Reject letter
Yesterday I emailed a resume and short questionnaire in response to a job posting to do desktop support. The job involved building, upgrading and maintaining PC’s at an office complex. One of the questions on the questionnaire was whether I had a college degree. (Not a CIS degree, just any college degree..) About 5 minutes later I got a response that basically said that because of my lack of a degree they were not going to even look at my resume.
That’s all well and fine, it’s certainly their choice to require a degree, but it made me think. This is a job that I am qualified to do. Really, it’s a job that I already do, or have done throughout my 5 years working where I do now. It’s a job that, other than the college degree, I have experience with everything else they were looking for. But they won’t even look at my resume because I don’t have a college degree.
I dropped out of college 15 years ago. (A mistake I admit, but I was young and stupid..) I was an Accounting major. What they are telling me, is that 15 years ago, if I had gone ahead and finished my Accounting degree, I would somehow magically be qualified to do this job. Spending two more years studying things that are completely irrelevant to this job would somehow make me more qualified to do this job? How completely short-sighted!
Remember, nowhere in their posting did they require a CIS degree, just ANY degree. Someone with a degree in Botany, for example, with a little real world experience, is more qualified to do this job, according to their HR people. But, even if they had required a CIS degree, I took some CIS courses 15 years ago (PASCAL anyone??), the stuff I learned then is about as irrelevant to today’s PCs as botany would be. But, if I had a CIS degree in the late 80’s, I would be qualified to work on 2003 PC’s more than someone who is working on 2003 PCs who doesn’t have a degree, according to them.
In the end, no loss. I wouldn’t want to work for such a short-sighted and rigid company anyway.
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