Is AOL derailing your job search ?
If you or someone you know is seeking a new position and use AOL, then potential career opportunities could be passing you by.
I know of no less than 20 hopeful job seekers I personally have tried to e-mail within the past few months with AOL accounts that, when I tried to contact them by mail, I have received an AOL generated auto response stating that I will need to obtain special permission from that e-mail account holder to accept my mail.
Now it's not just our firm who has dealt with this nuisance, as I also know of Corporate Recruiters and other Executive Search Professionals such as myself who have also experienced the same problem when trying to reach candidates who possessed AOL mail accounts.
Some of the recruiters I mentioned above have actually been reported by AOL as being SPAMMERS ! All they were trying to do was contact a job seeker to make a quick introduction or check on their current employment status. Many times these inquiries do not justify modifying our schedules, unnecessarily working late into the evening or playing 5 rounds of telephone tag just to get permission from a candidate to accept our mail.
Unintentional as it may be on a candidates part, talk about setting up road blocks. I have also tried on numerous occasions to contact a job seeker with an AOL account and then hear back from them months later.
It turns out my mail did in fact reach the recipient, but the message went directly into their Spam Box and was only discovered by accident long after the opportunity was gone.
Granted, Spam is a problem, but if you are a hopeful job seeker, you could be missing out on potential job opportunities; and therefore may want to consider using another e-mail provider or if possible modify your AOL Spam Filter settings.
Contributed by:
Mark J. Haluska
Executive Director
Real Time NetWork
