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Resume Spamming Creates Storage, Legal Snags 316

Posted by timothy from the laws-that-make-you-say-hmmmm dept.
selan writes "Did you know that federal law requires companies to store a copy of every single resume they receive? This applies to emailed resumes too, regardless of whether the applicant got the company's name wrong or is applying for a job that doesn't exist at the company. Employers not in compliance risk being fined and could lose government contracts. The resulting storage problems are creating massive headaches at companies who are overwhelmed with bulk-emailed resumes. The Baltimore Sun has the story."
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Resume Spamming Creates Storage, Legal Snags More

Resume Spamming Creates Storage, Legal Snags

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  • Another weapon (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 3DKnight ( 589972 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:52PM (#6016714)
    I wonder how long it will take for /.'ers to start using this loophole to further back up Spammers and their companies. then again.. they never did follow the law exactly, so why start now?

  • What are we waiting for?!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by levik ( 52444 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:52PM (#6016720) Homepage
    Let's all apply for the newly opened CEO position at Microsoft!

  • Company looking for experienced developers... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lugor ( 628175 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:53PM (#6016726)
    Send your resumes here: careers@microsoft.com.
    Bulk mailers welcome.

  • use /dev/null for storage (Score:5, Funny)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:53PM (#6016729) Homepage
    you can always use /dev/null for storing all the resumes - bulk or non-bulk ;)

  • Simple solution (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:53PM (#6016733) Journal
    I know by now I filled a few hundred hard-drives. If they would just hire me, dammit, I would stop filling their hard-drives with resumes and cover letters. Deal?

    • Sure, want a job as a résumé filer?

    • Better yet, see if they'll hire you to manage the storage of thousands of your own resumes.

    • Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)

      by yintercept ( 517362 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:38PM (#6017207) Homepage Journal
      Well, at least the people complaining about having to process the resumes have a job. Think of the additional thousands that would be pounding the street if the HR business suddenly got efficient.

      If businesses ran at peak efficiency, there would probably be only about 10% employment. The rest of us would have to run around and find a way to make the market inefficient enough so that we can get food in our mouths.

      The article also misses the cause of the problem. The problem is not too broad a defintion of an application. The problem is that the companies are storing the resumes in paper form. Storing the resumes in electronic form would save a few thousand acres of file cabinets and a few forests full of trees. Microsoft could fit all of its resumes on a $100 drive.

      To be honest, I think companies revel in the tens of thousands of resumes they receive. When you have 100,000 resumes piled up, it makes it a lot easier for the company to hire who you want as you can flood the court will a torrent of documents when the lawyers come to sue, and when you have that many documents you can prove anything you want.

      • Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)

        by zackbar ( 649913 )
        Not quite.

        True, many companies are running at low efficiency, but that just means that they have to charge a lot more to hire all those extra people.

        That extra cost goes into their prices, which drives up everyone else's costs.

        I contracted for a year at a company that handled paychecks and benefits ivr (interactive voice response). The systems were incredibly inefficient, but they charged for each programmer hour back to the client.

        We figured that if they designed their applications to not require a wh

      • Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MikeFM ( 12491 )
        If businesses ran at peak effeciency each business would probably need to hire fewer employees but there'd be room for a lot more businesses.

        In this case I'll tell any of these companies that if they want someone to setup a system to store resumes effeciently then just give me a call. All I hear from this article is 'whiiiiiiiine'. Honestly, a hdd costs about $1 a gig (for the price I've been paying). An average plaintext resume is less than 10k (and you can easily convert non-plaintext resumes). If my qui

  • sic (Score:3, Funny)

    by XianDeath ( 543687 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:54PM (#6016737)
    "But Griesmar, the bank's recruiter and an assistant file every resume they receive.

    'We feel we have to keep everything that comes to us even if they want to be a message therapist,' she said. 'I'd rather spend my time doing productive things than fighting a regulator ... having to explain what happened to a year's worth of resumes.'"

    Personally, I'd rather be spending my time as a 'message therapist.'

  • Found this out last week (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rorgg ( 673851 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:55PM (#6016755)
    When HR came to me about someone mass-sending his own resume over and over again, they wanted to know if they could avoid receiving it again. I wonder if setting up a rule on the box to automatically delete the message on arrival would have been sufficient, or if it needs to be blocked before it gets there?
  • Another tactic for the previous article, send spammers your resume, and everyone elses you can lay your grubby mits on. Teehee.

    I'm bored, can't you tell?

  • Does Uncle Sam play too? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pilo ( 673839 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:55PM (#6016757)
    I wonder if the government has to keep all the resumes that are sent to them from people wanting municipal jobs and the like

  • Bizarro World (Score:3, Insightful)

    by radiumhahn ( 631215 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:56PM (#6016761)
    I have never heard of such a law. Can anyone validate that it actually exists. What about those ads that are resumes and marketing blurbage for consulting and other services?
    • I don't know if there is actually a law that requires this, but in all the "hiring process" classes I've taken (I'm a manager), I've been advised to keep all records pertaining to an applicant for at least one year in case they sue. That includes resumes, interview notes, application forms, cover letters, etc.
    • First I heard of this also. I have seen it where applicants have been strongly requested to submit only one of {s-mail, e-mail, web} versions, but I just thought this was to avoid confusion and extra work on their end.

    • Re:Bizarro World (Score:3, Informative)

      by Farmer Jimbo ( 515393 )
      Title VII [fairmeasures.com]

      One of the reasons you have to keep the resumes on file is to cover your ass in case of EEOC discriminatory hiring suit.

  • Is this article just FUD? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dtolton ( 162216 ) * on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:56PM (#6016763) Homepage
    I found this article to be generally frustrating for several reasons:

    1. They never referenced any specific law or court
    interpretation of a law.

    What law are they talking about specifically? How can we
    check to ensure our company practices are in compliance with
    "the law". Does this law apply equally to all employers or
    does it only apply to employers with federal contracts as
    many of the equal opportunity laws do?

    2. They throw out terms like "under it's most rigid
    interpretation" and "the federal governments definition".

    By who's interpretation? The courts? The Equal Employment
    Office? Are there any court cases we can refer to in order
    to further define these interpretations? Where is this
    defined? How can we verify this?

    3. They don't give any specific guidelines for battling the
    problem.

    Is this article just writting to freak people out? They
    don't even mention how long you are "required" to keep the
    resumes on file, only that many people keep them on file for
    a year or two. Is this their preference, or is that what
    this "law" specifies.

    Overall, very frustrating and light on details. How can we as a
    company change our policies to be in accordance with some law,
    that is being rigidly interpreted by someone, somewhere?
    • How can we as a company change our policies to be in accordance with some law, that is being rigidly interpreted by someone, somewhere?

      Some possible answers:
      • Just wait a while. There will be a dupe about this, featuring a competing interpretation. Pick the one you like best.
      • Donate to the Republican party. Even if you are violating the law, you'll get better treatment.
      • Contact a real lawyer who specializes in employment law and ask them, and stop relying on Slashdot stories and their referenced arti
    • Also, I cannot see the problem. My resume in msword format is 5k gziped (yes, about 60% of word documents are NULL characters, I've counted :) and that is why they compress so well). OK, if a typical resume is 5k in size and lets say that this small company that is hurting for cash gets 5,000 applicants for 100 positions a year. This would be a grand total of 2.4Gigs a year. A 20Gig hardisk costs $50, and that would hold almost 10 years worth of accumilated resumes.

      If a company is hurting that bad for
    • Look up EEOC 1607. It's a big law, and part of it requires that you keep any materials that you used as part of your selection process. It's absolutely ludicrous if you ask me, and I've never heard of anyone actually following it before now. But believe it or not, it is a law.

    • Oh yes, it's very FUDdy. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nurlman ( 448649 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:25PM (#6017110)

      The requirement at issue is found in the Equal Employment Oppoertunity Commission's regulations interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Title VII prohibits employers of 15 or more persons from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, national origin, religion, etc.

      The EEOC has issued regulations that interpret the law. Among those regulations are recommendations as to how long employers should retain various items of paperwork. The article stems from a misunderstanding as to the meaning of 29 C.F.R. s. 1602.14, which states:

      Any personnel or employment record made or kept by an employer (including but not necessarily limited to requests for reasonable accommodation, application forms submitted by applicants and other records having to do with hiring, promotion, demotion, transfer, lay-off or termination, rates of pay or other terms of compensation, and selection for training or apprenticeship) shall be preserved by the employer for a period of one year from the date of the making of the record or the personnel action involved, whichever occurs later.
      What the article fails to acknowledge is that the EEOC's regulations are nothing more than recommendations, and are neither specifically enforcible by the EEOC nor binding on the Courts. Note 29 C.F.R. s. 1602.12:
      The Commission has not adopted any requirement, generally applicable to employers, that records be made or kept.
      In other words, the article is pure FUD: the EEOC recommends that you keep applications and resumes for at least a year, but doing so is neither required nor something that you can be punished for. (As a matter of corporate policy, it makes sense to retain bona fide resumes for at least that long in case of litigation, but what is "smart" and what is "required by law" are often two very different things.)

  • and who could forget... (Score:5, Funny)

    by H0NGK0NGPH00EY ( 210370 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:56PM (#6016769) Homepage
    ...our favorite resume spammer, Bernard Shiffman [petemoss.com]!

  • Re:Apache displacing IIS? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by erikdotla ( 609033 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:56PM (#6016775)
    I assume the storage problems are only discussing paper resumes. And even those, I would suspect the ink costs and time being gobbled on the fax machine would be more important than storage. Even if 100% are snailmailed, a small box holds a lot of paper.

    There's no way this could be a problem with emailed resumes, given today's storage prices. However, the act of moving them all into the system might be costly if there's no decent CMS system in place...

    CMS.... *shivers* I'm still reeling from the bad memories the last CMS thread produced.
    • "Re:Apache displacing IIS?"

      Heh, don't you love it when Mozilla stuff a form field and you don't notice?

      I wonder how many of my posts have had this subject...
    • These are resumes they HAVE to keep -- not data they WANT to keep. Who cares if you can find it later?

      All you have to do is to do is give them unique filenames (not hard -- a timestamp would suffice) and dump them to a harddrive. When the harddrive hits ~600 MB, burn it to CD, erase it, and toss the CD in a filing cabinet drawer.
    • I don't think there needs to be any CMS, or, for that matter, any system whatsoever. The law requires them to archive it, not to archive it well. For the 90+% of resumes that have no hope in hell of ever getting hired, toss it in a folder than a little shell script tar+gzips every month and sends it off to the tape drive to never be seen again unless a regulator comes by being pissy, when you hand him a pile of tapes and he never comes again.

      The 0-10% of useful resumes you keep in whatever system you al

  • Personnel departments and spam filters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cyberformer ( 257332 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:57PM (#6016785)
    From the artucle, it looks like this applies only to corporate personnel departments, so I don't think I'm in violation of federal law when I delete all the resumes I get in my work inbox.

    Slippery slope legal question: Does this mean it's illegal to use spam filtering software that might catch a resume en-route to a personnel dept? If so, a very large proportion of companies are breaking the law.
  • This is yet another example of bureaucracy getting in the way of productivity. Hopefully the government will reverse this law, but we all know how long it takes to get federal laws passed which don't benefit special interest groups, or help politicians.

  • The New DoS! (Score:3, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:58PM (#6016798) Journal
    Who will write a Perl script to send (Insert Evil Corporation here) a veritable A$$LOAD of random resumès?

    All with names such as "I.P. Freely" and "Rod Johnson", degrees like 'PHD in Beastiality', and work experience like "1987-89: Instrumental in the success of bringing Vacuum Poo Forming(TM) to underpriveledged children.

  • Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FroMan ( 111520 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:58PM (#6016803) Homepage Journal
    Is this terribly exciting?

    This is a no brainer. Most companies have places to put documents. Heck, there are great big systems that only do that, document management. Drop the resume into the document management system and set the rule to blow it away after the duration has expired. Nothing terribley exciting here.

    If you are a small company, drop it onto a disk and toss it into a box labeled $current_year. This is not rocket science.

    Companies being overloaded by this? Not likely unless they are so easily confused by managing documents, in which case should the company really be in the league of trying to get governement contracts?
  • I've thrown away plenty of resumes and I seriously doubt that there indeed is a federal law that requires you to keep them. Perhaps what they are failing to mention is that this is some sort of a requirement for government contractors.

  • This is quite simply solved. (Score:5, Funny)

    by John Penix ( 562591 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @01:59PM (#6016826) Homepage
    1. Buy a 100 gig hard drive
    2. Format it with random noise
    3. Give the random noise a PGP header
    4. If you're ever prosecuted for not keeping a copy of someone's resume, tell the prosecutor it's on this hard drive you've got, but you misplaced the encryption key.
    Remember, the burden of proof is on the prosecutor. He has to prove that your noise isn't encrypted resumes.

    • Re:This is quite simply solved. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree.davidglover@org> on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:18PM (#6017034) Homepage
      Not in the UK.

      Sadly, in the UK, there is a law specific to encrypted data that places the burden of proof on you. If you forget the key to some encrypted data that the government decides it wants to read, you can go to jail.

      Fun huh?

      • "Sadly, in the UK, there is a law specific to encrypted data that places the burden of proof on you. If you forget the key to some encrypted data that the government decides it wants to read, you can go to jail."

        Marutukku [rubberhose.org] or plain old destruction [blibbleblobble.co.uk]

        Does anyone else find it worrying that a privacy system designed to withstand people being tortured is of most use in the UK?
      • So supposing you happen to have a drive that IS just random noise with a PGP header. They can demand that you decrypt it. When you can't, they can suggest whatever criminal content they like is on the disk, and instantly convict you of possessing it.
      • Say what you will, but I like that law, so you can not pull one over like the original poster suggested. I agree with the prosecutor need to prove whatever, but they ust have access to the info. If you have locked it with a key, and claim the key is missing, then the blame should shift to you for "withholding" the potential evidence.
    • Actually for various compliance regulations (See OSHA, EEOC, IRS), it is up to you to prove compliance or loose something (like the ability to sell to govenments).

      These regulations probably come from the "Prove that you are hiring in line with the local population/applicant pool". Aren't regulations fun

  • Whatever. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chromodromic ( 668389 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:01PM (#6016841)
    This is a problem of large corporations who have to worry about government compliance. There aren't going to be any government officials knocking on my business's door. So what do I care if IBM, Microsoft, and Exxon have to purchase more RAID so they can store resumes? Big frickin' deal. Hell, it creates more jobs, probably, to fill the positions required to maintain the storage, and, which will be a big Slashdot plus, it'll probably create more Linux jobs.

    I could be wrong. Perhaps throngs of G-Men are going to be canvassing the neighborhood urgently nabbing resume storage violators, the filthy rotten criminals that they are, but this doesn't seem like much of a post. For the large businesses for which this is a problem, my response, gosh, guys, sucks being you.

  • Well then ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by the bluebrain ( 443451 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:01PM (#6016845)
    I think I'll start sending out resumes for the position of "Resume Collector and Archiver - You Know You Need One(TM)". Anyone got a link to the relevant federal reglementation?

  • Cost/Benefit (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GMontag ( 42283 ) <gmontag AT guymontag DOT com> on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:02PM (#6016860) Homepage Journal
    Well, if the storage cost is more than the fine then this is less of a problem than it may seem. Skip the storage and take the fine (if caught). Odd that there is no mention of the amount of any fines in the article.

    The underlying problem of a meddling nanny-state still remains and this is more evidence of it's obscenity.

    Another obscenity is this bit towards the end:
    He said agencies have been working to develop a new definition of applicant for the past three years and could have one by the end of next month.

    How fortuitous that the reporter just happened to be writing this story within a few short weeks of the underlying beurocratic 'requirement' is being re-forged!
    • Well, if the storage cost is more than the fine then this is less of a problem than it may seem. Skip the storage and take the fine (if caught).

      I can't imagine that the storage cost would ever be higher than the fine. Unless, of course, there isn't a fine, in which case the law has no real means of enforcement. The price of a 200GB drive less than $200. For the vast majority of companies that drive could hold every resume you receive in the next few decades. Paper resumes are more dificult to store but th
      • Actually, I suspect that this is not, in fact, a formal law but a typical conglomeration of regulations served with a good heaping helping of a conglomeration of definitions for the terms within the various regulations resulting in a maze of conflicting beurocratic interpretations.

        Result? Save everything so we can hand them a pile of crap the next time they bother us.
  • "If they are a cashier at 7-Eleven and they are applying for a national sales manager [position] ... it is pretty obvious whether they fit or not," Snyder said.

    The guy might have been the most qualified national sales manager they could have ever encountered; perhaps he was laid off and had to work at 7-11 in order to make ends meet?
    • From personal experience... I've done day-labor while in-between jobs. I wouldn't put it on my resume of course because it opens you up for lowballing the salary.

      But having some money coming in and being able to eat and pay the bills while you look for something else is better than not having a job and no income at all.
      • I disagree.

        Have you ever interviewed with a large hole on your resume? Most interviewers are brutal in this regards. Anything over 3 months they will pounce on. Poor economy or good economy wont matter. I even applied at Borders and the interviewer assumed I was lazy because I was laid off 3 months ago. He started asking questions like "How can I even know your going to show for work?".

        If your in IT then the interviewer will understand. If he/she asks why you worked at a 7-11??

        Say, I looked for IT jobs f
    • Sure, but why put 7-11 on your resume then? You don't have to include every single job you've ever worked ya know. ;)

  • Resume (Score:4, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:04PM (#6016884) Homepage Journal

    Send this to your various levels of government. Query them later via a freedom of information action to ensure they've kept it on file.

    Osama bin Laden
    Cave 273-b northern Afghanistan

    Dear Imperialist Infidel,

    Please accept this resume for your files concerning any openings
    you may have.

    Recently I've become newsworthy because of several operations my
    Al Quaeda teams have carried our successfully. This demonstrates
    a proven ability to plan and carry out large scale operations.

    I think my years of experience in strategic planning and covert
    operations would be an asset to your firm.

    Yours very truly,

    Osama bin Laden
  • All mail is pre-screened. No applications or resumes are accepted without a corresponding and valid job number. Personnel accepts no unsolicted phone calls Postings always close within two weeks. It's really tough to get a job with the company because of these Federal regulations. Compliance is not an option.
  • Use BIG file formats . . . and if you get an offer to be president, take it and stop this madness;)

  • Well no frigging wonder! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rifter ( 147452 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:09PM (#6016934) Homepage

    Six months ago, when Infinity Consulting Group began looking for three new employees to upgrade computers, the company received more than 300 resumes and inquiries by e-mail.

    ...

    The struggle was so tough for Infinity that it has yet to hire one of the three new employees it was seeking.

    Maybe if they quit posting jobs they don't intend to hire anyone for, they would not be so overwhelmed. or maybe they could hire more HR or IT staff. If all the companies complaining about this hired a few people instead, they would not have this problem.

    IANAL, but there is no requirement afaik for employers to look at all resumes. So maybe they have to store them all, but once they find the candidate they want to hire they can always close the position (and stop accepting resumes for it). Maybe some of those people they should be hiring could fix the software that handles the resume submissions (big companies like Dell, Microsoft, IBM, etc who get lots of resume submissions have automated software that puts a reasonable number of resumes in the hands of the person who is supposed to deal with it, and it can't be that hard to come up with a well designed system).

  • Absurd (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Carbonite ( 183181 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:10PM (#6016944)
    I can't think of any reason why this law should exist. A company should be free to do whatever they wish with the resumes they receive. If they want to store them forever, fine. If they want to delete/destroy them all upon receipt, fine.

    The govenment shouldn't dictate in any way what companies do with resumes. If a company decides that six months is an adequate amount of time to store resumes, they shouldn't face penalties.

    I could see some argument made for storing resumes of all candidates for one year. "Candidates" might be classified as all people who receive a phone screen or an actual face-to-face interview. This could be useful data in discrimination lawsuits, both for the plaintiff and the defending company. I see no sense in Intel having to store high school dropout Johnny Kantspell's resume if they decide he's not quite qualified for Director of R&D.

    Maybe there's some great reason why resumes should be stored; I'd love to hear them if there are some. Otherwise, kill this law and let companies do what they want with resumes.

    • Re:Absurd (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gclef ( 96311 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:34PM (#6017173)
      I could see some argument made for storing resumes of all candidates for one year. "Candidates" might be classified as all people who receive a phone screen or an actual face-to-face interview. This could be useful data in discrimination lawsuits, both for the plaintiff and the defending company.

      So, if you never make it to "candidate" status, you have less of a leg to stand on legally. To me, that will lead to some dork intentionally avoiding giving "candidate" status to some minorities. Since they don't have to save the resumes for non-candidates, they don't have to face the evidence in a discrimination lawsuit. That can't be the result you were looking for.

      Yeah, the law makes things messy. But, suck as it may, the best way to prove that you weren't being racist in your hiring *is* to save all your applications, even Johnny Dropout's.
  • If they are required to keep the resume whats the big deal dump all the resumes onto a CD or backup tape. Resume is probably 50Kbytes so something like 13,000 fit on a CD. I don't think the'll loose to much sleep trying to store a CD or two. Paper resumes are a bigger issue but at 37 cents to send through the mail most people don't bother anymore, scan and store even if each submitter had two pages that scan to 1MByte you can still get 650 per CD. They are required to hold onto resume not actual read it

  • terrific! (Score:4, Funny)

    by bilbobuggins ( 535860 ) <`moc.tnujtnuj' `ta' `snigguboblib'> on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:11PM (#6016962)
    finally my career in storage systems sales will take off!

    1) mass mail resume
    2)*ring* 'what's that? you need more disk space? you don't say...'

  • Create public folder for receving resumes. Create a mailbox and forward a copy to the mailbox as well. Perform Brick level backup and the emailed resumes will get backed up on a per message basis. Every month or so delete the messages from the mailbox and the public folder.

    Legally you are following this since all resumes can be retrieved from off site storage.

  • Sigh (Score:2)

    by jd ( 1658 )
    This is why some information is better stored on a central repositry. 75-100% of all the resumes sent out by one person will be identical, or nearly so. Store the identical part centrally for all companies, and then store the diff locally.
  • Simply don't accept any resumes at all from them. If you don't receive the resume, you don't have to store it. Or did Congress make those resume laws so far reaching that you can't do this?
  • I'm amazed that as of this writing nobody has posted a flood of resumes to this thread.
  • I think that's entirely reasonable.

  • resumes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by malia8888 ( 646496 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:43PM (#6017254)
    As a corporate recruiter (head hunter) we laughingly referred to resumes as "obituaries". As a stand alone method of getting a job resumes are quite ineffective.

    Once the myth that a resume can get a person a job is finally put to rest companies will continue to be flooded with them.

    My advice to anybody in this flat IT economy is as follows: 1. Get a job any job. If you aren't working, nobody is going to hire you. You are an "untouchable" when the imagine you at home in front of the T.V. Plus, companies can smell desperation and fear a mile away.

    2. If you can't find a job in IT, find one that almost sounds like a technological position. This could include putting together computer desks for a "temp" agency--anything to break the inertia of unemployment.

    This is just my humble opinion from years of watching resumes being filed like so many paper tombstones.

  • I wonder when spammers will start attaching resumes to their spam to make companies have to let the spam through, even store the spam for five years...

  • Simple rules (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Cisco Kid ( 31490 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:44PM (#6017270)
    Companies should be allowed to have published criteria for formats of resumes they will accept.

    Im sure there are some common sense rules for dead-true resumes. I would hope they arent required to accept or file a resume printed on used toilet paper, or in 30 point type on a 4x8 foot sheet of plywood.

    So same should there be some common sense rules for resumses - not required to accept or file resumes not in RFC-documented formats, for example, or perhaps even requiring them to be in plain text. Im sure the size of a DOC file for a given resume, compared to a plaintext version of the same resume, is at least similar to the comparison between a sheet of plyood as compared to a US-letter or A4 page of paper.

    Allowing PDF format might be a consideration, since they could print those and add them to their dead-tree file. Of course, that would cost them money in ink and paper, which doesnt seem fair.

    No, I think the best thing would be to ALLOW applicants to email resumes, but not require companies to supply the computer equipment or ink and paper to file them. If an applicant wants to force a company to file their resume, they should be required to pay for the paper and postage to send them a hardcopy.

    Of course, nothing word prohbit a company from choosing to save or print/file resumes they got. So they still could if they wanted.
  • Next week, we'll find out that it's illegal to toss away any solicited material that is dropped off at or in front of your office. We'll all be forced to keep a full pile of restaurant menus at our workspaces.

  • you sent your resume ?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dorfsmay ( 566262 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:46PM (#6017296) Homepage
    I don't get it, assuming there is such a law, then you basically have to keep all the resume for which the sender can prove he/she sent it to you, that is fedex or other courrier companies and registered mail.

    They dont really have to keep anything else.

  • For all you haydukers out there (Score:3, Insightful)

    by karlandtanya ( 601084 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @02:47PM (#6017307)
    I see much potential for groups of individuals to legally "motivate" companies they don't like!
    Of course I would never suggest a Distributed Resume Attack be implemented against any particular organization.


    Worst case--what--you get a job.

    Hey, Melinda, Where are we going to store all these Osama bin Lauden resmues?

    Gee, Bill, I guess we could put 'em in the warehouse next to the Sadaam Hussein job applications.

  • Too funny. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by crazyphilman ( 609923 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @03:13PM (#6017563) Journal
    So, employers -- who have been canning people right and left, and who post ridiculous job descriptions so that they can justify outsourcing positions instead of hiring for them -- are now experiencing a crisis in which the masses of unemployed and desperate people are sending them resumes that, by law, they must track and store? How amusing. I noticed that they're trying to call unsolicited resumes "spam", as though an unemployed and desperate worker is somehow committing a sin in attempting to find work. How compassionate HR managers are! How touching is their depth of feeling for their fellow man.

    Of course, what is *really* funny is, these idiots are so technically inept that they consider dealing with a few thousand resumes *difficult*. Perhaps if they hadn't fired all the tech staff, someone in the office would be able to do the following:

    1. Set up a shared directory on one of the office PCs, mapping that as a network drive for everyone else.

    2. Inform people that whenever a resume comes in, they should save it to the shared drive in a subfolder named after the "applicant", along with attachments.

    3. Have someone periodically dump the shared drive to a CD-Rom (say, when the shared folder hits 500MB?). Write the date on the CD label, and store it somewhere convenient. Then, clean out the shared folder.

    4. Stop worrying and let all the HR suits go back to playing solitaire and tormenting "applicants".

    Oh, but you'll say, "they get and track paper resumes, too -- what now, shared-folder-boy?"

    Easy enough. On the same PC where you're storing the emailed resumes, hook up a fifty dollar scanner. When a resume comes in, have one of the interns scan it and save it in the shared directory and subdirectory named after the person. The additional space being used just increases the rate at which you're burning CDs.

    Wanna go back and find someone's resume? Fetch the CD for the approximate time span in which the resume was sent and look the person up. This should take maybe ten minutes (including walking down to the file closet and digging up the CD).

    Unless you're IBM or something, this should be more than sufficient. Companies like IBM have enough staff to create something a little more comprehensive.

    Of course, most companies DID fire all the tech staff, so they're probably shit out of luck. Maybe if they give the homeless webmaster who sits in front of their building a doughnut or something, he'll put something together for them. Who knows? Or he might just spit in their eye, kick them in the shins, steal the doughnut, and walk away, muttering about "PR Flacks"...

    • Re:Too funny. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by envelope ( 317893 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @04:41PM (#6018407) Homepage Journal
      Even if companies do follow your suggestion, it is still costing them a lot of money to have to do it. It takes time to drag and drop. Not much, granted (and it would be less time if you didn't have to watch the cutesy papers flying across the progress dialog), but the more resumes they get, the more time they are spending doing the copying. I would guess it takes at least 3 times as long to do the copying as it does to just click the delete button.

      The way I see it, the government is imposing a rather large financial burden on employers, just so the government can go have a look when they want to see if the employer is unfairly dicriminating against applicants.

      This reminds me of the standard mortgage application. It has a box where you are required to indicate your race. Why should you have to indicate your race on a mortgage app? Only so the government can make sure the lender is not using that information. Not only is the lender required to collect information they aren't legally allowed to consider, the lender is required to guess the applicant's race if the applicant refuses to provide it.

      Just another fine example of government stupidity.

  • resume spamming? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spudley ( 171066 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @03:19PM (#6017614) Homepage Journal

    They haven't even stopped yet, and we're talking about letting them resume spamming?! ...

    oh, wait... you meant "resumé", didn't you?

  • What about format? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Xerithane ( 13482 ) <xerithane.nerdfarm@org> on Thursday May 22, 2003 @04:18PM (#6018203) Homepage Journal
    If you list that the only resumes that will be acknowledged will follow a specific format, that requires some sort of human intervention, would that be legal?

    For example, emailing your resume will result in a bounce message saying that the company doesn't accept resumes via email. Then, have a webform that requires them to be uploaded and have one of those wavy-text checks.

    Any thoughts on the legality of that?

  • What about resume _viruses_ (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheMidget ( 512188 ) on Thursday May 22, 2003 @05:59PM (#6019104)
    A number of viruses disguise themselves as resumes [kaspersky.com]. Does this law also force companies to keep those? Do companies still have the right to disinfect these mails?

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