Hello Spool?
August 25th, 2005
Microsoft Staffing has a strange way of greeting people…
In this morning’s inbox:
From: juliest@microsoft.com
Subject: Microsoft User Experience needs your expertise
Date: 25 Aug 2005 04:06:50 -0400Hello Spool,
I came across your information online and would like to reach out to you regarding career opportunities in the area of User Experience at Microsoft Corporation. Please feel free to reply to this mail with an update on your current situation. If you are interested in learning more about our career opportunities, please also attach an updated version of your resume.
I look forward to your response,
Sincerely,
Julie Stringham
User Experience Talent Scout
Microsoft StaffingP.S Please check out our exciting new design at Microsoft site http://www.microsoft.com/resources/design/ and our Usability site: http://www.microsoft.com/usability/default.mspx
I last updated my resume in 1988. I have no idea where the file is.
I’m guessing I’m not Microsoft material, anyways, as I tend to enjoy addressing people by their first name.
Update: Christine reports that Ms. Julie sent her a “Hello Perfetti” email. Josh, on the other hand, has escaped Ms. Julie’s web…
Update: The saga continues…
Update: And there’s more…
August 25th, 2005 at 10:26 am
Reminds me of high school gym class.
That’s not an experience I care to repeat.
August 25th, 2005 at 10:34 am
I heard yesterday from a M$ recruiter as well. She is apparently new to Industrial/Interaction Design and found “my blog on core77.com” and wanted my advice on people or websites she should be looking at.
It’s interesting – recruiters clearly make a good part of their living through networking. But so do the rest of us! Networking with non-recruiters feels like good karma; even if the person you help isn’t going to be in a situation to turn around and help you, it’ll still come back one way or another. But with recruiters, I always feel like the good will I share with my fellow person is being somewhat exploited. Within the last couple of years I was cold-called by a recruiter new to frogdesign who didn’t know what frogdesign did and didn’t want to hire me, but wanted me to teach them about frogdesign and the industry that they are in/that I am in. Hello?
Anyway, the irony of yesterday’s M$ contact was that core77 is absolutely not “my” blog; I’m just someone that contributes there (along with a dozen other folks), and if you would spend maybe 30 seconds look at that page you would see that they run the most extensive job board for design professionals anywhere on the web.
August 25th, 2005 at 11:54 am
Heh, looks to me like someone built a sloppy report out of one M$ product or another, which left out your “title” (or whatever we call Mr./Ms these day), or that someone forgot to fill in that field in their database or contacts manager. Ooops …
August 27th, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Yep, Ms. Julie wrote to me, too, and her mailmerge did the same thing: “Hello Sampson.” Sigh.
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:48 am
Hah. I got the same email today, with the mail merge problem fixed (“Hello Steve,”) but with the same broken image link mentioned by Jared in this or another post.
I don’t think I’ll bother to reply. But I’m oh-so pleased to be in the second (or later?) wave.