Design companies don't reply

Design Discussions design employment
1

I was wondering if this happens to me only, after I send in a resume and samples to design companies, they don’t reply to me.

Over the past year I have sent in MANY portfolios to design companies with open positions and ONLY 1 has ever replied to me, THANK YOU K-2!!!. I have Fedex’d portfolios, mailed them, and E-mailed them all with no reply ever. I have even followed up with phone calls and E-mails but I still don’t get responses.

I am asking this hoping that some employers that hang out here will know why. I understand if the opening was posted on Core or a similiar site you probably get hundreds of responses, but if someone Fedex’s you a portfolio is it too much to ask to email a “No, your portfolio sucks!” email???

Talking to my wife that works in the technology field, people respond when she sends them out…eventually. So why not in the ID field?
Is it just that designers that hire designers are too good to reply to designers that are less skilled than them???

What’s the deal?

2

Sorry to inform you this happens in most other fields today with equal frequency, and is much more the norm in America than Europe, where there’s still some decency left when it comes to employment ethics. It is basic human courtesy to at least acknowledge a sendout, after all it represents another human being’s work and aspirations. Big egos in design firms compond the problem, true. You probably wouldn’t want to work there anyhow.

Blame it on the cynical working world of today, obsessed with speed and profit at any cost. Sadder still is the fact you will yourself become this way after some years in it.

What goes around comes around, they say.

3

It is purely an exercise in practicality

I just hired a student employee for the summmer and after posting ads to the local post-secondary schools, I was flooded with no less than 60 applications in less than 2 days.

In and around my other work, writing the ad and submitting it to the various electronic job boards took a day.

Reading through the applications took 2 days. I called back 6 for interviews, which together took up the better part of the next day. The next day, four of those got a call saying they didn’t get the job and some feedback on their interview. Two were asked to provide their references. The next day, one got the job and the other, the bad news. All 6 interviewees received confirmation emails to back up the phone calls.

So after all this, I’m running behind at least 4 days on my other work… which doesn’t actually happen since I end up staying late 2 hours for at least a week and only doing a quarter-assed job.

If I were to call back all 60 applicants, I would have likely spent two more days, especially since I consider it important to give feedback if they want it.

So… no it is not about decency, but about being inundated.

And since I believe in feedback, here’s some advice if you’re looking for a job: The person(s) weeding out the flood are looking for anything that sets an applicant apart.

In my case, I asked for applications to be sent by fax or email. Any phone calls were automatically put in the “no” pile: “Thanks for your interest. Email me your application and I’ll get it processed right away.”

The ad mentioned that PDFs were preferred so those that were Word docs got put on the bottom of the pile. Spelling errors were also bottom listed, including the obvious typos like letter inversions. Details count.

Because the job is in design, the short list all had nicely laid out covers and resumes. There were a number of applications that used the exact same boilerplate provided by the school. Boring!

Don’t send hardcopy. Paper is now a precious resource and it only proves you are willing to waste it. If your PDF or website is interesting, you will be asked for more.

Incredulously, some design students did not bring their portfolio to the interview. Most of the engineering students that came did not bring photos or documentation of their projects. This is the ideal moment to wow your prospective employer.

Finally, if you get an interview, don’t be afraid to engage the interviewers… ask questions about the company. It shows interest and critical thinking. After all, the meeting is less about your skills and more about your fit. It also makes sense to determine if the company fits you.

:)ensen.

4

Time is part of it. You would be shocked as to how many people send all sorts of cool presentations of their work. Its not like you’re the only one.

In a down economy this is what happends. Its not that they don’t want to respond its just that there are soooooo many people who respond.

Finally, some people don’t like to give bad news. I know I do agree that if someone asked for stuff then they should at least tell you no. What’s worse is interviewing and getting no response. I can think of 4 instances of that happening last year when I was looking. One company actually sent me an email after my 1st interveiw saying they were proceding with round 2 of interviewing in 2 weeks. That was back in December… acatually emailed them 4 weeks later to find out what happened… no answer.

Of course now I’m employed, working at a great place with great co-workers and bosses. Look at this way, some of those people might not be the greatest to work for anyway.

5

Purplepeopledesign is 100% correct. It’s sucks on both sides, but the orginal poster is right, there is a certain level of ettiquite that should be observed.

My advice to those hiring is to lean on HR or your group Admin to send out a blanket rejection letter for you. Designers suck at paperwork, but as mentioned, are pretty nice people who are almost always willing to take time out to give feedback.

Follow his advice: follow the submission instructions to the tee, proofread, and for God’s sake bring your portfolio!!

6

If the people running the HR departments were capable of finding talented designers - then I would have no problem with this method.

The thing is - they aren’t designers themselves… They really shouldn’t be the ones deciding who goes to the next round.

That’s just my opinion - however…

7

Funny, maybe its me, but I would suspect that if someone submitted a resume etc. digitally replying digitally would be easy enough. You have a canned email ready to go…,,…pretty easy.

Heck,save every email addy and BCC everyone saying “Thanks, but no thanks”. Really reduce your keystrokes.

8

My design director is too busy to look at all the resumes/samples submitted since we posted an ad out 2 weeks ago. On any given day we would get about 30 applicants in our inbox. My job is to pick out only the ones worth looking at. I’d say out of 30 I’d keep 1 or 2. Those applicants that respond to an ad with ‘To Whom it May Cocern’ immediately gets delete- regardless of talent. And obviously those with no cover letter emails will be deleted as well.

I look for 2 things:

  1. that they address me by my name (not HR, or Sir/Madame)
  2. they have talent (good sketching)

If they succeed in these two things, I’ll take a look at their resume. If their work history has too many holes in them, or seems like they like to jump from company to company, then I continue no further with their application. If they succeed in the resume part, then I put it in the ‘in’ folder for the boss to take look at.

9

Pathetically shortsighted and simplistic (but common) hiring practice, throwing out talented applications for lack of “proper” business etiquette written decades ago. I hired some extremely smart, original and fun-to-be-with individuals who did send samples with no cover letters (or didn’t refer to me by name), but were actually brilliant where it counted - solving design problems. To not even meet someone because they didn’t respect a specific application format smacks of stiff corporate elitism and the worst form of narrow-mindedness prevalent in today’s conservative job market. The best creatives do not have conformist minds, but I guess you want an employee-of-the-month type of worker before a designer.

And who are you to decide about anyone’s work history having to many or too big a “hole” in it? What universal law is there that proves someone’s past employment history is an absolute guarantee of how they will perform for you? Over the years, our engineering department hired a few poster boys resume-wise who all turned out to be total duds at work, no personal initiative, no value added to the company whatsoever. Perfect resume, bland at the interview at utterly useless in real life.

I wonder how many excellent designers with poorer secretarial skills or patience have a hard time finding work because of conceited individuals like you functioning like government employees blindly following some stupid hiring rules instead of seeking out authentic thinking, of which there’s precious little to go around anyway.

You’re probably the kind of place that also weeds out potential candidates based on foreign-sounding names, an accent on the phone or creative grammar on a resume.

Where I work we don’t hire linguists, typists or receptionists in the design and engineering department. And I suggest designers looking to avoid prejudiced employers where form is valued above content present themselves, professionally yes, but unafraid to stand out and be themselves.

Corporate dogmas of political rectitude telling us all how to behave and how to live and how to fart, have gone far enough and given us the spineless photocopied platitudes they call design from coast to coast. Glad someone brought up this topic again.

10

+1

Well said. I wanted to reply to the above post, but was not sure what to say. You nailed it on the head.

I find it absurd to judge a resume based on company “hopping”. Based on my personal experience, that can be more the result of bad/new managment deciding they either want to bring their “posse” along with them or some wise guy telling execs that it makes more sense to outsource ID work to consultants.

Sometimes its actually out of the control of applicant. I have gone through this twice already in the 6 years of corporate ID experience I have.

11

That’s great guys, I agree. So how do you suggest rapidly filtering a large number of submissions?

12

I reply to amlost all emails I get. It takes two seconds to type out a thank you letter ( email ). It is a two way street .

13

I like the reply posted above. I know that when things at my current employer started going downhill to the point that they couldn’t guarantee me a paycheck myself and two others started looking for work.

I was amazed at how bad companies are at even acknowledging that they received anything. I have been involved in hiring at my current employer and I always tried to keep in touch with people and let them know whats up. I mean how long does it take to type “sorry, nothing at this time” and hit send. Thats better than nothing and at least prevents any further phone calls or submissions to your inbox. And beyond that, for the interviews that I have actually gone in for, I have been told afterwards that my work was awesome, everyone had good things to say, etc and then nothing. I thought it was just me but others that I have talked to have gotten the same thing. It really does seem to be a world of extremes except that neither end of the spectrum seems to be hiring.

As for the job hopping issue, Ive had that one come up as well. My first job out of school lasted nine months and then everyone involved on the project was thanked for their hard work and shown the door out. My next (and current) job has been going fairly well for almost a year and a half but now the company is doing poorly and I need a paycheck. Is leaving to put food on the table jumping ship?

I think that there are a lot more things that need to be looked at. It is hard to screen people but there really must be a better way.

14

[quote=“mmjohns”]I like the reply posted above. I know that when things at my current employer started going downhill to the point that they couldn’t guarantee me a paycheck myself and two others started looking for work.

I was amazed at how bad companies are at even acknowledging that they received anything. I have been involved in hiring at my current employer and I always tried to keep in touch with people and let them know whats up. I mean how long does it take to type “sorry, nothing at this time” and hit send. Thats better than nothing and at least prevents any further phone calls or submissions to your inbox. And beyond that, for the interviews that I have actually gone in for, I have been told afterwards that my work was awesome, everyone had good things to say, etc and then nothing. I thought it was just me but others that I have talked to have gotten the same thing. It really does seem to be a world of extremes except that neither end of the spectrum seems to be hiring.

As for the job hopping issue, Ive had that one come up as well. My first job out of school lasted nine months and then everyone involved on the project was thanked for their hard work and shown the door out. My next (and current) job has been going fairly well for almost a year and a half but now the company is doing poorly and I need a paycheck. Is leaving to put food on the table jumping ship?

I think that there are a lot more things that need to be looked at. It is hard to screen people but there really must be a better way.[/quote]

As long as you stay at a job for a year. It shows that you at least tried to make it work.

15

What HR department? We are a 50-person mfg and the closest we have is an HR consultant that comes in once a month to listen to the griping from the non-salaried staff.

I’m not HR, so I didn’t think about a blanket reject. My discredit. So, that will happen today, about 2 weeks after the original posting and near the date that the postings will be closed by the e-boards. However, that will only happen by email.

:)ensen.

16

I figure the best thing you can do is at least acknowledge people even if its to tell them no. Ive found this works equally well with panhandlers and designers.

My boss doesn’t like to call anyone and it makes people crazy. Since he does all of his work via mobile phone there was one applicant who couldn’t get his phone number and then started calling me because I was the only design department person listed on the website. It drove me crazy. “did you get my portfolio”, “how about now”, “how about now”… it went on like that for weeks. I told the guy I had no knowledge of the hiring practices at the company and that my boss was out on a business trip. The calls finally stopped, by the desperation in his voice on the phone I figured he either gave up or drive off a cliff.

For that reason I always try to acknowledge the people in some small way. These days you never know who will come wandering into the office with a 12 gauge looking for the design department.

17

Oh Jeez, there go my chances for gainful employment of any kind, huh? Are there really places like that? I’d be very curious to know who they were, since I’m out now, looking for work.

18

I run into it all the time. I’m 5’11", blonde with blue eyes and have lived in the US more than in the country I was born (I have dual citizenship), but you wouldn’t know it from looking at my name.

Makes me sick to tell you the truth.

19

CG:

Not in HR, but from my previous experience, where my job was to rapidly filter a very large number of applications :

  1. First pass look through do a very rough sort into three piles based on portfolio/resume (or whatever key things you’re looking for) a) Star b) Obvious reject and c) middle of the road, spotty portfolio with some excellent pieces or some other reason why they aren’t obviously a star or reject

  2. Then go through the stars and order them based on resumes matching your requirements - this will form your first round choices in order of priority

  3. Then go through each of them carefully and put them in order of preference - usually these are about 15 to 20% of the total applicants. And they are very easy to spot.

  4. The “Grey area” pile will form your second round candidates or maybes.

Lastly, if you need any help, email me

20

Maybe prejudice still plays in a lot of places, but I try hard to minimize it in my own practices. It probably helps that I am obviously brown, but, stuff shows up… just a human thing. That said, I have to say that I’ve experienced very little of it in my life, a testament to the city in which I live.

I can’t imagine not having the variety that I got in my hiring. To wit, the final six were euro M, southeast asian F, 2 X asian M, euro F, asian F. Pretty wide range. My first choice was the euro F, but as a grad she didn’t qualify for the gov program. The number two was the southeast asian, but she was holding out for another (better?) job, so I hired one of the asian M, who is working out nicely.

:)ensen.