Hiring Designers

I found a discussion at core77 about how design companies hire. The comments don't apply just for design but general hiring practices. Someone I used to work with had a sister who recuirted for the Bank of Montreal and told me that they get about 700 unsolicitied resumes each day. In order to elimante the pile they desparately look for any reason not to consider you to put your resume in the "NO" pile. The best candidates are probably missed because of some idiot reason. My point they are not actively looking for the best they are just looking for a reason not to consider you. The comments in blue below are from the core77 discussions and found the reply to the top post made really good points and decide to post it here:

My design director is too busy to look at all the resumes/samples submitted since we posted an ad out 2 weeks ago. On any given day we would get about 30 applicants in our inbox. My job is to pick out only the ones worth looking at. I'd say out of 30 I'd keep 1 or 2. Those applicants that respond to an ad with 'To Whom it May Cocern' immediately gets delete- regardless of talent. And obviously those with no cover letter emails will be deleted as well.

I look for 2 things:

1. that they address me by my name (not HR, or Sir/Madame)
2. they have talent (good sketching)

If they succeed in these two things, I'll take a look at their resume. If their work history has too many holes in them, or seems like they like to jump from company to company, then I continue no further with their application. If they succeed in the resume part, then I put it in the 'in' folder for the boss to take look at.

Reply:
Pathetically shortsighted and simplistic (but common) hiring practice, throwing out talented applications for lack of "proper" business etiquette written decades ago. I hired some extremely smart, original and fun-to-be-with individuals who did send samples with no cover letters (or didn't refer to me by name), but were actually brilliant where it counted - solving design problems. To not even meet someone because they didn't respect a specific application format smacks of stiff corporate elitism and the worst form of narrow-mindedness prevalent in today's conservative job market. The best creatives do not have conformist minds, but I guess you want an employee-of-the-month type of worker before a designer.

And who are you to decide about anyone's work history having to many or too big a "hole" in it? What universal law is there that proves someone's past employment history is an absolute guarantee of how they will perform for you? Over the years, our engineering department hired a few poster boys resume-wise who all turned out to be total duds at work, no personal initiative, no value added to the company whatsoever. Perfect resume, bland at the interview at utterly useless in real life.

I wonder how many excellent designers with poorer secretarial skills or patience have a hard time finding work because of conceited individuals like you functioning like government employees blindly following some stupid hiring rules instead of seeking out authentic thinking, of which there's precious little to go around anyway.

You're probably the kind of place that also weeds out potential candidates based on foreign-sounding names, an accent on the phone or creative grammar on a resume.

Where I work we don't hire linguists, typists or receptionists in the design and engineering department. And I suggest designers looking to avoid prejudiced employers where form is valued above content present themselves, professionally yes, but unafraid to stand out and be themselves.

Corporate dogmas of political rectitude telling us all how to behave and how to live and how to fart, have gone far enough and given us the spineless photocopied platitudes they call design from coast to coast. Glad someone brought up this topic again.