Submittals

Submittals are simply a record of which employers are seriously reviewing your credentials. If they received your resume from a recruiter, submittals serve as a record of who gave it to them. That's it. Nothing more - nothing less. It is the accuracy of this information that make submittals so important. There could even be legal implications if someone takes action on erroneous information. Allow us to illustrate a few scenarios.

Two Recruiting Firms

Suppose Firm A submits your resume to XYZ Corp.and you fail to record the submittal. Lets then say Firm B calls you and tells you about a great job at a company named XYZ Corp. and they would like to submit the resume you have on file with them. You permit them to do so. XYZ Corp. receives your resume and wants to bring you in, but has just realized that two firms have submitted your resume. Which recruiting firm do they work with? The answer - neither. They will typically take your resume and throw it in the trash because to work with either firm would violate their agreement to pay the other firm for candidates whose resume they have received and have hired. The legal wrangling that could fall out is just not worth it.

It is incumbent upon the recruiting firm to work with the candidate to make sure that the candidate has not already been submitted to the manager for the position. The alternative is permitting the employer to inform the recruiting firm who submitted the resume last that they already have that individual's resume. How would the recruiting firm know that another firm had already submitted the resume? In this case, unethical employers could then contact the candidate directly and forgo the hefty fee they would have to pay the recruiter. If the employer doesn't have the contact information available, but can ascertain that the resumes from the two firms are the same person, they will simply work with the firm that has the lowest fee.

Your Application and a Recruiting Firm

Suppose you respond to a job opening you find online at XYZ Corp. Then you receive a call from a firm about a great opportunity with XYZ, Corp. You permit the firm to submit your resume. Now you have put yourself and the employer in a quandary. Let's say they want to interview you, but some recruiting firm just submitted your resume with your permission. They now have to either tell the firm that they already have your resume and possibly compromise their relationship with that recruiter or they can pay the recruiting firm's hefty commission for a candidate they actually found via an online application. They are both bad scenarios that you could have avoided. Additionally, this could reflect negatively on your due diligence and record keeping skills.

Your Application and a Referral

Suppose you respond to a job opening you find online at XYZ Corp. Then a friend who works at XYZ, Corp., unaware that you have already applied online, informs you that she can get a big referral bonus if you hire into the company so you give your resume to her. The manager is impressed with your online application and the resume he just received from his colleague. He realizes later that the resumes are for the same person and now he has just found himself in a predicament. If the firm provides referral fees to their employees for bringing in good talent, then he may be in a position to have to tell his colleague that he already has the resume on file. Alternatively, he could simply recognize the colleague as the person who gave him your resume, but then he would be breaching his ethics because he actually received your resume online before receiving it from his colleague. Again, they are both bad scenarios that you could have prevented from happening.

Conclusion

There are any number of combinations and permutations that could cause a conflict of interest or endanger good working relationships. Market forces have determined that the job candidate maintaining a record of who he has given his resume to is the optimum solution for all parties involved. The best thing to do is keep track of which employer has your resume. This is done by tracking your submittals which JobTabs will do for you once you create the submittal. While you're at it, just keep track of every resume you send out regardless of whether or not it is submitted. JobTabs automatically does all of this behind the scenes so you need not feel encumbered.

We want to emphasize that a resume has only been submitted when it is in the hands of an employer. A noteworthy exception is sending in an unsolicited resume to an employer to see if they might be interested. If a recruiter or a networking contact avails you of an open position with that same employer and wants to submit your resume directly to the hiring manager then you need to inform them that you sent in an unsolicited resume and then invite them to submit your resume with the understanding that they are officially representing you at that employer and your unsolicited resume should be disregarded. Provided everyone is on board and amenable to the arrangement you should be okay. Unsolicited resumes rarely see any action and if somebody calls you with the opportunity to be directly considered by the manager, you should probably cede to the third party representation. Just take the extra effort to keep everyone above board to avoid any conflicts of interest.

The bottom line is great record keeping which is built into JobTabs Job Search & Resume Builder!

See Also

Applying to Jobs: Managing Your Candidacy