Resumes increasingly falling into 'black hole'

I'm in search of a humongous black hole filled with millions of job applications and resumes.

It has to be somewhere, because every other day I hear from someone who sent out a resume to a company and it "disappeared into some black hole." Never heard of again.

It seems employers are forgetting their manners, being provocatively rude and outright snubbing potential candidates. Now I have no hard stats to prove this. But lots of you have been writing in to say, "What's up with this?"

I don't blame you. There's only one thing worse than getting one of those "regret" letters after applying for a job: hearing nothing.

Sitting in wait as that heart of yours jumps a beat every time the phone rings, only to have it be your mother - again. Or going from pretty sure you got an interview to no way would they want you for the job, to almost positive you will be sitting in that new desk within a week to why did you even apply in the first place? You're way underqualified.

It happened to Jared, who wrote me about the topic. After waiting for weeks after sending an application to a government agency, he finally decided to make contact to see what was going on. He called the employer, left a voicemail and e-mailed.

"And again I heard nothing," he said. "I get sick of hearing all the things employees need to do when applying for a job. What about what employers need to do?"

Before cyberspace and computers, companies seemed to do a better job. They would always acknowledge the receipt of applications in writing. Maybe a letter saying you weren't chosen for a job but that your application would remain on file.

You had been dissed, but at least you knew where you stood.

Today, with online job searches and many human resource jobs being automated, there may just not be enough people around to contact every applicant.

But employers beware. If enough people get ticked off that your company didn't reply, they might start spreading the word, and pretty soon, you'll have no talented applicants coming in.

"You don't want to create ill will out there," said Mark Haering, senior partner with PrincetonOne Search in Indianapolis, an executive recruiting company, "What comes around goes around."

Acting as the middleman between applicants and employers, Haering strongly encourages his clients to acknowledge every candidate in some way.

"It just shows respect to the candidate," he said.

CareerBuilder.com, an online job site, sees every employer handle the recruitment process differently, said Theresa Chu, senior career adviser.

"Some will respond individually, some will automatically respond through their applicant tracking systems and some won't respond at all when they're not interested," she said.

Her advice on how job applicants can ensure a response? Make yourself as relevant to every specific position you are applying for as possible. Some employers use screeners to weed out applications that don't fit.

"And then a lot of times resumes do seem to just go into some black hole," Haering said.