From: salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem)
Subject: Re: Pet Peeve "No E-mail" Was (Re: Software Engineers - Applications Programming (MA/AZ) CIS (Recruiter))
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: 23 Jul 92 04:29:14 GMT

ted@sage0.gsfc.nasa.gov (Ted Ying) writes:

>lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:

>>In article <BrJJ11.4K5@world.std.com> cisml@world.std.com (Marty Lebowitz) writes:
>>>	Fax or mail resume (please, no email) referencing job#, to:

>>Why do you insist that I wait until a place with a fax machine opens, walk
>>15 minutes and pay $3 to fax you my resume, or send it via snail mail?
>>Do you honestly find e-mail that hard to use? If so how in the world
>>did you learn to post to news?

>	Because in many of these cases, the person posting is not the
>	person receiving the responses.  I have posted several positions
>	before for bosses and personnel people.  In none of these cases,
>	was I the person receiving the resumes.  In one such case, the
>	person receiving the resumes did not have electronic mail access!


	And maybe that person doesn't understand the job description well
enough to make an informed assessment of the candidate. People who post
here are pretty technical, programmers, system administrators and the
like, Do you think that they would want to report to someone who doesn't
have e-mail access, or be considered by someone who has as little
technical experience?

>	Hence, the request was made that responses were made via snail
>	mail or fax to the person receiving messages.  If the attitude
>	is that I'm inconveniencing someone by not allowing them to e-mail
>	me a responses, then perhaps it isn't even worthwhile to post a
>	job posting on the net.  Do you honestly find USnail Mail so
>	difficult to use that you can't put a resume in an envelope and
>	mail it to someone at my office?  Is it that inconvenient for you
>	when you pay your bills?  If so, how do you pay your bills?

	Paying bills needs the latancy of snail :-)

	At issue was the outright refusal to read e-mail. I would have
serious reservations about working for a place that can't handle e-mail.
It speaks to the technical backwardness of the organization. If the
people in command do not use the technology than how can you expect
there to be a good climate for capital acquisitions of technical
equipment, workstations, networks, disks, tape drives, etc.?

>	I'm a competent Unix system administrator.  The people who receive
>	resumes here may not be.  For consideration of those people and
>	to help keep from overburdening already overburdened system people
>	please read the text of the message and please try to be considerate
>	enough to adhere to the restrictions in the posting.


	Maybe the ability to read e-mail is a mark of minimal computer
literacy and this must be expected in an organization that hires the
likes of you and me. 

	For the technical positions I apply for I find that HR types
are minimally competant to understand the hiring issues. Like alot of
outside recruiters they rely on buzzwords and have little in-depth
knowledge of the position. If the hiring manager is also not computer
literate, then maybe the workplace is not the best environment for a
technical guy, getting in the door past know-nothing HR people and
dealing with ignorant or unsympathetic bosses. It is almost preventative
medicine to expect a prospective employer to be able to deal minally
with the same technology and use e-mail.

>	Ted Ying			ted@rosserv.gsfc.nasa.gov
>	Hughes/STX			Goddard Space Flight Center

Bruce Salem