Lighthouse PR, a tech PR firm in the UK, recently issued a press release (Cut and Paste Job Hunters Discarded as Spam) summarizing the results of their three-month recruitment drive, which ran from January to March 2007. Of the 245 applications they received and analyzed, Lighthouse found:
- More than 75 percent of applications contained mistakes, such as grammatical and formatting errors as well as cover letters addressed to competitive firms
- Less than a third of applicants included a cover letter
- Approximately 50 percent of the applicants submitted multiple applications (the biggest offender submitted his/her resume 9 times for the same position)
The most bizarre applications included soft porn photos and underwear (yuck).
The release ends with a Top Ten list of application faux-pas which, not surprisingly, include supplying photos (of any kind!), using fluff language and publicizing off-beat interests and pastimes.
I could rant for days about the bizarre applications I have received and even more bizarre humans I have interviewed over the years (note: to the woman who changed her clothes in front of me before the start of our interview, I am talking about you!), but I will take a deep breath and refrain.
What interested me most about the news supplied by Lighthouse was how the company used its hiring experience – painful as it was – and internal data for their own PR purposes. (A number of marketing and recruitment mags have written about Lighthouse’s findings). Oftentimes, we as PR practitioners, as well as our clients, look to the outside world for key data to affirm our positioning and to help us generate media coverage; as evidenced by Lighthouse, though, tapping into the resources we already have on hand and leveraging the personal experiences of our everyday lives can generate the most interesting stats and anecdotes – and, of course, a little PR.
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