Ask a Manager

If you’re conducting a job search, be vigilant about checking your spam folder or bulk email folder if your mail program has one, because there might be a job-related email sitting in there. At my organization, we’ve discovered that our emails sometimes get mistakenly routed to applicants’ spam folders and so some people don’t even see them. This is a particular problem when we’re emailing job applicants back to ask them to supply further documentation (such as a writing sample); when I’m particularly interested in a candidate, I’ll sometimes have our hiring assistant follow up with a phone call if I don’t hear back for a while, and often she discovers when she calls that the email is indeed sitting in a spam folder, unseen. But most companies won’t bother to do this; I do it because I hate the thought of missing out on someone good, but most places aren’t as anal retentive as I am.