<p>Friend’s media/marketing company is looking for interns. Friend knows D doesn’t have a summer job yet, so lets me know this and passes along contact info. for HR person. D researches the company online, and in the absence of any posted employment ads or specific intern job descriptions, sends a cover letter and resume geared toward marketing. In the e-mail she mentioned, as directed, that it was Friend who had told her there were available internships. I read this cover letter, and can attest to the fact that she specifically stated she was looking for a “marketing internship.” She discussed her skills and experience related to marketing.</p>
<p>The HR contact responds immediately, asking D what department she’d be interested in working for, lists 5 departments as examples," and that they’d set her up with an interview." Of the departments listed, none are marketing or anything related like sales or advertising. They included several for which she had zero qualifications, like logistics. So, she replied that she thinks her experience would be best suited for finance or e-commerce–the first two the lady listed.</p>
<p>Friend tells me today, with some annoyance, that they aren’t going to hire her “because she only wants finance.” Friend implied that she had wanted to help but D screwed up by not presenting herself as flexible. Confused, I told friend what I knew of what D had sent, and that she had actually specified marketing at first and then gave another option besides finance later when questioned. Annoyed, she told me it doesn’t matter what D said, but rather what they “heard” and that clearly D somehow gave that impression and maybe that’s why D hasn’t found a job anywhere yet. Oooooh. So I sent Friend both communications D had sent to HR and asked if she could help us figure out where we went wrong, since we had no idea. She just repeated that it’s not about what D said, but about what they heard.</p>
<p>So I wondered if maybe D’s resume “said” finance. Well, one bank who interviewed her thought it didn’t say enough finance, so… But she’s only a college soph., thus it doesn’t say anything that strongly yet. D will contact HR person and reiterate her interest in ANY job at the company.</p>
<p>Any ideas what could have gone wrong? I’m thinking this is not something we’re going to figure out, but at the same time Friend’s words stung and I don’t want D to keep making a mistake, if she is making one.</p>
<p>Yeesh! I guess the correct response is, “You tell me where the openings are because I am as bendable as a soft pretzel.”</p>
<p>D has been trading emails with a woman about an internship for the summer. She sent out a “haven’t heard from you, just checking” email and got back a response that said “we took you out of the running because you can’t work on Sundays.” (D had put in the application that she can work on the weekends but preferred not to work on Sundays.)</p>
<p>She emailed right back and said, “Wait, I’ll be happy to work on Sundays!” We’ll see if it is too little, too late.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that your friend didn’t give your D a little heads up on how to discuss the issue with HR. Sounds like it might have helped in this case.</p>
<p>Lesson learned by her–portray yourself as EXTREMELY flexible at the beginning. Obviously places have enough people applying that any little perceived inflexibility gets your application put in the “too much bother” pile.</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s really tough to know how to play it. At some companies or for some interviewers, not being specific about your career goals and employment interests makes you sound weak and undirected. I think it was MOWC who posted on my other job thread that she sees kids being too vague answering interview questions. They give generalities like “I want to work in business.” At the career workshops D has attended, they’ve stressed being specific about what you want, and of course tailor your cover letter and resume to each job. Sigh.</p>
<p>I had some of those kinds of issues when I was interviewing for entry level positions after I graduated. There is a sort of dance you have to do between showing you’re, as ellemenope put it, as bendable as a soft pretzel-- without seeming too flexible because then they think you lack focus. If everything D said/sent sounds okay to you and she doesn’t get other feedback like this, I wouldn’t worry too much… some people are just cranky. Maybe she could use some interview practice with you or someone at the career office at school to see if there are genuinely any issues in her presentation.</p>
<p>oooh, that’s crummy GFG. Sounds like they were playing with her. In today’s employment environment, companies hold all the cards and many just aren’t ready to commit. Your friend may even have gotten something ($) for mentioning your DD, but it also sounds like the company wasn’t quite ready to describe what they were looking for.</p>
<p>I must say though, if she’s interested in getting an internship in marketing or sales, she might want to stay away from offering she’d take a finance internship. Those are just very different, even though they’re not.</p>
<p>limabeans: Actually, she wanted a finance/banking internship but hadn’t gotten anything. So this friend says to me “I know your D wants to work in finance, but I see her as a creative person. If she’d consider something in marketing, my company is hiring.” To that I said, “D thinks she wants finance, but I believe she’d actually be much happier in marketing. And right now she really just needs a job.” And that is how this started. </p>
<p>And ellemenope, I am a little worried about the friendship. I wondered if my friend was perhaps embarrassed that she had offered to help, but couldn’t deliver and is saving face by implying D is the problem. But she never promised she could get her a job, just gave me the insider information that they were hiring. Funny, if she had said D wasn’t qualified, or they had found better prepared candidates, that would have been completely logical and understandable. D doesn’t have great experience yet. But this weird reason made me feel sick inside, like there’s something about D’s application that she and I are blind to but everyone else sees.</p>
<p>TheGFG: You are too savvy and sophisticated for that to be the issue. Sometimes things are as stupid as they appear. I think you should let this go.</p>
<p>It really sounds like a no-win situation for your D. And it sounds like your ‘friend’ is not acting like a real friend right now. </p>
<p>When these things have happened to me, I always end up being glad that I don’t have to work for that company! And it’s not sour grapes: I just find that employers that want to run you through hoops, play games, etc, are not really places that I would be comfortable working. It says a lot about their environment.</p>
<p>Some people are jerks. You may have just added a couple to the list. I’d apologize to the friend and try to quickly get beyond it and abandon the forensic analysis. Leave bad enough alone, and keep moving.</p>
<p>First, you have to remember that virtually everyone is doing the work of two or three people these days – including those in HR. I really doubt whoever parsed your D’s credentials was lazy or irresponsibly, probably just very harried. </p>
<p>Second, unless your D knows precisely what functional area a particular opportunity has arisen, it is best, imo, to keep her requirements broad. Many people get their foot in the door in fields completely different from their training. Also, it’s really not a good idea to appear too rigid. Perhaps her cover letter should re-cast her background and objective more in terms of her versatility, track record of rapid learning, desire for new challenges that will expand her perspective.</p>
<p>I think what may have happened is your friend had an “In” to the marketing internships, but knew your daughter wasn’t qualified for their finance internships for whatever reason.</p>
<p>The HR person read the cover letter, and the resume, and was thinking, hmm, the cover letter talks about marketing, but the resume seems to show her educational interests are more in line with other areas of the company. They wonder if she really wants marketing, or just heard there was an opening there. So he or she does what HR is meant to do, they ask screening questions, including “Do you want to work in X?” Perhaps if your daughter reiterated that her first choice, as mentioned in the cover letter, was marketing then they would forward the resume to marketing. But since she seemed to change midstream, they put her in the reject pile. (Yes, it was a “gotcha” question. That’s what they do.)</p>
<p>Your friend is probably embarrassed that they gave the impression a resume and cover letter were good enough and frustrated there is nothing they can do about getting her past HR. In your case the HR person thought your daughter sounded more interested in finance than the job she originally asked for. (Note: I said the “HR person thought” not “your daughter said”.) Given the number of students looking for internships, in this case that HR person felt that was a deal breaker.</p>
<p>When I was working I would only help friends with job searches if I could bring the resume in without going through HR. If the resume goes into HR, there are a myriad of reasons it never comes back out. Any pull your friend has only comes after the resume makes it to their department. That’s the way it works. Don’t lose a friendship over this.</p>
<p>Evidently it is about what your friend heard that they heard. I hope this isn’t a close friend, I think you should be annoyed with her. You didn’t even ask for her help and now she has turned this into an opportunity to tell you what is wrong with your daughter.</p>
<p>I’ve gotten people interviews before. I get them the interviews, then it is up to them. I’m not on the interview committee, I’m not part of the decision, and the people doing the interviews don’t report back to me. When someone doesn’t get a job I don’t know why they didn’t get it. Maybe I just work for a highly principled company but what happens in an interview is confidential.</p>
<p>If your friend ever brings this up again maybe you should ask her why she knows so much about what happened in the interview. Then ask her why the interview wasn’t confidential. Then ask her why the people at her company think it is OK to interview someone and then talk about what they did wrong to every busybody who wants to know. If your friend ever offers to help you again I hope you will decline.</p>
<p>I know your daughter needs a job and that makes things tough but I agree with the other posters that it is better to not take a position too far afield of where you ultimately want to be.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, she never had an interview. The story was that the HR person told my friend “D only wants finance,” and apparently finance is a no-go, so there wasn’t going to be an interview offered.</p>
<p>UCDAlum82, your theory makes sense. D did the best she could given there were no job descriptions posted and their website had very little information. Apparently HR had sent out an e-mail to staff asking them if they needed summer interns, so that’s how my friend knew they planned to hire some. D’s school only has economics–no finance, business or marketing, so that is what she is majoring in. If they were looking for a marketing major, that could have dinged her.</p>
<p>One wonders if any departments said they needed any, or not. I would guess from what happened that there is some chance that they won’t hire anyone in any department. </p>
<p>PS: expanding on a point made above. If you get an interview, don’t ever assume that the “fix is in” for your candidacy. You are on your own. We had a situation where someone was granted an interview and the candidate actually suggested that the fix was in for his hiring, which instantly eradicated whatever favorable consideration this person might have received.</p>
<p>In a number of large organizations, the initial scan of a resume in HR is done by computer, looking for key words that get transformed into “checks” for certain boxes. The cover letter is not part of this scanning. </p>
<p>It sounds to me as though this might possibly be what happened with the internship application. The scan of the resume yielded the 5 job categories (based on college major and perhaps previous experience), none of which was marketing or sales. So the availability of internships in those areas did not make a difference. </p>
<p>The friend may have heard that TheGFG’s daughter “wanted” only finance, when she only turned up on the finance (and 4 other area) lists. (“Gee, thanks, Mr. Computer!”)</p>
<p>And yes, this is frustrating to the people actually doing the hiring, when people they might like to hire are pre-screened out by a computer program. It becomes quite a skill to tailor the list of position requirements so that those the computer thinks are most qualified actually have some overlap with the people who are genuinely the most qualified for the position.</p>