I'm a director of human resources for a midsize company, and I'd love to hear you wax eloquent on the uselessness of mass resume mailing. I've received 30 almost identical resumes from different applicants who obviously used the same resume development and mailing service—a service that claims that mass-mailing your resume to anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 or more CEOs and presidents is more effective and lucrative than good old-fashioned networking.

This company's claim (I visited the Web site) is that networking gets you a lower salary than you had in your last job, while their tree-killing method doubles your salary or more. (A falsehood, I say! My experience has been very lucrative with networking, and I have used your good coaching in the past.)

The sad part is how much of our company information and contacts this service got wrong, making their clients appear less credible than the average unsolicited resume submission. It was so bad that I actually called the service, told them of their error, and asked them to cease and desist. Nick, how can these people sleep at night?

They sleep with wads of $100 bills in their pillows, my friend. There's a sucker born every minute. What gets me is that the higher up the exec ranks you go, the more sweaty palms you find at job search time. Otherwise smart execs turn into nervous Nellies, convinced that the more they spend on career help, the smarter they must be.

I melt when I hear HR managers like you expose these career rackets for what they are.

Come on, folks—do you really think some mailing service is going to research employers more effectively than you can? Do you think they can really select the right employers and jobs for you? Do you really want your resume to be one of those 30 almost identical resumes this reader refers to?

I've told this story many times. A guy wrote me a while back, saying he had paid one of these services $5,000 to mail out 3,000 copies of his resume. He got zero responses. But why should he expect any? As this HR manager points out, employers treat such resumes as junk mail. The aforementioned guy closed by saying he couldn't figure out where he was going to get the $2,800 it was going to cost to hire a career counselor...

Thanks for revealing what happens to all those cookie-cutter resumes once they're received in the HR office. I'm glad to have another insider confirm what I've been saying on Ask The Headhunter.

Job hunters: Take heed.

Best to you,

Nick Corcodilos

Ask The Headhunter®