to try and confuse search engines.</p>

<p>Perhaps a better technique nowadays would be to use all of your blank lines as places to insert key words you know the software will be looking for. Put it in sentences if you think it’ll help, but you can be really blatant with saying exactly what the search wants. Just color it white and make it a tiny font.</p>

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<p>nellieh or any one else who hires can answer this.</p>

<p>Does it matter where the education part of the resume goes? In the beginning versus the end.</p>

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<p>If you are graduating from college this year, or are a recent grad, it goes up top. If you have 4+ years work experience post grad, it goes on the bottom.</p>