What a company doesn't say, says everything

I had the opportunity earlier today to speak with Jessica Miller-Merrell about the "resume black hole." She was soliciting feedback from job seekers for a column she was writing and wanted to know if someone had any experience with this issue.

While I don't know what her column says in it's entirety, I would like to talk briefly about this and one other issue where those who interview for a position, never hear anything back from the company after that interview. I've experienced both situations, and those are both things that reflect poorly on the company.

When applying for a position for a company, I almost always receive an automated e-mail acknowledging that the company has received my application. What happens next is always disappointing: Never hearing anything ever again regarding that position.

I understand I'm not always the best candidate for a position. I understand I'm not always going to be asked to interview for a position. But if this is the case, at least send me an e-mail telling me that I will not be asked to interview.

The same thing goes for the second issue I am talking about: Interviewing for a position and that is the last you hear from the company. This has happened to me on a number of occasions, but I'll detail perhaps the worst.

I traveled out of state to interview with a well known company. They told me I was going to be meeting with eight different people, and the process would take most of the day. Not a problem. I was all set.

So the interview comes and goes and everything seemed to go great. I know I was not the only person considered for the job, but I felt confident about my chances. After I returned home, I sent out thank you notes to everyone that I had interviewed with. Then nothing.

No response from anyone. No acknowledgement that the company had ever made a decision either in my favor or against.

When either situation happens, it makes me wonder if the company can't even appropriately deal with potential employees, how do they treat their current employees? It certainly can't be all that well and it tells me a lot about that company - and it is not good.

Doing the simple things goes a long way towards making your company look great. Just by properly informing candidates that they are no longer being considered for one position, makes it much more likely they will come back to you when you have other positions available.

40 hours a week is enough

CNN has an interesting article out today regarding Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. The article goes on to explain how and why it is OK to have a tech job, yet only work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This is something I have been thinking about, not only based on what I see others post about on Twitter, but my own experiences.

I've come to the conclusion that outside of a few exceptions, there is no good reason to work beyond 40 hours a week. It doesn't matter if you are the CEO of a major corporation, in an entry level position or somewhere in-between.

Those exceptions could include some kind of disaster to the place of work (fire, flood or other natural disaster) and many many hours are needed to get the business back up and running. Or there is a chance to add a client or other business to your company and you want to make a great first impression.

But these should be exceptions and not the rule. If you are putting in more than 40 hours a week, you need to examine why. Is your boss being unreasonable? Do you need to hire more people to handle an increased work load? Can you not trust the people who work for you and as a result, you need to put in more hours (and replace those you can't trust)?

If you are working more than 40 hours a week on a regular basis, what is that doing to your life outside of work? It's widely reported that people need eight hours of sleep per night, so right there, that is 1/3 of the day. Then you have to not only get to the job, but get home (assuming you don't work at home). After that, what about family life, friends, and anything else just to maintain a normal sense of balance.

The more you work, the more all of that gets cut into. A quick google search will tell you about the lives and families that have been destroyed because someone worked too much.

Think about it. You only live once. Do you want to live to work, or work to live?

Self sensor...but to a point

There is a ton of information on the Internet regarding your online image. Everyone has heard about not putting anything 'risky' on your Facebook, Twitter, ect. accounts. But how far should you go with not making certain information available?

I think we all can agree that putting pictures of yourself doing who knows what at that kegger you attended while in college is not the best of ideas.

But what about your personal thoughts and opinions? This blog post is my own opinion on the subject, and I'm sure there are people who will disagree with what I have to say in it. Should it disqualify me from a potential job as a result?

No, and here is why. I'm a person, not a machine. I have thoughts, opinions, dreams and desires. The whole package that is me is unique. Nobody else is the same. Sure, I have similar thoughts on things as other people, but nobody thinks the exact same way on all subjects as I do. It is what makes me an individual.

As a result, I don't mind sharing my thoughts on the latest political happening, sporting event or news making item. If I make a snarky comment about a politician, or a team that is the rival of my favorite team, why should that matter to an employer? If I have to be a drone and keep those thoughts to myself, chances are, I'm not going to be happy at your place of employment (and you likely have an unhappy group of employees).

Keep in mind, I'm not going to be showing up to work on a daily basis and telling everyone and their brother what I thought about last night's election results or my latest thoughts on religion. There is no need for that in the workplace. Idle water cooler chat about a team blowing a 3-run lead in the bottom of the ninth inning? That happens everywhere all of the time and to pretend it doesn't happen at your place is naive at best.

As a manager or HR director, if you run across a potential candidate who may share some political/sports/news opinions on social media outlets that are different than yours, don't dismiss them out of hand. You likely already employ someone who has different opinions than yourself and they are a good employee. If you are a good manager or HR director, you will know before you hire them how they will fit within their organization based on many many other factors then some random thoughts on social media sites.

Here is how to lose a large pool of potential candidates

In an effort to network and reach out to others, I participate in a few Twitter chats. I do this not only to learn about what other people are saying and thinking, but to also share a few nuggets of knowledge that I have.

I was in one last night and notice some excellent answers being given by someone who works in HR at a US based automaker. Following the chat, I exchanged a few tweets back and forth with her, and she provided a link to the career website for that company.

After not having the best experience at the last conglomerate that I worked for, I was not expecting to find much of anything that I may have liked. However, I encountered a major problem before I could even see what kinds of jobs they had to offer.

When I pulled up the webpage, I noticed that nothing was formatted correctly, poorly laid out and just a major mess. Since I use the Safari web browser, I occasionally encounter this problem. So, I tried Firefox, since that will fix all problems I come across with Safari.

Except I then had the exact same problem.

Since I was not sure quite what the problem was, I sent a tweet to my contact at this company, and explained the problem. Her response: "Hi Rob, currently our ATS for job openings works best with Internet Explorer right now."

Seriously? This immediately brought back my failed attempts to apply for another major company that handles prescription drug plans when I had similar issues with viewing and applying for jobs within their company.

But with web browser usage somewhere around 53 percent being Internet Explorer...these two companies are missing out on up to 47 percent of their talent pool by letting their jobs sites be only accessed by IE. I'm not sure who is making these decisions within the companies, but if I were CEO, and I discovered this, someone would have some explaining to do!

So if nothing else, make sure your job website can be accessed by multiple web browsers. If this was 1997, I might understand. However, being 2012, access by multiple browsers over multiple platforms is a requirement!