Waiting in Vain

Where is the humanity in our contemporary human resource departments? Because of the 'poor economy,' the state of a job search these days seems to be a 'buyers' market.' I wholeheartedly agree with The Boston Globe's Heather Boushey that as a nation we have accepted our anemic economy as an excuse. America's previous can-do attitude has fallen by the wayside in lieu of a resigned acknowledgement that we can't change anything until it improves. OK, but it's an economy. Part psychological game, part monetary policy, part fiscal responsibility, and directly affected by decisions we as consumers make on a daily basis. Instead of promoting employment and investment like Germany, the low-growth ideals stimulating today's market seem to be leading us down the path that Japan took two decades ago that they are arguably just now beginning to come out of.

The most frustrating part of this situation for me is the carte blanche on manners that HR managers have developed. They don't need to impress anybody they don't want to hire, so they can get away with anything. Most of the time that means they can ignore me completely. Here are some ugly stats from my nine months of searching:

• After submitting an application, only 32% of the companies have sent an email acknowledging receipt of my submission. Each response is a very vague form letter from a donotreply@ address, with a "don't call us, we'll call you if we want to" message. Heart-warming to read, after you have devoted a few hours or days, or in one case two weeks, to perfecting your cover letter and adjusting your words to present yourself in the best light possible, but still provides peace of mind that you at least made it into the system.
• Only 9% of the companies I applied to gave me a personalized response. A couple of phone calls to follow-up on my resume with a few questions, and some emails to me from an actual recruiter.
• Possibly the most upsetting number is the actual resolutions I have been sent: 6%. That's how few of the companies I have tried to get a job with respect candidates enough to tell me I didn't meet their qualifications and they were moving forward in another direction. Phone interview or not, it is rare to actually be officially rejected! Someone told me once that I should be glad for that because I wasn't actually dealing with rejection, but I would seriously prefer to know that I was no longer on their list than leave everything up in the air.

When I had to replace myself before I left for Thunderbird, I received about 120 applications for the position. I personally wrote back to everybody, even the JD who wanted $140K to tell him that he was overqualified to manage the office supplies at a small software shop. It didn't take that much time to thank them for their work and wish them the best...am I the only person to consider how the brand is perceived by potential employees? Not to mention respecting the pursuit of other opportunities each candidate is looking into? But then again, I am just a bi-lingual MBA looking for work in a recession.