Automated Job Responses?

[George Parr]

I have just had this reply from an agency:

Many thanks for your CV.
Owing to the large number of 'automatic response applications' we receive we regret that we are no longer able to speak with every applicant about every role.

If we are not in touch within 48hours then it is likely that you have not made our initial short-list. In which case you CV and details will be added to our core system and we will be in touch about other opportunities.

If you feel you are a particularly strong match for this position, but you have not been contacted then please do not hesitate to give me a call ...


Does this mean that they are too lazy to actually read any CVs they have been forwarded and are relying on follow up calls or has someone written an app to automatically reply to jobs advertised with certain keywords I wonder?

[Mich the Tester]

Does this mean that they are too lazy to actually read any CVs ...?

Yes. They probably won't understand them anyway.

[alreadypacked]

I have just had this reply from an agency:

Does this mean that they are too lazy to actually read any CVs they have been forwarded and are relying on follow up calls or has someone written an app to automatically reply to jobs advertised with certain keywords I wonder?

They never read the CV, they rely on a CV search tool to match key words from the job in all CV's. The last line is for you to ring if the search tool has missed you.

HTH

[RichardCranium]

Plenty of agencies have these messages being sent out my email autoresponders. It means:

"You CV has actually got to us, so Jobserve is probably working properly today and actually forwarding the applications. A some random point in time we will skim the first few CVs in whatever order the mailbox is sorted; it may be by date, reverse date or size. As we find a CV that is sort of suitable, we will call that person and check them out. Once we have made contact with 3 people we can put forward, all the other applications will be ignored and never read."

This bit is important: "If you feel you are a particularly strong match for this position please do not hesitate to give me a call". If you are a 100% match and make that call BEFORE they find the 3rd CV, you're in with a chance.

[Paddy]

I have just had this reply from an agency:

Many thanks for your CV.
Owing to the large number of 'automatic response applications' we receive we regret that we are no longer able to speak with every applicant about every role.

If we are not in touch within 48hours then it is likely that you have not made our initial short-list. In which case you CV and details will be added to our core system and we will be in touch about other opportunities.

If you feel you are a particularly strong match for this position, but you have not been contacted then please do not hesitate to give me a call ...


Does this mean that they are too lazy to actually read any CVs they have been forwarded and are relying on follow up calls or has someone written an app to automatically reply to jobs advertised with certain keywords I wonder?

Highly unlikely that they read the CV. The CVs are scanned and word counts done. If you mention C# one hundred times and match their criteria; you might get to the top of the list.

[EternalOptimist]

I built a system that did all this for an agency, it searched the database, plus all attached docs , including CV's.

Every morning they had a planning meeting where they took a bunch of CV's in and tried to match them, which was very impressive. The problem was this - they started with the high value permie posts then worked downwards.
At the end of the hour, they were left with a pile that were matched by number of hits.

[Mich the Tester]

I built a system that did all this for an agency, it searched the database, plus all attached docs , including CV's.

Every morning they had a planning meeting where they took a bunch of CV's in and tried to match them, which was very impressive. The problem was this - they started with the high value permie posts then worked downwards.
At the end of the hour, they were left with a pile that were matched by number of hits.

They could have spent the time they were in the planning meeting on reading CVs.

[EternalOptimist]

They could have spent the time they were in the planning meeting on reading CVs.

Thats exactly what they did. Starting with the most lucrative post, they filtered the CV's and gave them a thorough going over