From: ted@sage0.gsfc.nasa.gov (Ted Ying)
Subject: Re: Pet Peeve "No E-mail" Was (Re: Software Engineers - Applications Programming (MA/AZ) CIS (Recruiter))
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 19:43:58 GMT

salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
> I wrote:
>>	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?
>

I never once said that the person receiving the resumes and job
applications was the person hiring.  Nor did I state that the person
receiving the resumes and letters was evaluating the applicants.
That was not said either implicitly or explicitly.

However, sometimes it is the role of a clerical staff member to collect
the resumes and letters, take them out of envelopes and place them in
stacks, perhaps xerox extra copies if several people (technical and
management) might be reviewing the candidates.  This person may or may
not be knowledgeable about using e-mail or Usenet.  This person is only
responsible for a little bit of organization.  This means that the
management and technical staff spend less time doing this clerical and
paper work and more time doing the "real" work.

Try having a little bit of respect for these people.  The clerical
people are busy enough with the tasks that they already do.  They answer
phones, do paperwork, filing, scheduling, and many other important tasks.
And for most of their work they don't need or want net access or e-mail
access and yet, you are belittling the process by the arrogance and
misassumptions shown earlier in this thread.

>	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.?
>

There was never any implication made that a workplace cannot handle e-mail
if resumes are requested by Fax or Snail.  Such an assumption is totally
unwarranted.

If you choose to make these assumptions than perhaps you aren't the
candidate that is sought after.  I think it speaks well of a larger
company that doesn't require the technical and management staff do
the tedious clerical work (and get paid high salaries to do it)
inherent in candidate searches, especially when there is a large
pool of applicants.

>	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.
>
Again, this is based on the assumption that the person collecting the
resumes and doing the clerical work behind it is the hiring manager or
a technical reviewer.  Neither of these is always the case.

For us, we have clerical staff to assist us in doing the clerical duties
and allowing the technical and management staff the leisure of spending
as little time as possible for the hiring procedure (who has time these
days to make such a tedious and long procedure even longer?)

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