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The Dangers of Mass E-mailing Job Applications

Jan 13, 2010 / Job Seeker / Trackback

Guest Post by Heather R. Huhman

When fac­ing a stack of job appli­ca­tions, it can be tempt­ing to craft one résumé and cover let­ter and send them to out to mul­ti­ple recruiters/hiring man­agers to save time. They won’t know the dif­fer­ence, right? Wrong.

Recruiters and hir­ing man­agers can spot a let­ter sent to mul­ti­ple recip­i­ents from a mile away. Gen­er­al­ized sen­tences or lack of a per­son­al­ized greet­ing are dead give­aways that can instantly turn a recruiter/hiring man­ager away from your appli­ca­tion, no mat­ter how qual­i­fied you are for the job. Why should a s/he take inter­est in you when you haven’t even taken the time to show true inter­est in their company?

If you don’t per­son­al­ize each and every résumé and cover let­ter you sub­mit, you run the risk of seeming:

  • Dis­re­spect­ful: Mass mes­sag­ing shows a lack of con­sid­er­a­tion for the recip­i­ent. Not show­ing care and atten­tion now can sug­gest that you might be that way on the job, as well.
  • Unknowl­edge­able: By not even tak­ing the time to research the com­pany you are apply­ing for, it appears you may not be aware of every­thing your desired posi­tion may demand of you.
  • Lazy: This is prob­a­bly one of the worst traits to you can exhibit as a poten­tial new hire. Cus­tomiz­ing your résumé and cover let­ter may be time con­sum­ing, but doing so shows you have a true ded­i­ca­tion to the job.
  • Uno­rig­i­nal: Recruiters and hir­ing man­agers receive count­less résumés and cover let­ters each day. If you don’t use your appli­ca­tion tools to present how unique you are for each posi­tion you apply for, you are miss­ing a huge oppor­tu­nity to show your worth.

Remem­ber, cover let­ters and résumés are your first impres­sion with a recruiter/hiring man­ager. They can make-or-break your chances of advanc­ing in the hir­ing process. Get­ting the job you want takes time, dili­gence and def­i­nitely doesn’t start with the phrase, “To Whom it May Concern.”

Heather R. Huh­man is a career expert and founder & pres­i­dent of Come Rec­om­mended, an exclu­sive online com­mu­nity con­nect­ing the best intern­ship and entry-level job can­di­dates with the best employ­ers. She is also the national entry-level careers colum­nist for Examiner.com and blogs about career advice at HeatherHuhman.com.


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  • @JobCannon I agree that reaching out to your network is a great move, you never know who knows of an opportunity or contact that can help you in your job search. I also think my site just got used for free advertising but I'm not taking down your post because I believe in freedom of speech.

    @Alex Your math skills rock. That's exactly what one needs to do... treat a job search as a full-time job. I prefer a more strategic approach in who I reach out to and I think it should be personalized.... I would pick up the phone.

    @woollylanc Resumés are cool documents that serve as a career snapshot to make someone interested in you. It's like dating. If I don't like your pic I'm not calling to chat with you.
  • Woollylanc
    Great posting! and how true! after all we would not wish to be treated like that personally! Take the view that every letter is your handshake!

    Peter
  • Karla,

    Great post. Boo to the bloke spamming below.

    I was arguing about this with a 'mass mailing consultant' (or whatever they hell we call them) last night actually. He was trying to attract students for $300 upfront and $700 on completion. As far as I am concerned receiving a mass e-mail puts you in the bad bin and makes future applications harder.

    On top, if you don't have a job that's all you should be doing; and not hemorrhaging money either. You work what? 8 hours per day. 2-3 applications per hour is reasonable. That is 24 applications per day; or 120 in a normal work week. Save your money and put in some elbow grease.
  • The headline on your blog post drew my attention because we provide a tool which uses email marketing techniques to aid in a job search.

    I was pleased when I read it to find that we agree with ALL the points made in the post, but I would like to take this opportunity to make the claim that there are ways in which "mass" emailing can be useful during a job search.

    Certainly you should not send a form letter when applying for a position and each and every application should be tailored to the company and position being applied for. That is what you are addressing here.

    However, we have found that broader emails can be useful in reaching out to your network and keeping your friends and contacts informed regarding the progress of your job search and what you're looking for. If you don't let as many people as possible know what you're looking for, you are making limited use of your network.

    Our approach involves reaching out and politely and tactfully asking your friends and contacts if they'd be willing to assist you in your job search. If you have hundreds of people in your network, this initial email should probably not be customized to each and every person. Those who do not wish to assist you need to be honored in their request not to be part of your effort and be removed from your list. If they respond personally to offer assistance, you should send a personal reply back.

    Once you have received people's permission to help them out, you can then send occasional (but not too frequent) emails with information about what you're pursing and where you'd like to get your foot in the door.

    This approach to a job search may be very effective. You can do this using your standard email program or using a tool such as ours at http://JobCannon.Com. We manage the process so that you will not make any errors when people choose to opt-out and we provide templates to use as starting points for your communication.

    If you do use our tool, in the spirit of this blog post, we highly recommend that you customize our templates so that they sound like yourself and not like a mass email.
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