Monday, October 03, 2005

Resumes with no email address

I received a resume a few weeks ago and the candidate is very interesting. It's in the U.S. style, two pages with only relevant information in there. the philippine style, with parent's names, religion, and picture, is useful for discriminating against people based on surface characteristics. I discriminate against people based on stupidity, and while that can sometimes be seen in resumes, more often I have to wait until the interview for that.

Many of his skills are just what we need, and he's interested in learning other skills that we need that he doesn't quite have yet. That he studied at Mindanao State University and Ateneo de Davao and graduated from the University of the Philippines at Diliman doesn't hurt either.

But his resume doesn't have an email address. Or a celphone number either. Maybe HR got this from JobsDB or similar and they need to pay extra money to get his contact information. Whatever the case, I dropped the resume and the positions have since been filled.

Resumes with no convenient contact information is just not going to be seen. Well, by me, anyway. He's got a snailmail address there too. But it's in Los Angeles, CA, for some reason. Now that's another filter. If he's in the U.S., he's either immigrating (legally or otherwise) or he's just visiting. If the first, why submit a resume to a philippine based company? If the second, he should put down his philippine snail address since a U.S. address is instantly off-putting. Why waste time considering someone who is probably already making more money in the U.S. as a busboy than he would make in the Philippines?

Of course there are exceptions. There are people who go to the U.S. for a few months, work there as computer consultants or software developers for very small (t<6 months) projects and come home. But there should still always be an email address or at least a chikka-able number, so that the employer can check whether any such exceptions apply.

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