How Not To Ask For Help
I made the mistake of giving someone I know my work email with the understanding I would forward his resume and a quick call to hr to see if I can set up an interview/check out the situation with a position.
What followed was him pinging me ~20 questions a day about random shit/what hr said/what he should correct on his resume.
I'll give him that the bugger is persistent but he seems under the impression I am going to call every hr person that I know/ he wants to know to get him interviews. That is not going to happen.
As of today all his emails are being filtered into the trash.
Just a FYI if you want to ask for help from someone, feel free, but realize the person on the other side of that call has limited time.
I honestly cannot believe there are kids out there who do this... Hard to believe.
How about instead of trashing the kid's email, not even reading them, and basically ignoring him, you tell him upfront how you feel, so that he can learn what he did wrong and learn to not do it in the future.
Burying your head in the sand will get you nowhere.
this comment is straight up baffling
Why should he care? He has nothing to gain and maybe this kid will gain some social awareness. I've been on both sides of the fence at one point or another so hopefully the eager candidate will learn something and just move on. If not, maybe they doesn't have the soft skills to play this game....
It's a friend of a friend so I dont want him complaining if I say anything too critical. It's not like I haven't spent time on him already, gave him feedback/ called hr/ got him the contact info of hiring managers.
If he doesn't have the balls to make use of that information, why should I help more?
That was a terrible decision...lesson learned.
I think I can understand that guy. I have done similar things before, although not constantly asking for help, I gave a call every 1-2 weeks. It would be an add but not a must for others to help, and I do understand they are busy, but still you gonna feel yourself so stupid waiting quietly while they forget to help you == well, just don't be too cruel.
You're spot on. Even though I'm a student at Cambridge, I need to spend considerable amounts of time to get the kind of assistance that this guy seems to have gotten for free.
If I can ask you something - how easy or difficult is it for you (ie an employee at the firm in question) to get HR to arrange an interview for someone? Also, does your firm run a structured programme for recruiting into whatever position your protegee is trying to get?
I am at a BB so there is definitely a structured hiring process.
As for the interview, it is actually pretty difficult. Since I am only a small monkey working in a big jungle, I can make sure the hiring manager/hr sees the resume (which is more than I could ask for when I was applying for jobs) but if they don't like it, I can't force them to have an interview.
Maybe at the VP level someone would have enough pull to guarantee an interview?
I think you should be honest with him, even if it might come off as too critical. The advice I remembered the most was when people were most critical with me because I internalized that information with emotion and that made it stick. The kid might not appreciate it at the moment, but he'll understand eventually.
The kid was obviously not a reader of WSO.
Absolutely agree. I realized this after networking with a BB ED who was nearly as harsh as Sirtradesalot... The point here is to be both critical (so the kids will stop wasting their time or having unrealistic expectation) and constructive (tell them how they can improve, etc.) If they don't come to appreciate your constructive criticism, they are not tough enough to be in this business anyway.
In fact, I wished more people were honest with me when I went through the process, so I wouldn't repeat the same mistake with multiple people. Think of it as doing the guy a favor.
Thanks for the advice. So I dug up the latest email from the trash to get his number and chew him out and this is what it read. I cant even make this shit up.
Hi,
I'm going to Costa Rica today. I'll be back on the 16th so I might not be able to get in touch with you until then. But when you get a chance can you get in touch with the recruiter for the position I applied to last week. Heres the ID for it. I also changed up my resume a bit so I'm going to attach it here too.
Quantitative Finance Analyst - (Removed)
So when you get a chance can you please get in touch with the recruiter. Thanks.
Frankly I want to drop kick this little snot.
The kid comes across as though he's entitled to your help and you owe him several large favours. Zero tact.
The kid seems like he has no tact or etiquette at all. I'd personally ignore him, but maybe he needs a good waking up and learn things the hard way.
a quant? explains alot
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HR serves as a gatekeeper/screening function. Be nice to them since they can easily trash your resume.
After they hand your resume to the Hiring Manager it is pretty much out of their hands. You will usually get interviewed by a bunch of people, all who will discuss with the manager how your interview went from their point of view.
I've gotten TERRIBLE constructive criticism from senior people before. Just abysmal feedback. I usually ask SEVERAL senior people (dad's friends in the biz, etc) for their opinion and then put that together to form a general consensus.
Anywho, yeah, well, he's an eager beaver.
I usually get a lot of needless patronizing advice as well, but that's to be expected as a woman. That stuff I just tune out.
Yeah, I get countless emails from kids looking at MSF programs. I reply to them all, but some people keep coming back with endless questions that really don't matter. I'll reply as long as I can, but after a point I have to just stop. People need to be courteous, especially when someone is helping you and they barely even know you.
Networking 101.
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