Is it a bad idea to hand deliver my CV to a company on spec? [duplicate]

Question

Recent events caused me to terminate my employment with my (now previous) employer. I am searching for technical work in my field (programming), with the understanding that if something does not materialize quickly I will need to search for a temporary job, in say food service.

I have submitted 9-10 applications which are directly in line with my career trajectory, and now I want to maximize my chances of landing an interview. My question is this: will it be perceived in a negative light if I show up at these same companies tomorrow and drop off a resume in person? My intention is to make a good impression which will hopefully catalyze interest in my application.

I know that moves like this lower your position at the negotiating table. I'm not too worried about this because I was being paid so far below market value at my previous position that even if these companies underpay me I will still be in an improved situation .

My concern is that I don't want to come off as rude. I won't linger too long, I am just planning on having a brief conversation with whoever answers the door and asking for them to pass along a physical copy of my resume.

Answer 1

Don't do this!

This is a terrible idea - It's not the 1950s any more.. unless you're looking for retail or service industry roles unscheduled walk-ins are rude, disruptive and incredibly annoying. At best you're showing yourself as someone who is completely out of touch with professional norms or a bit weird and at worst you're just going to get binned off straight away. Personally I'd go straight for a combination of the two.

If the company has an open position that you match with then they'll be wondering why the heck you didn't just apply using the normal channels and if they don't they aren't going to create one just because some random stranger walked in off the street.

Even if (and it's a very big if) you pass your resume to the receptionist and they intend to pass it on to the appropriate hiring manager it may take some time to get there (if at all - misc bits of paper get mislaid depressingly easily in many offices), or be jumbled in with various other unrelated bits. If it does make it to the hiring manager then the most context they are going to get is a "some random person dropped this in".

Then they have one random hard copy resume to integrate into the rest of the candidates who applied in the normal way - which is most likely electronic and that's generally an irritation. A small one to be sure but do you really want any feelings of irritation associated with your application, no matter how small?

Answer 2

Taken from Joel Spolsky, co-founder of and CEO at Stack Overflow; who wrote on his blog:

Study the directions that are given for how to apply. They are there for a reason. For example our website instructs you to send a résumé to [email protected]. This goes into an email folder which we go through to find good candidates. If you think for some reason that your résumé will get more attention if you print it out and send it through the mail, that you’ll “stand out” somehow, disabuse yourself of that notion. Paper résumés can’t get into the email folder we’re using to keep track of applicants unless we scan them in, and, you know what? The scanner is right next to the shredder in my office and the shredder is easier to use.

_{[Emphasis mine]}

Answer 3

A better tactic is to attend events where the people in your industry gather for training and networking. Even better if you volunteer to help the organizers of the event. Best is if you volunteer to be a speaker. Then make it a habit of talking to people while there. You will meet people who might work in the specific area you are working in and generally once they find this out, they will want your resume (and likely ask you to apply through their automated system these days.)

Answer 4

For what it's worth, I managed to get interviews right away on two occasions, with 1 CEO and 1 CTO simply by showing up unannounced, 1 hour before the official opening of their small companies.

That way, the probability of meeting a secretary telling me to apply via conventional means was low and the probability of meeting a manager was high.

If you want to try it, you have to look confident, motivated and be prepared to waste an hour standing in front of an empty building. If you see someone coming, smile and politely ask them if they have 5 minutes to spare while drinking coffee. Have your pitch and resume ready.

So no, it's not always a bad idea but it's also a long shot and probably won't work with larger companies. To increase the chances of success, you might want to test it with a company which isn't very high on your wish list first.

Answer 5

Doing things that make your application stand out are good as long as they aren’t disruptive. Showing up and talking to people who aren’t expecting you is disruptive. It might be ok if there’s someone whose job it is to receive people (a receptionist), but it doesn’t really make you stand out.

Here’re a couple of things you can do to maximize your visibility without disrupting people:

• Find out who the hiring manager is and have your packet delivered directly to that person in a mildly unusual way. Focus on unusual, not disruptive. No singing delivery clowns. I have had success using Priority Express to deliver my application.
• Go to trade events and meet ups where company people you want to meet are. It’s perfectly acceptable to introduce yourself as a job seeker at such an event.

A lot of companies have job requisitions open for jobs they aren’t currently hiring for. So accept that sometimes you won’t get a call back no matter what.

Answer 6

In a larger company, you will little chance to ever meet anyone remotely responsible or interested by just showing up. Larger companies have typically security and badges, and won't just let you walk into the buildings. The security guards potentially have no idea who you would want to talk to, and are not allowed to give out names, so unless you have a specific contact name in HR, and that person is reachable, available, and willing to walk to the entrance for you, you will get nowhere.

In addition, larger companies have larger numbers of open positions, and don't just mail the stack of all resumes to each manager to pick from. You would need to apply for specific jobs, and those lists are on the internet, and not at the security guard shack.

Of course, smaller companies might work better.

Answer 7

As motosubatsu said, Don't Do This! I have additional reasons for saying this, though.

I have submitted 9-10 applications ... will it be perceived in a negative light if I show up at these same companies tomorrow and drop off a resume in person?

You state that you've already applied at these places, so why would applying again help? It's simple, it won't. In fact, it will most likely kick both of your applications/resumes into the "round file" faster.

If they see 2 copies of your resume, they'll most likely get rid of them both as a penalty for wasting their time with redundancy. They have potentially hundreds of applicants for this one job, so they aren't going to waste their time on someone who is actively trying to make more work for them.

You don't mention if you applied directly the first time, but if you applied via a 3rd party recruiter, you will definitely get kicked out of the running. They don't want the possibility of the {recruiter, temp agency, other people finder company} hearing that they hired someone directly who was also offered through the service. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen, as it would probably be breach of contract. At best, the recruiter will refuse to work with them in the future, and they may let other recruiters in their sphere know about the situation, too.

Also, even if you don't get hired, that recruiter will likely hear about you re-submitting your application directly and then not work with you.

Recruiters get paid by finding workers for companies. If they do work to find a company for someone, or vice versa, and then they don't get paid for it, they get mad, and for good reason. If they do this too often, they go out of business, so they are going to fight this pretty much every time.

From my own experience in Iowa, USA, looking for either a computer tech or computer programmer position: My parent's used to ask me why I wasn't out handing my resume to every company in the area. Well, for years, I was. That quickly ceased as more and more companies pointed me to a website or the 1 recruiter company they used who had their own website. Even if I offered the resume right then, they would usually not take it.

That was almost 15 years ago. Almost no one takes a paper resume anymore. I even tried putting my resume and portfolio on a business card sized CD to make it "stand out", and no one ever looked at it.

Use the sites and other online resources companies offer, as that's the only way they expect to find people, unless they know someone personally who will fit the role. Trade shows are good for networking, but they aren't looking for employees, they are looking for customers.

A hiring fair is a completely different animal. You'll likely see long lines of people at every booth, a variety of styles of resumes, and you might get 1-5 min for an elevator pitch. Unless you had an absolutely stellar pitch and really connected with the person, they'll forget you before they talk to 2 more applicants. Paper resumes may work here, but the presentation/elevator pitch is the key to getting remembered and staying out of the shredder.

Job hunting is a pain, no matter how you slice it, and there are more ways to kill your chances than to help. As someone who struggled to find steady work that didn't disappear for economic/"no more work"/"company shutting down" reasons for over 15 years, I sincerely wish you good luck!

Answer 8

In Europe it used to be a good idea to show up with a CV in hard at your target company as it showed personal initiative which would give you an edge compared to those resorting to standard electronic delivery.

Now both the personal delivery and the standard electronic delivery (email, Facebook etc.) is a bad idea due to GDPR. A CV/resume will contain personal information, quite often also sensitive personal information, and that now has to be handled with extra care. Managing CVs in piles on a desk or as emails in a mailbox will be impossible to do in a compliant manner so that's now out. What remains are dedicated CV management systems with fine-grained access controls and the ability to securely delete everything related to a person when necessary.

Answer 9

I'm also a programmer, and I've successfully gotten three new jobs within the past 5 years so I'm fairly familiar with the general hiring practices within the field. One of the keys to remember is that each step only leads to the next. Your resume won't never get you hired, but it might get you the interview that will. Being proactive and showing up in person without an invitation might seem like a way to get noticed, but it will mostly seem like you're willing to waste their time. Instead, continue applying to more places - don't let off the gas until you've got an offer in hand that you want to accept.

I recommend applying to each and every job where the technical requirements overlap with your experience and the amount of experience they're looking for is within 50% of your own (so if you've been working for 4 years, applying somewhere that wants 6-10 years experience is fine). The key is that most of the jobs that are available are not posted, so frequently you'll get "well, we don't know if you're right for this position, but we've got another position that you'd be a good fit for". This is especially true for recruiters, who want to build up a large base of candidates so they don't mind entering you into their system even if they don't actively have a position available.

Answer 10

The last 20-30 years or so has seen an extreme increase in amount of middle-men in filtering of recruitment and employment decisions.

1. By doing as you ask... what it would look like is that you would basically try to sneak in between.

2. Those people and companies won't like that, because that threatens their livelihood.

3. Also the people deciding how the filtering works won't like that, because you threaten their filtering power. Deciding who gets to be employed where is a very big social power indeed.