CareerXroads Annual Mystery Job Seeker Report

Kendall Park, NJ, May 19, 2011 – For ten years CareerXroads has taken on the role of a mystery job seeker and applied to actual positions at the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For. Each year principals, Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin create a new fictional job seeker, make sure his or her resume includes current in-demand skills and also include a few tongue-in-cheek features to keep things interesting:

• In 2008, Jim Knee Cricket worked in puppet shows for Mastro Geppetto.
• The following year, Bill Beau Baggins worked for Lord of the Rings Inc.
• And this year Chris Kringle conducted sensitive national security investigations in cybercrime in regards to stolen items from under Christmas trees.

The purpose of this somewhat fun assignment? To analyze how job seekers are treated in the application process. So what did jolly Chris Kringle teach us this year?

• Even with the obvious fictional elements – and a mystery job seeker disclaimer at the end of the resume – these resumes find their way through automated screening to the recruiter’s desk year after year. In fact, this year we received six phone calls requesting an interview.
• At one company our mystery job seeker made it all the way to the hiring manager’s desk before anyone noticed it was not a real candidate.

Conclusion: Job seekers must have the right keywords in the first half of their resume to attract attention.

• 78 out of 100 companies did not acknowledge Chris Kringle’s application with any sort of follow up. With that said, the 22 companies who did tell Chris that someone else was hired for the position is our highest ever such response.

Conclusion: Companies are slowly getting better at follow up with job candidates but still have a long way to go.

About CareerXroads

Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler, co-founders of CareerXroads®, work with corporations to better understand and adopt cutting-edge, recruiting technology solutions for their staffing strategy and process. They are also the personalities behind the CareerXroads Colloquium – a group that brings together recruiting professionals who share a passion for critical analysis and sharing what really works (and what really doesn’t) in recruiting. Learn more at www.careerxroads.com CareerXroads is your Staffing Strategy Connection. # # #

For more information, contact Mark or Gerry for an interview.

Mark Mehler & Gerry Crispin
CareerXroads
email: mmc@careerxroads.com
phone: 732-821-6652
CareerXroads: The Staffing Strategy Connection: http://www.careerxroads.com