HR not responding to resumes?

Don't take it personally for those who have been out of work a while and your job search is going nowhere but to silent rejections. Employees no longer respond to resumes as we can see since most human resource departments have changed. Even a simple "no thank you" is a thing of the past.

Most HR departments are incredibly busy

HR people who don't respond aren't unsympathetic to your situation, they’re just overwhelmed with theirs, as stated in a poll done by the Human Resource Management. These past few years, HR departments have been downsizing and enduring layoffs of their own. According to SHRM, since 2007 the typical HR department has decreased from 13 to 9.2 employees. This means the average workload for any HR worker has amplified by nearly 30 percent from the days when a written response to resumes was expected.

Those who work for HR know what it's like

HR workers understand what unemployed job-hunters are going through right now. In a different survey, SHRM found that of the HR professionals who were out of work in 2009, 85 percent of job losses resulted from layoffs, 47 percent of workers looked for work for six to 12 months, and 27 percent had been looking for more than a year. Among the HR workers who found positions in 2009, 49 percent said they liked their new jobs less than their old ones. Add pay cuts to the mix, and chances are good that HR personnel are better candidates for pay day loans than ever before.

HR department has become a 'black hole' for resumes.

It is easy to say many HR personnel are overworked considering the high level of job dissatisfaction. Businesses are flooded with resumes and applications considering there are more than 14 million unemployed people searching for jobs. HR employees are hard pressed to give individual consideration to your resume which is buried in a pile someplace regardless how carefully it is crafted and whether or not the company solicited it. The same thing could be said for interview follow-ups. Many candidates get to the interview stage, think everything went well, but never hear from the company again. It's not personal although it may be discouraging and inexcusable.

Getting past the HR department

With record high unemployment rates here and maybe in the future, with job hunting there is nothing wrong with knocking on the door. It can be good to do research and try the back door. Check web sites or call the company to get names and contact information of the department head and hiring manager for the job you're inquiring about. Then, whether or not you send your resumé to the HR department, send it straight to those people.

Your resume is a checklist for HR purposes

HR personnel sort through hundreds of applications and compare candidate qualifications to a checklist of job requirements. If all the boxes aren't checked in about 10 seconds, your resume vanishes forever. Doubtless, department heads and hiring managers are busy people, too, but they aren't looking at stacks of resumés each day, and they might see things in your application that an HR person does not. Many times, what company executives really hope to find cannot be expressed in a list of job requirements.

Make sure your resume gets to the right hands

Have patience when waiting a few days after sending your resume.

Be brave: Pick up the phone and call the people you sent your resumé to.

Be confident when asking to schedule a meeting.

Don't you need a job? You aren't even able to obtain low interest loans without one. Give your job experience and qualifications the recognition they need by getting your resume to the right hands.