How NOT To Recruit Me

I received an email yesterday from Everett Stephens Career Transition & Job Search with the following subject line: We have reviewed your resume and would like to make an appointment

So that sounds interesting, so I open it (round 1 to you spammer)…

The email is as follows:

Philip,

We are contacting you because a member of our senior staff has reviewed your resume online and felt that we might be able to assist you in your job search.

Please go to: http://www.everettstephens.com/your_career.html to complete our free professional career assessment form and paste a current copy of your resume in the box.

After evaluation of your credentials, if we know we can be of assistance to you in your career search, someone from our office will contact you to schedule an appointment.

Also, feel free to call directly to set an appointment.

So, now I’m slightly annoyed and decide to email them back and tell them how I feel about getting spammed. My email response was:

Hi Guys,

Let me give you some feedback on the spam you sent me.

The subject says, “We have reviewed your resume and would like to make an appointment” – ok, so you start out with a lie.

Then your first line says, “…a member of our senior staff has reviewed your resume…”. Really, who was that, why not send me their opinion or feedback along with this email?

Then, why would I go to your site and paste in my resume if your senior staff member has ALREADY REVIEWED MY RESUME?

The final paragraph says after I do your work, someone may contact me to schedule an appointment, but your subject says you would like to make an appointment.

Your entire spam-mail is a waste of time for both of us. It’s a waste of your time because you’re spending time coming up with a spam campaign when you could be targeting specific people you could really help and build a relationship with. And it’s a waste of my time because it’s spam.

I’m sure I’ll blog about this later today, I’ll let you know when I do. I’ll have suggestions on a better way for you to actually connect with people who will make your earning increase and build solid relationships so that they will recommend you to others.

So I click send and assume that’s the end of that. But then a split second later I see that in fact, my email has bounced, because the email address they send their spam from (raleighjobs@everettstephens.com) can’t actually receive email.

Grrrr. So now I go to the site and pull off what I assume is a real email (raleigh@everettstephens.com) and resend. The second time it appears to go through.

I guess this shotgun approach must work for them at some level, or they wouldn’t be doing it, but I think they could be doing better.

The type of job search firm I would love to work with would do the following:

1. Find out what the next job I want is, not just match me to the previous jobs I’ve had.
2. Would have a recruiter assigned to me that actually wanted to find me an awesome job that would make me more money and more happy.
3. Would only send me information when it would be helpful to me, rather than helpful for them.
4. Checked in with me when and where it’s convenient for me.

The reason those things are important is because they make you feel special. That’s a feeling everyone likes. I’ve been thinking more about this since seeing Chris Brogan’s post on how hotels could be better for him. If a firm treated me like that, why would I ever talk to another recruiter? I would certainly tell all my friends about them.

I can already hear people shaking their head saying, “nobody does that any more”. In fact I think it’s the way most smart businesses are now turning.

I met Sonja Jacob through Twitter. She runs a high-impact copywriting firm in Boston, Massachusetts, roughly 750 miles north of me. I can’t imagine ever needing anyone else to do copywriting for me or my clients because she always goes out of her way to make you feel special. I know I’m not a huge client for her, and probably never will be, but she understands that the extra 2 minutes a month she spends on me (and probably all her other clients) makes people loyal to her.

Although I am bashing Everett Stephens Career Transition & Job Search in this post, it’s not just them.

How does your company treat people? Do your customers feel special?