Over the course of the year, you may have received emails on your Otago student email account advertising for various postgraduate jobs and entry-level positional vacancies. Or maybe you haven’t, which probably means your degree (like mine, Interpretive Pole Dancing) is so useless that no company cares enough to pay to put you on an email list.
Why do these companies have your email address? Dun...dun...dunnnnnn... the University gave it to them. The Otago Career Development Centre told Critic that third-party companies are able to pay for targeted marketing emails at various focus groups based on major and year level, with costs starting at $80 for 10 groups and capped at $500 for between 30-60 groups.
But wait… these are companies emailing regarding potential job openings, right? You’re at Uni to get a job, aren’t you? So who cares? Apparently, some people.
One person who cared lodged a formal complaint with OUSA in March, but when they discussed it, the OUSA Exec decided that the net positives of such emails outweigh the net negatives, and students should have the smarts to be able to filter out good opportunities from bad.
However, some positive changes have come out of the complaint. “Within each targeted email we ensure that in the subject line of the email we indicate ‘this is a sponsored email,’” said Manager of the Career Development Centre, Jackie Dean. “At the bottom of each email there is also a message which indicates that if you do not wish to receive any more emails of this nature this is the process to unsubscribe.”
So, if you don’t like ‘em, unsubscribe. And just be glad you’re getting these emails, it means someone wants to hire you… unlike me.
P.S. Who the fuck uses their Otago email anyway?