Comment by Valentino Martinez on June 20, 2011 at 5:03am

Recruitment advertisement back in the day, with a few exceptions, tended to be impersonal with basic mailing info and never a recruiter’s name for contact purposes.  Why?  Well, for many recruiters, and employers, there was a fear of receiving a deluge of unwanted resumes which were manually handled back then.  Today, some recruiters and employers still operate in this fashion wanting to avoid heavy job applicant traffic for the same reasons.   

The recruitment advertisement, shown above, was a new breed of advertising for its time that not only “branded” us, the employer, but featured a key person (me in this case) to contact directly for IMMEDIATE employment consideration.  Besides making it easy for a job applicant to reach me—I correctly suspected that a good percentage of professionals were too cautious to forward their resume to an impersonal P.O. Box, which was not too much different than a black-hole.  They preferred to discuss a job opportunity with a hiring manager, or company rep, before they presented any personal information, to see if the job and employer sounded like a good fit.

As you can see such recruitment Ads had my name, my photo, and direct mailing address--and later, my phone number for immediate access and consideration.  Few of my peers in the defense industry followed suit—which gave us (me in particular) “first contact” advantages with highly qualified candidates who were looking, or were simply curious, over the competition. 

What enabled Rockwell International-North American Aircraft, in Southern California CA, to attract and hire literally thousands of technical and support staff in the “80s was the fact that we also perfected the On-the-Spot “Contingent” Job Offer in writing (contingent on positive interviews and passing a medical/drug screen and background/security checks to then receive a formal job offer in writing).  Speeding up the job interview and job offer process in this way allowed us to get start dates with candidates long before the competition could even extend a verbal job offer. 

Today, in spite of advanced Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), creative branding and linkage to social media, many employers are still making the connection with job applicants impersonal.  As impersonal as the P.O. Box of the “80s.  The new P.O. Box in the 21^st Century is the company ATS.  Try making contact with a hiring manager or an internal recruitment rep.  If you’re fortunate enough to reach one--they will direct you to “apply online so that you can be considered for employment.”  And when you attempt to apply online via their ATS—you will often discover a maze and experience the frustration of being stymied by a machine that will not let you move forward until you have satisfied each requirement asterisked as “must have” to move forward.  It actually becomes a test of patience and perseverance of sorts to get past the ATS—and forget about it if there is a glitch in their ATS.  And definitely forget about those highly qualified candidates who will never go through that ATS exercise without talking to a human being with some helpful insights about job and company first.      

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