As many of you know, a large component of my job involves polling, and to complete the polls we hire callers to administer the surveys. We have a lot of people that we work with repeatedly, but occasionally we find ourselves short and have to resort to Craigslist to fill our call center.
Should anyone reading this ever feel the desire to respond to one of our job listings, here are a few pointers.
1. Notice the line, "Experience is not necessary. Good phone skills and attention to detail are!" If attention to detail is important, then why would you send me an email full of typos? I'm not even talking about commonly misspelled words here. I'm talking about omitted letters ("I just ecently read your ad on craigslist...") and sentences that show little or no comprehension of the english language. One of my favorites had a 9-digit phone number - 617-555-123. (not the real number)
2. There are some simple instructions listed in the job posting. If you want the job, you should email me with your phone number, availability, and office preference (we have two locations). Now, there are some people who send just this information, and that's fine. There are others who include a brief statement of interest, and that's fine. There are those who attach a resume, which is completely unnecessary, but that's fine too.
What you should not do is ONLY attach a resume with nothing else. I don't want to open your resume in Word. Nor should you send me a one line email saying, "hey man, im interested in this job do you still need people?" I did still need people, but the people I need include their phone number in the email.
3. Free email addresses are easy to get. I won't discount you on your email address alone, but getting an application from 'babycudlz2@-------.com' is not a plus.
4. Then there's the matter of simple email etiquette. ALL CAPS ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE.
HELLO MY NAME IS ---------.MY AVAILABILITY IS M-F FROM 10-4 BUT IF NEEDED CAN WORK WEEKENDS.I WOULD LIKE TO WORK AT THE PARK ST LOCATION.MY PHONE NUMBER IS 617--------.PLEASE CALL IN THE AFTERNOON IF NOT AVAILABLE LEAVE A MESSAGE.
You have to be kidding if you think I'm going to respond to that.
4. And while I appreciate the effort put into a thought-out, well-written letter of interest, I can see through the generic one that you sent to everyone else.
To whom it may concern/ Hiring Manager:
I am very interested in the call center/ phone survey position(s) opening in BOSTON, MA. in which I became aware of through Craigslist / Jobster.com.
As you can see by my enclosed resume my employment through the years have involved customer service, data entry and retail sales.
What I bring to the table, as a potential employee is dedication, accuracy& precision, efficiency, hard work and also determination to get the job done regardless of the time and effort involved.
I am looking forward to discussing my qualifications in further detail, if asked to appear for an interview. I would also provide references both character and work related at that time along with a follow-up phone call.
Thank you, for your time and consideration within this matter.
I also don't need to know your job application strategy.
5. To sum up, let me explain how this works. You email me with your phone number. I call you. If you sound half-competent, I schedule you to come in and make phone calls. It's really quite simple, so why do you all make it so difficult?