What would you do?

65LoveAffair said

Okay, this is a theoretical question. Say you had placed a job listing on an internet board advertising for a clerical position, but the listing had a number of grammatical and spelling errors in it. One of the applicants responding to the listing, instead of submitting a traditional cover letter, decides to correct your errors and submits a letter that includes the corrected job listing. How would you respond to this? Would you be offended that the person pointed out your errors and ignore their application, or would you respond favorably to the person taking the initiative and demonstrating their grammatical expertise?

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Such a response would absolutely intrigue me. At the very least I would need to invite this person in for an interview.

Writing a response allows you time to review and correct yourself, In a personal interview, your responses are pure, uncorrected, and candid.

As a VP of Ops., and and business owner, I've always leaned toward informal interviews. I've found that interviewees are much more relaxed and natural in a neutral setting, as opposed to my office. Further, I always required a second interview that would take place in my office. That just the reverse of most interviewer's approach.

...and I usually to the HR report with a grain of salt. In 45 years of business, I always found that HR people are very zealous in te performance of their duties. Not a bad trait, btw, just one that needs to be tempered by the department heads, or, as in my case the head of OPS.

You can usually tell how a person is going to "fit it" to the company on the "skills" level, and on the "personality" level after the first few minutes of an informal interview.