1) Not changing the name of the company they had applied for prior to the current application in their template cover letter.
- It indicates a lack of professionalism and attention to detail.

2) Run-on cover letters that don’t discuss the skill set required as stated in the job description
- The purpose of writing covers letters is to present yourself in a manner relevant to the job to which you’re applying. By rambling on about irrelevant activities or experiences wastes the reader’s time and leads the reader away from the qualifications of why you should be the candidate for the job. The skills/attributes should be presented in a clear and concise way.

3) Poorly formatted resumes
- Again, this belongs under the professionalism category and, perhaps, competency in formatting in Word or coding, the latter being a more graver blunder, given the nature of a web media business.

However , I take different perspective on those who lack the proper job qualification. One term, we required a person who was adept at coding and updating the website. Coming from a smaller organization, we had a limited pool of marginally qualified candidates. In the end, our incumbent web manager was able to train the person up to competency and they fulfilled their duties very well. In this situation, it would lead me to believe that if you’re close to being qualified, just apply; at the very least, you’ve completed your duty as an applicant. Whatever happens after will happen. :)

Verne is right; spellcheck is a useful tool! Please take a minute to use it.

you’d be surprised at some of the stuff i saw - some of the resumes i had to fix up or even start from scratch - some of the responeses that we got from employers — and etc :)

It’s just about first impressions. I share this lesson with everyone because I can attest to it being used in the workforce. It is what it is. And it’s those who adapt to our world’s silly rules that make it, and it’s those that don’t.. who don’t.

I think it’s great to consider all applicants generally - but when you’re sifting through hundreds of them, you tend to need some kind of a filter. You can keep the unprofessional email address, and hope that the recruiting company doesn’t care. But why take the risk?

Thanks for the follow-up, I appreciate you adding in your 2 cents. ;D

I’m not sure I agree that using a “non professional” email address necessarily means that the individual in question won’t do those things though. My own personal email address is a bit quirky by “professional” standards, but nobody at $WORK has ever questioned my professionalism.

Presumably if your hire somebody they receive a new-employee@yourdomain.com email, no? If so, and they use that for their work communication, I don’t see much correlation between these things. Now if they were expected to use their personal email for correspondence with customers I could almost see the argument. Depends on who the customers are I guess. It’s similar to how I would wear a suit to a meeting with a customer if the customer was a large, traditional, east-coast based bank, but would probably wear jeans and an Iron Maiden T-shirt if the customer was a Web 2.0 startup from CA. :-)

Using an unprofessional email address like the fictional one depicted in my post shows that the candidate hasn’t put enough effort into presenting themselves in the most positive light, which gives the recruiting company little incentive to believe they’ll exert any more effort as part of their team.

The world is full of great designers. But it’s the ones that can apply those skills most effectively against the market of young go getters that truly represent talent. Given that, I hope you can appreciate my perspective and why no. 4 made the list.

Thanks for the comments! :)

sexXxy_aZn_babie_ang3l_69@hotmail.com might have just been one of the hottest young up and coming superstar designers, and you just let (him|her) walk away to the competition due to your shallow thinking. At least you have the benefit of probably never knowing how (he|she) turned out, so you can continue to tell yourself “nah, we did the right thing.” Ignorance is bliss, after all.

I’m putting my detective hat back on (like I did with your Non-traditional Marketing post)… I’ve added sexXxy_aZn_babie_ang3l_69@hotmail.com to my Windows Live Messenger to see if someone with that ridiculous of an e-mail really exists. Any bets?

Great list btw. The one I would add is when outsourcing agencies (again from places like Neverland and Neverneverland) “apply” for positions when it’s clearly a gig for an individual or for a long-term contract position. And on the other extreme, seeing folks that want us to bring them into Canada and give them a full-time job and what not. Yikes.