How Not to Get Hired at Groupon: Stalk Us

How Not to Get Hired at Groupon: Stalk Us. This may seem slightly obvious, but excessive social networking with recruiters can sometimes work against your chances of getting hired. We ask that everyone apply via our career site, but there are some additional steps you can take. While we very much appreciate someone doing some extra homework and finding us on a professional site such as LinkedIn, try to keep your search targeted and send your resume to the best person to help you.

Choose one person—preferably a recruiter—and explain your situation. Even though we are busy, we also are here to help you get a job. If your email isn’t sent to the right person, that person will most likely forward it on for you. You can mitigate this by doing your research beforehand. A simple search for “Groupon recruiter” brings up tech recruiters, Editorial recruiters, and corporate recruiters, so if you know what you’d like your focus to be, it’s best to reach out to the appropriate person. If you are not applying specifically to a tech or Editorial position, a corporate recruiter is the best person to help you.Before you apply, please look at our jobs page and let us know what you think is a fit. We need to focus our time and efforts on candidates who are most relevant to the role at hand, so please be able to articulate your interest accordingly. Also, we want you to be doing the job you actually want to do and not just what you think you can get hired for.

We understand it can be hard to wait for a response, but we ask you to not call customer service for the status of your application. If you have applied, you can check on your application via the email we send when you first apply. We are doing our best to let people know the status, and we appreciate your patience. Bombarding the phone lines/email inboxes of customer service keeps customers waiting longer and without customers we won’t have any jobs anyway.

We are on the phone and in interviews constantly throughout the day, so email is the best way to reach us. This may sound like a brush off, but it’s the truth. Calling over and over again may eventually work, but you are much more likely to get a response via email. If we could train our computers to physically pick up the phones, we would, but then we’d have to be concerned with robot domination and prank calls.

Bottom line, the most effective way to get noticed is to do some research and target your communication accordingly. Just as when you are choosing companies to apply to, we want you to vet this out properly. Connecting with us via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and then showing up at our apartments is a bit excessive. We haven’t checked our MySpace account in awhile anyway and we don’t want you to be ignored.

You can view updated job postings by following the Recruiting department on Twitter (@grouponjobs) or visit our job site at http://www.groupon.com/jobs.

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Comment by Dustin Carper on April 14, 2011 at 10:30am: Thanks Luke. I think that companies should try to be as transparent as possible when it comes to speaking with candidates, so I very much appreciate the comment. It's tough sometimes, but everyone needs a job at some point, and LI is basically how I got in to Groupon.

Comment by Tami Brittain on April 14, 2011 at 11:04am: Thanks so much for posting that...

Comment by Frank Zupan on April 14, 2011 at 11:11am: Thanks Dustin. This is a GREAT post!

Comment by Ryan Leary on April 14, 2011 at 11:11am: Dustin - Though I agree with the posting nearly 100%, if a candidate where to see this posting is this how the company would want to be perceived? I know this is not a negative article or not intended to be, but perception is reality and as a candidate I would take this as rant from an arrogant startup.

This is not a knock on you or groupon, as I do agree with the feelings behind the post. Any thoughts on this?

Comment by Dustin Carper on April 14, 2011 at 11:19am: @Tami and Frank-Thanks, this is my first entry and was a lot of fun!

@Ryan-We are going to be featuring this on our site and very much want candidates to read this. I tried to ride a fine line between just being an arrogant jerk and providing actual value, so I totally get what you mean here. I'm not trying to rant , per se, but I think it's important to be transparent with candidates about what works and what doesn't. Maybe I am off the mark a bit here, but I'd rather people know what to expect and not be waiting for us to respond.

I'll be submitted a few more of these in the future, so I'm very interested to see what you think of them as well.

Thanks for the comment, Ryan.

Comment by Nicola Thomson on April 14, 2011 at 11:32am: This is such an interesting topic because there has always been a fine line between marketing yourself and going over the "line" and being a detriment to your own application. It is tough and frustrating for applicants looking for a job in today's electronic environment not to be able to follow up directly by telephone with the recruiter. But this is the way it is, and, as long as the hiring company does follow up with communication as to the outcome of the application in a timely and personalized manner, this is understandable and acceptable.

Comment by Travis@nexusITgroup.com on April 14, 2011 at 11:38am: Dustin - Good article but I tend to have to agree with Ryan on this one.

I understand the frustrations of getting bomb-barded with phone calls but that's the nature of the business. I recommend that Groupon focus their efforts on creating a positive candidate experience, just like how Groupon put a focus on creating a positive customer experience with their product. Groupon may be at the top of candidates lists right now, but someday Groupon will move down that list. What’s most important today is that you work to create a great candidate experience. At some point the tide will change and Groupon will not see near the demand that they are experiencing right now. When you look back and are struggling to find key skill sets that are in demand, did you make people upset or did you create a great experience for them?

www.nexusITgroup.com

Comment by Stephanie McDonald on April 14, 2011 at 11:39am: I'm fine w candidates not knowing which of our recruiters to contact and I can say I ALWAYS forward that contact, no exceptions, to the appropriate recruiter internally. I won't do anything to stand in the way of a hire, or a contact, or even a no thanks.

I challenge every recruiter to be as transparent and customer centric. No HR@ email addresses. Man (or woman) up, use your personal email and interact. It's our job. And it's not that time consuming.

Comment by Nicola Thomson on April 14, 2011 at 11:58am: Megan, I agree with you. My point is that there must be communication of an informational and timely nature, whether it's e-mail, an applicants section within Groupon website or whatever - there are so many useful tools that can satisfy all parties.

Comment by Dustin Carper on April 14, 2011 at 12:10pm: @Morgan: We do have a FB page (facebook.com/grouponjobs), Twitter account, and LI Group to address and serve as a direct link to recruiters and hopefully to form an online talent community. Thanks for the suggestions, obviously we need to get the word out more on those.

@Travis: I absolutely agree with you, and feel as though we do create a good candidate experience for the most part. We are working on making that even better and hopefully down the line (when demand diminishes) people will see that.

These comments are great, everyone! I was an agency recruiter for 4 years before joining the "corporate" side, so I think that the juxtaposition of the two is fascinating. Obviously, we all want to create the best candidate experience, so open conversation like this is fantastic.