I remember how much work I put into writing my first (and only – I became a freelancer later) job application: I read a book on how to do it, wrote a nice letter, had it spell-checked by people who knew the language and wrote the letter on good paper. I then carefully typed my curriculum vitae on my father’s typewriter (remember those?) and checked and re-checked that everything looked neat before lovingly sliding the sheets of paper into a good envelope and carefully licking and precisely placing a stamp on it. I see job applications come in once in a while. Not spam, mind you, but real applications written by people who really need a job. Let me show you one. (I bounced this to Gmail to anonymize it.) The “job application” announces itself so: I first notice that the person hasn’t even bothered to use their full name, and I notice an advertisement – probably a free mailer. (This e-mail needs deleting before doing anything else…) Upon opening the message, we see this: First, the ad, which says: “Your desktop background is boring? …”. There is no letter of introduction. The e-mail contains no personal message at all, just an attached JPEG which a whopping 1.2MB. The image file contains a lousy scan of the woman’s head and shoulders, and badly written, lousy information. Well, lady: this attempt isn’t even worth an answer. And let me tell you one thing: nobody on this earth is going to give you any kind of job if you don’t pull out your finger a bit more! In case of doubt, read this! Update: Stephan Wissel seems to have similar experiences.