Another cloud has appeared in the online
recruitment horizon: legitimate resumes sent by
e-mail are being junked by company spam filters.
The Internet was expected to speed upand changethe
job search process for both job seekers and recruiters.
Instead of using paper and a stamp to respond to
job ads, job seekers could now e-mail their resumes
directly to a company or scan job ads online and
apply through an online job board. Companies are
relying more on keywords to help manage the stacks
of resumes they receive.
Accordingly, job seekers were coached to rewrite
their resumes using keywords and phrases to increase
the odds that their resumes would be noticed. But
most job seekers and recruiters don't often think
about what can trigger a spam filter:
- Accomplishments that indicate a direct dollar
impact on a company's bottom line.
- Popular prescription drugs that are also the
subject of spam messages.
- Innocuous words and phrases taken out of context,
such as "trial," "education," or "degree".
- E-mail addresses that contain many numbers to
the left side of the @ sign, such as [email protected],
which look like it might contain the tracking code
that spammers use.
- Job seekers who use "resume-blasting" services
to send out hundreds of resumes at a time.
- Many recruiters ask for a resume formatted in
MS Word sent as an attachment because they're
easier to read than plain text. However, some
spam filters automatically block messages with
attached files from unknown addresses, according
to Susan Joyce of Job-Hunt.org.
There is no question that spam continues to spiral
out of control, despite recent legislation and technologies
designed to stem the flow. In its second annual
independent study of the cost of spam Nucleus
Research, a global research and technology advisory
firm, found that the average cost of spam per year
per employee more than doubled from 2003 to $1,934.
In the study, which was based on interviews with
Fortune 500 companies, Nucleus also found:
- The average employee receives nearly 7,500 spam
messages per year, up from 3,500 in 2003.
- Average lost productivity per year per employee
is 3.1%, up from 1.4% in 2003.
- Companies using spam filters report that on
average they are able to filter only 20% of the
incoming spam, down from 26% in 2003.
As first reported in April in the Wall Street
Journal, while companies have tightened their
e-mail filters in an effort to block spam and computer
viruses from getting through, the unintended consequence
has been to also stop legitimate e-mail, including
resumes, from getting through.
According to Mark Mehler of Careerxroads,
a recruiting-technology consulting firm, people
count on their e-mailed resumes reaching the intended
reader. Now, he says, spam gatekeepers stop suspicious
e-mail at the front door-including resumes.
There are no data to quantify the problem because
job seekers aren't usually notified when their resumes
have been junked by a spam filter. It would be fair
to say, however, that the probability of e-mailed
resumes being caught in spam filters is likely higher
than we think. Spam filters work by scanning message
headers for valid e-mail addresses; message content
for specific words that are common to spam; and
the source of the message, that is, does it come
from an Internet service provider (ISP) known to
be used by spammers. Most filters rely on a wide
range of tests, not just one, to determine if an
e-mail is spam.
The Journal story featured job seekers like
Tim Bishop, a software engineer and product developer
whose his experience went something like this: Bishop
sent out a cover letter and resume, only to see
it appear in his own spam filter half an hour later.
As Bishop wrote in his web
blog, "Apparently words like Standards, Marketing,
System, Proven, Global, Experience, President, Technologies,
Product, Project, Manager, Director, Startups, and
Software, which appear in my resume, are also common
in the spam I receive. To some degree this makes
sense -- resumes and cover letters, like spam, are
a form of self-promotion."
Bishop adds, "Email has evolved in a very short
period of time (~10 years) to become a critical
means of business communication...However, the measures
being used to combat the rising flood of spam are
now threatening email, because they make email unreliable.
It used to be that when you sent email, it either
got to its destination, or it bounced. Now there
is a significant possibility that an email will
simply disappear into the black hole of spam filters,
with no notification to sender or intended recipient."
Since spam filters are computer programs, it's
not surprising that legitimately e-mailed resumes
are coming up as "false positives" and tagged as
spam. Here are a few tips to reduce the likelihood
that some resumes because will be blocked as spam:
- Check your spam folder every dayand revise the
rules on your e-mail program to increase its effectiveness.
- Ask applicants to use a very traditional subject
line, such as the job title the company has used
when posting the ad.
- Enlist your Information Technology department
to help by checking messages caught in the filter
and forwarding them to you.
- Similarly, help your IT folks by providing them
with feedback on acceptable terms to bypass the
filter.
- If your company does not have a Web-based portal
for candidates to apply for job openings, this is
a good opportunity to do so. This way, e-mail and
spam filters are eliminated from the resume submission
equation because the resume is entered directly
into a database.
At press time, the Wall Street Journal
is reporting that Internet heavyweights including
Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., Time Warner Inc.'s America
Online unit and Earthlink Inc. are "working together
to develop standard technologies for authenticating
e-mail senders, which the companies say will make
it easier for mail recipients to beat back spam, scams,
and viruses." (June 9, 2004)
Corinne Marasco is editor of ChemHR and an
associate editor at Chemical & Engineering News
specializing in human resource and workplace management
topics.