Job search spam

Andy’s post today reminded me of a similar experience I had. I submitted a resume in response to an ad on a nationwide job board. Actually a reputable one at that, but obviously they don’t control everyone who posts jobs there. Within minutes of sending the resume in response I got an email, letting me know that this company was the “resume bank” for the given position and that their “high tech” resume scan software had scanned my resume and I should click the link and verify that they had scanned the resume properly. Only thing was, the link had exactly one field filled in, my email address. There was absolutely no contact information on this form that indicated that they had ever even seen my resume or that I had ever contacted them. It smacked of personal information harvesting. I then proceeded to get 3-4 more emails. These were all the same, from different companies claiming to be handling the resumes for this position, each having no actual identifiable information other than the email address. I use my hotmail address on job boards like these, knowing full well that I’d get a bunch of spam the second I made any other address public. (I get so much to the hotmail address anyway that it makes no difference!) And I never, ever fill out forms for “resume banks”. Frankly, even if a company used one of these services, it’s probably not somewhere I want to work anyway!

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