If you really want the job, this is a bad idea. The form is there so that HR (who usually knows nothing about the technical details of the posted jobs) can match base requirements against what the hiring manager is looking for. If they get a match, they just forward the resume to the manager. Doing stuff like this on the form is likely going to result in them just moving on without looking at your application further. And it doesn’t mean it’s a bad place to work; the company and the manager might be great.
Pretty much.
Maybe I’m some rare unicorn. But I have NEVER successfully got a job filling out forms like this. It’s a huge waste of my time.
I’m a hiring manager, and every single person hired at my company has to fill out a form like this.
Then I sneak through the backdoor then, or they fill it out for me.
Again, never have I filled them out and got a job.
And I’m sure you’ve worked enough jobs for your anecdotal experience to be statistically significant.
You aren’t. I was just hired for a great position by not filling out their form. Then they emailed me and asked if I wanted to finish. I said “I won’t fill out something that is already on my resume”. They had a couple of interviews and a substantial offer. I started last week.
It depends on the position. If it’s entry level or some retail job, yes, fill it out. But management or some other position where it’s highly specific, this is an absolute waste of my time.
“It depends on the position. If it’s entry level or some retail job, yes, fill it out. But management or some other position where it’s highly specific, this is an absolute waste of my time”
It’s an absolute waste of time, period. No need to stratify it further. McKinsey & Ilk bullshit is commodifying the lowest denominator shit in the name of HR professionals using more buzzwords and less braincells in the hiring process while pretending they’re standardizing equity, in my opinion.
That the positions you are ostensibly qualified for allow for a measure of ‘hardball posturing’ doesn’t mean pseudo-hokey HR practices on non-leadership role hiring. aren’t filtering the best of the best of people–at filling out useless forms that you’ll need to train to critically think anyways.
Only way to combat MBB bullshit is for the in-house managers to grow a spine and speak truth to power after the pre-contractually safe ‘I’m so good you want me even if I don’t toe the line’ that is allowed to every leadership role hire as their moment to feel special to see that reaction.
Places like this probably get 2000 submissions so they are indeed a waste of time.
I got a job once that was like this, except on paper.
It was 2017.
The fact that you have people that know nothing about the technical requirements of the role means you have an idiot deciding on whether or not you fit. Your chances are crippled from the get go.
These are red flags to me. This is just a tip of the iceberg and a great indicator as to how dysfunctional the company is.
If you’re THAT detached from the hiring process then you’ll never find a good candidate because you don’t know what a good candidate is.
All that means is that if you some how manage to get hired you’ll be working with idiots that can’t do their job because they were hired by an idiot.
I work for a company that makes rocket engines. It makes no sense to teach the folks in HR about all the disciplines that go into the business - mechanical design, combustion devices, materials and properties, electronics, software, etc. It makes way more sense to make sure they know how to do their own job, and for a hiring manager to be able to tell them something like, “Send me all the applicants who have a computer science degree and at least five years of experience.” Then I can evaluate which of those applicants is the best fit based on the resume. The form facilitate that.
That attitude is precisely the reason why you struggle to find good people. There is no shortage of good applicants. You just don’t know what you’re doing and can’t see the difference.
It’s a real shame. All the more reason why my hatred for corporations grows on a daily basis.
I don’t struggle to find good applicants. I have a really high success rate in a very challenging field.
just because somebody typed this stuff and took a photo doesn’t mean that’s what they submitted.
Understood, but I didn’t want anyone to think it’s a good idea.
Would actually love to do that. I just have an extreme aversion to knowingly shooting myself in the foot
Me too. The only jobs I apply to are ones I really want (obviously), so doing this just hurts my chances of getting them.
But I absolutely hate this bullshit.
Yeah its annoying as hell most times
But you would edgily shoot you in the foot!
As a hiring manager, I am absolutely floored how many people do not actually have this information on their resumes. So while most people would assume a lot of redundancies between the form and a resume, I can assure you that many people do not have this information readily available on their resumes.
Sorry to say but you hiring managers don’t know jack shit about hiring people. You have zero clue as to what qualifies an employee. Always asking the wrong questions.
The reason why corporations have a hard time finding talent isn’t because a lack of talent. It’s because the hiring process is a joke. But then you’ll complain that no one wants to work anymore.
The amount of top talent you toss into the bin because you don’t know what questions to is staggering.
Truly abysmal.
“What would you say is your biggest weakness?”
STAR. The STAR format is my biggest weakness. Please everyone stop using it.
Then why do you need the resume if you just ask for it all again
Why do you need to build a system to capture this information from people that can’t read rather than just rejecting those applications?
Thousands of applications and only dozens of jobs.
Imagine a world where there are countless open job reqs and only one applicant per job. That might be the case if the world population was not 8 billion.
I’m saying why not just reject them if you have lots of applicants… Not sure I follow what you are saying.
Building the elaborate system to help them get last the initial pass of resumes only gives you more resumes to look at later.
I honestly think ATS are a pain in the ass simply to filter out the people who won’t deal with bullshit. They want people who will live with bullshit working for them because the org is (always) dysfunctional.
Alternatively… their HR technology team is just trash because it’s run by HR and not someone who knows technology. Seen it plenty of times where shadow IT is being run by people who don’t know what they’re doing beyond “we need this thing.”
I just joined a fantastic team and within a month I saw how dysfunctional it is. Nobody knows how to organize humans. Whoever actually figures it out could rule the world.
Because I know if a hiring manager talks to me, they are likely to hire me, but if I write down that I didn’t graduate college, then they aren’t going to talk to me.
seems to me like this would be the kind of information that you would clarify IN the interview. But what do i fucking know. I’m just a person.
I’m relieved whenever candidates demonstrate that they are less likely to correctly complete important tasks.
“Pick up this can…”
We all, deep down, understand the exploitative of the employer/employee relationship. They are setting the tone for the rest of your life doing bullshit work that doesn’t matter at all.
If you ever get through to a person high enough to answer your question of: “why did you ask for my resume?”
…the honest answer is:
“There are two things that look at you, the candidate. For cost cutting reasons, we put your answers you fill in all these blanks into a computer which eliminates you if you don’t match our basic criteria. We save money by never actually even knowing your name. If you pass the computer filter, your resume is needed because actual humans look at it. So thats why we ask for both.”
There’s actually an easy technical fix for this. All we would need is a common format for resumes that is machine readable, e.g. an XML schema that defines what fields should be in there. Then you just need a simple tool with a nice UI for inputting the info. So what are the chances of this happening? That’s right, exactly zero.
The EU actually has something like that:
https://europa.eu/europass/eportfolio/screen/profile-wizard?lang=en
Interesting. Never heard of that.
I recently endured a job search. Applied to over 400 positions on Indeed alone. I stopped filling out the forms. Probably lost out on some job opportunities, but having to fill this shit out 30 times a day is not worth the effort.
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Once when I was in High School, there was a test that had a fat block of instructions at the top. But buried in those instructions it said “You don’t need to write any answers, just write your name and hand the instructor the test, and you will receive 100% credit.” It was more a test to see if people would read and follow instructions than it was for knowledge. Needless to say, many people did not get 100% credit.
I can only guess that job applications are like that test in this regard.
We had this kind of test, too. I guess it’s a popular way of teaching this lesson of “read the whole f*cking instructions! That’s why someone wrote them down for you!”
While it is good to filter through people who are unwilling or uncapable of reading/following instructions, it still feels unnecessary.
It sometimes feels like the whole world refuses to stop testing you. It’s an endless gauntlet.
I’m so glad I was able to establish a career and become well known in an industry before applying for positions was so demoralising and exhausting. I worry about what things will be like in another few years when my children enter the job market.
This is one of the rare spaces where AI could be genuinely useful if it can accurately pull this data out of mass uploaded resumes.
It’s already being used, and already screens out people with the same biases you could expect (name sounds foreign, name is female, etc.).
I wouldn’t want it to do screening, literally just OCR and key word extraction.
They do that too.
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Recruiters consistently use bad practices like this and use AI to search for keywords.
Then they get upset when candidates use AI to apply for jobs.
Rules for thee, but not for me!
“nO oNe WaNtS tO WoRk AnYmOrE!!”
We’ve airgapped the employee database from middle management resume double-space-n-font-checkers. Don’t ask how, it just happened.
- HR, Marketing sub-team
Employers do this partly to make sure you can follow simple instructions, and so they know you’re paying attention to the job you’re applying for.
Red flag. Stay the fuck away from any company who thinks this is acceptable. It only gets worse from there.
If you can’t handle data entry for the job application how the hell are you going to handle anything else in your job.
They absolutely can handle data entry. This post refers to the absurdity of firms asking for a resume and then asking for all the details in a form, which is pointless.
