Unsolicited Resumes

A business associate of mine was describing a new leveraging of the Linked In technology. The concept is simple, use Linked-In to discover the name of key people: recruiter, directors, principles, etc., for the company you’d like to work for and directly submit your resume to them via e-mail or postal mail. The rationale behind this is that often when submitting your resume through the proper channels on the corporate website, or via Monster/Dice/etc your resume may be automatically filtered out because of some negative keyword. However, by directly submitting a resume, it will increase the likelihood of it being read by a human and therefore you have a higher chance of being contacted.

However, on the other end of the spectrum, I cannot count the number of times I’ve received a unsolicited resume, for a position we don’t have or have then need for. It frequently makes me wonder how much they really want to work for my company, instead of just “some” company.

I guess the reason for the offense is my perspective of the hiring process:

1) You should be looking for a job position which specifically matches your skill set;

2) You should be looking for a company which matches your work culture/ethic;

3) You should want to work specifically for our company for a specific reason. If it came down simply to businesses (title, pay, etc., all the same) I want you to have a reason to want us.

Sending out an unsolicited resume says that you’re willing to take anything from anyone – that it really simply comes down to price. But the reality is most people leave their jobs for reasons other than money. Sure, we all would like to get paid more. But frequently there are other underlying problems. If pay is what will make you choose me, then you might simply leave when it suits you.

What are your thoughts? How have you received resumes lately?