I’ve mentioned in the past how frustrated I’ve become with the job search.
I’ve been puzzled as to why this task is so darn frustrating for me.
I finally figured it out.
It’s the difference between the Old and New way.
In the old days, back in the beginning of time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth we would look religiously through the newspapers each day or every other day.
We’d read small descriptions of the jobs being offered then dutifully write a cover letter. We’d stuff the cover letter and our resumes into an envelope then put a stamp on it and drop it in our local outbound mail box.
I’d sometimes send out 5 or 10 resumes a day. Sometimes I’d send to a company I knew of “Blind” because their HR would actually file a resume for 6 months or so, sometimes longer…
Often, these applications would generate nice little letters addressed to me.
Many times these letters would say in a nice way the position had been filled but that my resumes would be kept on file.
Other times the letter would be something like “Thank you for your interest in our company we have no openings but will call you if we do.”
The best day was when a company you applied to called you to schedule an interview. That was a WHOO HOOO DAY!
Now we apply online and each application requires MORE time to fill out than writing/mailing a simple cover letter & resume.
Dice
Monster
Cybercoders
Careerbliss
Careerfinder
All of them have their own method of accepting information. They all want you to have an account, and then you have to cut and paste your resume into their form. You’d think that would be that… once the information was in their format… You click apply and all that data would be sent to the hiring company HR and bing, bang, boom, you get called for an interview.
You’d BE WRONG!!!!
You log in, search for the job, click on apply, THEN you get to fill out a 20 minute survey about the job, followed by an essay exam “Tell us why you think you should be presented to our client.” “Make us believe that you are worthy of our attention.”
The problem is this, when I start talking about what I do 50% of the words don’t make sense to the average person. Those that actually understand the words still don’t understand what I do. So I’m faced with a conundrum… Do I write something simple enough that an average person will get it without bleeding from their eyes, or do I write something assuming that a hiring manager is going to see what I wrote and understand?
I’ve tried both ways with little difference in result.
(I’ve noticed that the job application process gets a WHOLE lot easier with these people if there are a lot of jobs and very few applicants)
Where I could crank out a nicely customized cover letter and have it and a resume in the mail, in about 15 minutes. NOW it takes closer to 45 minutes to apply for some of these positions.
There is ONE of the above headhunter sites that is awful in this regard.
Almost every single fucking application requires that you answer different questions and move little sliders around then enter the number of year experience you have. It’s maddening! Especially since all this information is already contained in my resume. And that same information is already contained in their specific forms that I filled out when I created my account.
I’ve actually gone back to sending a fax or mailing a cover letter & resume whenever possible!
Even that can be fraught with difficulties.
Since so many of these sites link to other sites which link to other sites it’s pretty easy to get messed up thinking you’re responding to an ad from one site when it’s really from someplace entirely different.
In general, I prefer to send something I wrote, and had control over from start to finish rather than turn my future over to a snot nosed idiot.
Back in the day… If you were going to use a professional placement agency… you’d contact someone that specialized in your industry and you’d work with a single agent.
That way you could actually build a relationship and that person could sell you because they knew you. It was an implicit recommendation.
Now, you never speak with the same agent twice and you’re damn lucky if they speak English.
So to all you job placement firms… Understand that some of us have little to no desire to spend our days filling out 4 job application forms online when we can type and stuff 8 or 10 of our cover letters and resumes into an envelope or fax machine in half the time.
Heck, I have a fax machine and a nifty little usb fax modem… I might as well get some use out of them!
Maybe I should get into the job placement gig. Perhaps it’s time for OLD SCHOOL standards to return.