Mmm... personalization

So a long time ago, when I briefly quit my job before I came to my senses, I put my resume up on Monster and sent it out around town. I got some really stupid queries -- do I want to sell insurance for a company that went out of its way to hose me on a settlement for years? Or be a financial consultant?

Anyway, I sent Google a nice note with my quite-nice resume, and said, essentially, "Hey, here's my pitch about who I am, check out this great resume, blah blah blah..."

It took them a while to get back to me, and when they did, I got an email that didn't even have my name as a salutation.

This is not a huge deal. I wasn't really surprised I got rejected -- they hire people who do my job, but not where I wanted to work, so I was kind of asking for someone to read it and be willing to talk to me about the position in general and maybe even discuss working out interviewing or whatever -- and I'm sure Google's swamped with resumes from great people applying for exactly the right job at the right time.

And I know their hiring process is broken and takes too long to get back to people.

What struck me as notable, though, is that Google, of all places, with all the importance they put on personalization and tailoring search results, all of that good stuff, couldn't manage to put a name in there. I guess I'd expected that they'd put the kind of care and thought into hiring that they put into, say, Gmail, or Google Earth.