This turned out to be long. If you want to read this rant, you better do it on your lunch break!
In my final days working at ?#$@&! Printing Company, I have been indescribably blessed with the chore of posting a job ad (for my job!) on a local community website and sifting through the endless stream of r?sum?s that come in via email ? at least twenty a day. This is the third time I've had this exciting task this year because I'm a foolish sucker who doesn't like to say no. Note: I'm a prepress/graphics worker. Not a manager, not a human resource person, and certainly not the one who should be screening which applicants Boss Man should hire.
Now, I've lounged around PPF for about six months now ? have a pretty good concept of who is who, who does what, who doesn't know shit, etc.
(And don't take that as a hostile insult ? all of us at one point or another didn't know shit (hell, I can remember interviewing for a estimating job with a large printer in 1999 and telling the owner I was interested in getting into prepress/graphics and that I had "played around with Publisher a bit" ((and I will confess I actually thought it sounded good)) but otherwise knew nothing about computers & prepress...the guy shook his head and told me Publisher was the worst piece of crap he's ever seen...I had no idea!) ? but I'm realizing, day by day, that there are some people who
GET IT and who thrive and grow, and some people who just never will ? and it's these poofs that I'm composing my rant about.) And I will add that I think the lot of you are a super-smart bunch who are experts of your trade and this forum is one of the best things I've stumbled upon on the Internet.
Out of respect and interest to fellow printing/prepress workers, I want to share the following information and advice to job seekers.
1. The job ad we posted clearly states we need somebody with commercial printing experience. It lists the skills you must have to do this job. The ad also states that if you do not have actual printing-related work experience, please do not apply. Response: about 75% of the r?sum?s have no printing-related work history. Running the copy machine as a secretary in a mortgage office does not qualify you. Attending one Offset Printing course at a community college 12 years ago does not qualify you. Having operated a folder in 1981 for six months does not qualify you. Developing web programming languages and using words like Joomla, PHP, and "ISP system authentication security algorithm administrator" (I made that up, but not by much) does not qualify you.
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2. The job ad is just that: an AD. Short slang for AD-VER-TISE-MENT (or AD-VERT-IS-MENT for you Brits) When you write you are responding to our "add" it only takes me five seconds to scan through a few sentences and see many more retarded spelling errors. Based on your "education" and work history, I'm assuming English is your native language, yet I can barely tell. Your email is barely coherent and appears as if you've either just had 8 shots of tequila or that your keyboard is entering triple letters and/or is missing various characters ? people, fucking READ what you have just typed, please.
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3. The job ad states that error-proofing and typing accuracy are pretty feckin' important. If you type up a postcard for a client and even if the client approves it ? if it's full of typing and/or grammatical errors that you made and we print 10,000 stupid pidgin English postcards, WE are down the shitter for a reprint. If you're even bothering to read the job posting ? and clearly few of you are ? and you make the effort to emphasize your accuracy to detail, yet you type the words "typeseting", "profing", or "scaning" (I've seen them all).
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4. The job ad states that this is an offset printshop. The job duties are rather mundane and technical and primarily consist of preflighting and imposing files, wrestling font problems, trapping, troubleshooting, outputting film, making plates, etc. This is not a "fun & creative" position to "let your artistic talents go wild". Yet, the aforementioned 75% of responses are from the massive herd of unemployed graphic & web designers in the area who want to "express their creative talents in a business environment". People ? this is a boring job ? I stated so on the job posting. There is very little creative work, almost zero website work, and the link to your online creative portfolio of oil paintings, stained glass, and Photoshop collages of you & your friends at the beach in Mexico (I've seen that too) does not qualify you.
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5. The job ad states this is a full-time job with a competitive salary, and to reply with a brief summary of your qualifications, r?sum?, etc. Your email consists of "Dear Sir, I require $50,000 annual salary with full health benefits and this & that, this & that. Please contact me for an interview. Joe Smith" No mention of interest, skills, qualifications, etc.
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6. The job ad states you should submit your r?sum? in either Word or PDF format, or paste it into the email. Yet, I receive attachments in .wpd and .pub format. I've also received one from a "graphic designer" that was an 800KB PDF entirely rasterized, which opened in Photoshop at 72 dpi. And the bulk of files from "graphic designers" are Word docs with the dullest plain text r?sum? template in existence ? you're a designer?
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7. And more on email: 99% of the r?sum? attachments are titled "resume" or "my resume_version2_email" or something more obscure. If I download all these files into a folder to review later, which 1% do you think will stand out and be noticed? Your email address is from Yahoo or Hotmail, and is typically something like "joe_crazy_artist" or "sexypoetrygoddess696969696969@hotmail.com" and you link me to your "portfolio" at the dreaded (you said it, not me) myspace.com or geocities. People, I pay a whopping $35 a year to have my own domain name, email address, and 256MB of webspace to host my site. You don't have to be an expert or even know poop about web design, but you should have some concept of professional appearances if you want to make a favorable impression.
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8. And finally: we are all people, not machines. We all have personalities, quirks, and the like. Try expressing those to show us why we might like to meet you and work with you. Time and time again I see cover letters and r?sum? objectives with the same boring bullshit. Using uncommon 4-syllable words and generic buzzword phrases & cl?ches will not impress us. Using the word "utilize" is the worst ? do not state your employment objective as "I desire to utilize my skills and experience to enable your company to grow and to further enhance my job skills" ? I've seen that one a million times ? yawn.
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There's more, but I'm wasting too much time on such nonsense. Why should I even care? It's just frustrating that this is the gene pool out there now, and that the one or two fantastic job applicants are being drowned out by such a batch of retards. Work is just another survival of the fittest ? unfortunately the poofs seem to work their way in and out and cause grief and wasted time. Such is life ? otherwise, what would I have to rant about?!
I'm not alone ? check out these comparable rants I found on craigslist:
Tips for applying to a job from Craigslist.
A little advice for Jobseekers.
Rant over. And if I made any typing errors, god help me.
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