What Recruiting Has Taught Me

Having made the decision to leave my job at the end of May in favor of what's next in our lives, my boss tasked me with writing my job description and managing the hiring process.

It has been very enlightening.

• You should do what the job description says (what documents they want, where they want you to send it, etc.) It may be clever of you to track down the head of the department (in this case, my boss) but odds are that, even though they make the ultimate hiring decisions, they aren't the one coordinating the details. So it makes you look stupid to send your application to him, instead of the e-mail listed.
• It is very, very easy to make snap judgements on resumes. I had my top candidates ranked after a very brief scan; a lot of this is from poor formatting (huge blocks of text, etc.).
• Say why you'd be good at the job you applied for, specifically, not why you'd make a great employee in general. It's really obnoxious to have to dig.
• The company may already have an idea in mind of what type of person they want to hire, and will rule out others accordingly, even if there's nothing inherently wrong with their application or experience. (I need to remember this when applying for my next job...)
• Don't (PLEASE) track down the person who sent you an e-mail of receipt on LinkedIn and attempt to contact them through a chain of connections. This puts that person (again, the person coordinating the details, not the person responsible for hiring) in an awkward situation.
• E-mails matter. Make yours something that is just your name, simply, not something that involves lots of random letters or numbers. 
• Pictures on resumes = awkward. 
• When it says "do not call" that really means "do not pester". This includes e-mails.

Overall, it's been an interesting experience being on this side of the fence. It turns out that phone interviews are just as nerve-wracking for the interviewer as the interviewee.  Who knew.