I can’t actually work for you now, can I work for you later?
I’m not sure how to respond to this, in an email from someone looking for a job (I sent out a call to some faculty).
“Dear Ms/Mrs [my last name misspelled]”
The emails are all earnest, and I’ll respond to them all, but I wish they’d been taught certain things about job applications.
- Rename the email something relevant. Re: Fwd: jobs for linguists (fwd) is not good.
- Don’t leave the job description attached at the bottom of the email, and especially not if it’s got the > sign there, too.
- ‘Hi’ is not a good way to start a serious email.
- Please give me your full name and email address at the end. Phone number would be good, too, but since I’m not intending to actually phone anyone, it doesn’t matter that much.
- I want your CV. It’s good that you list classes in the email, and good when people tell me where they are in their degree, but I want the CV.
- If you can’t legally work in this country, why are you wasting my time?
- I’m not impressed that you’re “super interested” in the job. Really.
- On the other hand, it’s nice if you pretend you’re interested in the job because of what you’d be doing and not just because it pays well.
I feel like I ought to email everyone back and give them a crash course, but I’m just going to write them all back and ask them their availability for testing and training.
February 23rd, 2005 at 6:08 pm
You could just pretend that this is an assignment that you’re marking and send everyone his/her grade with comments. It might be fun to see how they respond to: “C. Not only did you fail to include information that would have allowed you to make a convincing argument in the body of your message, your writing style, which is inappropriate for this type of exercise, detracts from the point you were attempting to make. May I suggest a visit to the Career Centre to help rememdy this. Oh, and since this is the real world and not a university classroom, a “C” here means that you will not be awarded this job.”
Um, I’m grumpy today.
February 23rd, 2005 at 7:40 pm
Would that ever be tempting. I really want to do something like that, but don’t dare. Some of the letters are quite good, and many came with CVs, and I feel a lot of sympathy for them, because I’ve been in that position, too. And also, perhaps, because I feel totally incompetent to be judging these people for jobs.
On the other hand, this is totally going to bring hidden power trip woman to the fore.