Very often, I share a career opportunity and ask people to reach me via inbox, where I share my email address. I have become tired of having to give the same advice to different people when they send me their CVs, and I figure that it will be useful to share that advice here, so I don’t have to keep saying the same thing to individuals who send their CVs.
It is IMPROPER to email someone with NO CONTENT, and I cannot stand it. You’re looking for a job, someone shares an opportunity with you and asks you to send a CV, and you do just that. Email comes, and it has a CV (which by the way is not saved with your name, but just titled as “CV.doc”), and you don’t even take the time to add a salutation … no hello, no introduction, no mention of who you are, the purpose of your mail, what you’re interested in, where you heard about the opportunity from etc. All you send is a CV and … well, nothing. Blank email with an attachment, and I guess in my “omniscience”, I’m supposed to know who you are, why you sent the CV, what you want, who referred you etc., just by looking at the blank mail.
It tells me a lot about you as a jobseeker. That you do not pay attention to doing things properly; that you’re not a serious job candidate; that you perhaps feel a sense of entitlement or over-confidence and don’t see why you should spend time writing a proper email etc, … after all, the job should be handed over to you, or … you’re just ignorant of how to do things properly.
That is why I invest my time in responding and letting people know that I will not review the CV until they do things properly. Frankly, I don’t have the time to send that mail every time I get a CV in my inbox. Where did this come from, anyway?
Sometimes, this happens because supportive, well-meaning people do too much spoon-feeding and handholding, thereby crippling the jobseeker. The jobseeker never learns how to do things, never learns how to go after opportunities because the first resort is to sit back and let other people take their CV and go round with it trying to help them find a job. I have met so many young people who say they’re job hunting, and when I ask them what effort they themselves have made, there’s no response because they have given their CVs to concerned others whom they expect to go putting their CV out. That is not the way to do it. For those of us helping others, don’t give them the fish… teach them to fish, so they can reel in the opportunities themselves. If/when you do all the work for them, you clip their wings and hurt, rather than help them.
This also happens because in our schools (primary through tertiary), we’re not teaching these simple lessons. We need career centers at all levels. That is a totally different conversation for another day. In the meantime, if unsure how to email someone you do not know about a job, poke around the web for professional sites who help with such information. If you need coaching and are willing to invest in it, visit www.axishcl.com, and we’ll teach you the essentials of communication and job hunting etc…
I certainly do hope someone somewhere learns from this… each time I see blank emails, I don’t want to bother responding and I want to just delete them, but then the coach in me feels well… if I don’t teach them, how will they learn? …, and so I teach.
However, my time is limited, and I can’t keep responding to all those blank emails, especially when common sense should prompt you to at least even say hello in an email to someone you’re contacting for the first time. I know millennials tend to eschew structures and ‘protocol’, but some of these basics are absolutely non-negotiable and come down to good manners.
Anyway … enough said. I hope someone has learnt something from this much-needed rant. If you’re looking for a job, visit www.axishcl.com, create a profile and apply for jobs you find interesting and qualify for.
If you need more help to build your skills, give us a call, and we’ll help you out if you’re willing to learn and are willing to pay even a token for our time and advice.
Source: Dr. Esi Ansah
