Started Hiring and amazed at some of the responses

JasonFox said:
It's only going to get worse. I write ads for a living. Spent most of my career in agencies, but have been freelancing for almost two years now. Since our twins arrived six months ago, I've been looking at getting a so-called real job again. On several occasions, agency people have looked at my portfolio and said, "Wow, a writer who actually writes." Amazing. Although having been in the position myself to hire junior writers, I really shouldn't be that amazed.

Anyway, when writers can't even write, what hope is there for the rest of the world?
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Wait! As a writer I am supposed to be able to write? What the hell? Does that mean as an actor I also am supposed to be able to act? Come on!

:grin:
 
In almost all cases when I see type and english like that, I've learned the person responding is not an English speaker.

Give them the benefit of the doubt and ask for more info.
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
Just one question: Are you looking to hire an artist (creature builder) or a writer? The only thing that should really matter to you in this case is the quality of his creature work, I would think. Many a great artist has been illiterate.

Just my 2 cents...

.
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This was my first thought as well... literacy and art don't necessarily go hand in hand... and for the record... ugafan is a consistently funny m-f-er. Me likes that dude.
 
I mean, if you want to hire someone who won't follow a simple request and expect them to follow a contract. Then more power to you. I on the other hand would rather hire someone that cares than someone who doesn't.
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I'm absolutely with you, Matt. A lot of what I am reading in this threads just perpetuates the problem instead of teaching people to present themselves correctly. It's actually quite sad.
 
What you guys are saying is true in theory - and it's a nice sentiment... but I have to go with Mattykins on this.

If I'm looking to hire crew for a job, and I have a relationship with a paying client on the line,
a deadline to deal with, and more applicants coming in than positions... then yes,
I will immediately pass on any applicant that doesn't follow simple instructions in their email.

Then again - it all depends on the time you have on hand, and the amount of money on the line for the specific project, I suppose.
Of course, the higher the budget, the more carefully I would select people -
but the lower the budget, the less time I want to spend sifting through resumes....
so I guess it's a catch 22 of sorts.

But as nice as it would be, I simply don't have the time in most situations to contact every person that sends
a poorly written email to see if there is someone with talent behind the poor presentation.
Not as long as there are people with both talent and decent communication skills out there.
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
..... Many a great artist has been illiterate.

.
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The chances of someone answering an online ad being a great artist and illiterate is by far less then the chance they're just illiterate and illiterate.


If english isn't their first language you'd think they'd at least learn what the hell the little red lines under certain words were.......
 
Well, let's examine the message....

"HI IM (removed) IM INTERESTTE IN UR JOB OFFER CREATING SOME CREATURES . HERE IS MY ARTLINK . U NEED TO COPY AND PASTE THE LINK AND MAKE SURE TO CHECK ALL MY 3 PAGES THERE AND REPLY BACK . THANKS."

I ran it through Yahoo Mail's spellchecker. It did catch "IM" and suggested "I'M". It caught "INTERESTTE", but its first suggested correction was "INTEREST TE". The second suggestion was "INTEREST-TE". It did eventually get around to suggesting "INTERESTED". It missed "UR" and "U" completely, and it thought "ARTLINK" should either be "ART LINK" or "ART-LINK".

So while the errors may jump out at us, spellcheck wouldn't have caught all of them necessarily, and may not have been much help with some of the ones it did catch.

The fact that the person wrote in ALL CAPS indicates, to me, that they aren't very experienced with email courtesies. Or it may be that they sent the message from their cell phone, I don't know. (If they did send it from their cell phone, would they have access to spellcheck at all?)

Bottom line for me -- I care more about their work and their ability to provide me what I need, when I need it, than I do about their spelling, grammar and punctuation. I wouldn't just rule the guy out on the basis of his writing skills. But that's just me.
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
Bottom line for me -- I care more about their work and their ability to provide me what I need, when I need it, than I do about their spelling, grammar and punctuation. I wouldn't just rule the guy out on the basis of his writing skills. But that's just me.
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I think anyone would agree with that statement....and if every reply to a job posting were like that example, then I'm certain we'd all look at the guy's work and consider him.

But let's say you got 20 responses, 15 of which were well written emails which followed your instruction in regards to subject line, attatchments, etc... and then you recieved 5 replies like the one above.

Would you really take as much time with those 5?
Would they be amongst the first that you looked at?

I wouldn't necessarily rule a guy based solely on his writing skills, but he's definitely not moving to the top of the list if the majority of respondents communicated clearly. Then again, I may be too harsh in that regard...
 
Luis Caffesse said:
I think anyone would agree with that statement....and if every reply to a job posting were like that example, then I'm certain we'd all look at the guy's work and consider him.

But let's say you got 20 responses, 15 of which were well written emails which followed your instruction in regards to subject line, attatchments, etc... and then you recieved 5 replies like the one above.

Would you really take as much time with those 5?
Would they be amongst the first that you looked at?

I wouldn't necessarily rule a guy based solely on his writing skills, but he's definitely not moving to the top of the list if the majority of respondents communicated clearly. Then again, I may be too harsh in that regard...
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I would certainly take the time to look at his work and see if he might be more talented than the other applicants. If he was, I'd give serious thought to hiring him.
 
Unless I'm hiring a writer, I don't care if the people on my crew can write an effective sentence or even spell correctly. I want my DP to give me great shots. I want my sound guy to give me excellent sound. My gaffer to give me amazing lighting. My actors to give me inspirational performances. They are all capable of doing all of that without being able to compose a well-written email.
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
Unless I'm hiring a writer, I don't care if the people on my crew can write an effective sentence or even spell correctly. I want my DP to give me great shots. I want my sound guy to give me excellent sound. My gaffer to give me amazing lighting. My actors to give me inspirational performances. They are all capable of doing all of that without being able to compose a well-written email.
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I understand your point, but there's always a "but"..... Basic communication/direction following isn't exclusive of email. If a person can't follow simple online ad directions how can you expect them to follow them on a shoot? I would be leery of hiring anyone that doesn't have at least common sense communication skills (all CAPS- please....)
Bottom line is there is a lot of great talent out there and there's very little room for illiterate people on a team.
That's my view anyway, but I'm not hiring............
 
I agree, I don't think we can categorise a person that cannot spell
(like me) I know some motion graphics guys that did not graduate high school
and cannot spell ( I always give them a hard time on emails when I write them back noting spelling mistakes) :) yet they are making 100k a year and their work is beautiful. Now dont get me wrong if you are sending me your resume or something of that sort and its all jacked up, then that means that you are too lazy to run spell check on MS word and that is pretty bad


chapelgrovefilms said:
Unless I'm hiring a writer, I don't care if the people on my crew can write an effective sentence or even spell correctly. I want my DP to give me great shots. I want my sound guy to give me excellent sound. My gaffer to give me amazing lighting. My actors to give me inspirational performances. They are all capable of doing all of that without being able to compose a well-written email.
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if i got an email like that i wouldnt even click on the link. english speaking or not, they've done nothing to try and convince me i should hire them. they obviously don't want the job that badly, they just saw the ad and on a whim sent a quick email.

i've been guilty of doing something similar. i'm not actively looking for film jobs but i cruise craigslist sometimes and when i see someone looking for an editor, i shoot them a really short email saying i'm interested and a link to some of my work. but i certainly spell everything correctly and don't use all capitals... ha ha.. but i basically don't give a crap if they email me about it or not.

sometimes, i think to myself, that if they're 'cool' hip and young, this will suffice and they'll want me more than some boring stiff that writes a page long cover letter and attaches a pro resume.

but that's really stupid cuz when i started looking for on call camera operators for my company, which i like to think IS hip and cool, i appreciated the cover letters and resumes. so.

just my take on it!!
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
Bottom line for me -- I care more about their work and their ability to provide me what I need, when I need it, than I do about their spelling, grammar and punctuation. I wouldn't just rule the guy out on the basis of his writing skills. But that's just me.
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But the OP asked for a few simple bits of info to be included by people applying for the job and apparently a fair number of them failed provide what the OP needed when the OP needed it. If one can't, or doesn't care enough to, follow some simple instructions when applying for a position how much confidence does that instill in the employer that the applicant can handle the more complex and demanding tasks associated w/the position?


ddp said:
I understand your point, but there's always a "but"..... Basic communication/direction following isn't exclusive of email. If a person can't follow simple online ad directions how can you expect them to follow them on a shoot? I would be leery of hiring anyone that doesn't have at least common sense communication skills (all CAPS- please....)
Bottom line is there is a lot of great talent out there and there's very little room for illiterate people on a team.
That's my view anyway, but I'm not hiring............
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Yeah, I gotta agree that being able to follow basic instructions and communicate clearly is pretty important.


-A
 
To each his own. But by not even looking at the guy's work, you may be missing out on the best possible person for your job.

As for me, I'll take the time and make the effort.
 
And by the way, just because someone can't spell or write well, or even read well -- that doesn't mean they can't communicate clearly or follow instructions. They may just do better with visual or spoken communications, rather than written.
 
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