A) Mark message as a read / Low prioritize applicant
B) Star it / Review applicant
C) Delete it / Ignore applicant
Personally I would choose C, it's a case of non-responsibility... I don't need such employee in my company.
Unless you've never made a dumb mistake on a critical task in your life, then C.
It takes 5 minutes to review an average resume. Yeah, it sucks that the email had no subject, or if the resume has bad typos, or other stuff like that. If the resume is a stinking pile of fail in all ways, then you can safely ignore it. Getting overly anal and rightous about 1 typo on a resume or a missing subject line, or an applicant that didn't realize you spell your name with an I instead of a Y, or have an extra E in your name or other dumb shit is just pretty lame, IMO.
Don't be a prick - cut people some slack.
If his resume impresses you, there is plenty of opportunity to screen for fatal flaws during the rest of the interview process.
You also didn't mention if you're interviewing a CEO or an IC-level person, thou much of my above comments would be the same either way.
The reason being that we where doing mass interviews years ago something like 200 people for 30 positions.
One guy missed his interview time slot by over an hour. Most people would say 'forget it', but for some reason we decided to bring him in at the end of the day.
Not only did he get one of the spots, he was an absolute rock star employee and won numerous corporate awards.
There is no doubt his resume is going to have to impress you, so if it doesn't then he doesn't get an interview.
If his resume is great, and you bring him in for an interview, bring up the lack of a subject, and you might get some interesting insight out of his response.
Really, what do you have to loose? it took you more time to post this to HN than it would have taken you to take a quick look at his CV.
This is by no means an attack on you or your organization, but I absolutely despise this knee-jerk reaction to emails, resumes or anything really that's so prevalent in the hiring sector where Hiring Managers are LOOKING for a reason not to even blink at a resume.
I get that companies want the best candidates available, what I don't get is how willing they are to shrink the pool of qualified and excellent candidates because of something resulting from human error. The absence of a subject line in an email isn't non-responsibility; as pedalpete said, his organization reached out and interviewed a guy who came an HOUR LATE. That's a death sentence in the conventional wisdom of job hunting, and look what happened.
No, the exception does not prove the rule, but I think hiring managers-if they want to hire and if this disease of near double-digit unemployment is to shrink-need to get their heads out of their asses and actually HIRE people.
The first step in this is to stop demonizing things that genuinely do not matter when put next to a resume that bleeds talent, organization and character. Missing a subject line is one of them.