Ask Slashdot: Why Are Online Job Applications So Badly Designed?

First time accepted submitter GreyViking (3606993) writes Over the past few years, I've witnessed a variety of my intelligent but largely non-technical nearest-and-dearest struggling to complete online job applications. The majority of these online forms are multiple screens long, and because they're invariably HTTPS, they'll time out after a finite time which isn't always made known to the user. Some sites actively disable back/forward buttons but many don't, and text that's sometime taken a lot of effort to compile, cut and paste can be lost. And did I mention text input boxes that are too small? Sometimes it seems that the biggest obstacle to getting a job can be being able to conquer the online application, and really, there has to be a better way: but what is it?

Comments

Pete and Repeat

[Anonymous Coward]

What annoys me the most is they ask you to upload your resume... and then ask you to fill out a million fields with the exact same information that's already on your resume.

Re:Pete and Repeat

[bobbied]

I further hate it when they insist on "plain text" for the resume too. For crying out loud, I spent hours trying to cram my 20+ years onto two pages and when I dump it to plain text it turns into like 5 pages of disjointed text. I get the problem with MS Office macros being dangerous, but plain text?

My advice to these sites is.... At least accept PDF or XPS versions of any document that's formatted like a Resume.

Re:Pete and Repeat

[ShanghaiBill]

I further hate it when they insist on "plain text" for the resume too..... At least accept PDF or XPS versions of any document that's formatted like a Resume.

You seem to be confused. Your resume is being read by a Perl script, not a human. If your resume does not include certain keywords, a human will never see it.

Because they don't use them to get employees.

[gurps_npc]

Instead, they use them to show that they are willing to accept anyone - black, white, male, female, etc.

Real jobs don't come from HR. They come from business contacts.

Re:Because they don't use them to get employees.

[bobbied]

Real jobs don't come from HR. They come from business contacts.

Actually, this is NOT true all the time. In fact, a any job you get from a corporation of any kind of size, you are going though HR and the only thing your contact can buy you is priority treatment (getting put top on the stack) and possibly having an advocate with the hiring manager. My last 3 jobs which cover the last 15 years of my life all came via HR and not direct contacts. In fact, most of my jobs came though the HR process and didn't involve an insider at all.

That"s not to say that jobs don"t come from referrals and business contacts, for small companies, they often do. It's just a function of what kind of company we are talking about. The bigger they are, the more likely HR is going to be in firm control of the initial vetting of possible candidates and having an inside contact is much less valuable. But in the small company, where they don't have an HR department., contacts are the only route to get in. So it just depends on what kind of company you are looking for.

Re:Because they don't use them to get employees.

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Real jobs don't come from HR. They come from business contacts.

Actually, this is NOT true all the time.

By any chance, do you work in HR? Exactly ZERO jobs "come from HR." Without a business need for a hire, there is no job. HR is the cadre of paper-pushers who stand in the way of getting a job, and make it impossible for teams to hire the people they actually need by enforcing meaningless, arcane, and bureaucratic "best practices" which also happen to enshrine the HR people themselves into unfirable, key-man positions. Their function is (literally) to prevent applicants from connecting with hiring managers--this is the exact opposite of what you should be trying to achieve. Until you're talking to the hiring manager, directly, and have permission to contact her directly after the fact with any followups, you're not a real candidate for a job. If HR can arbitrarily cut off your contact with the hiring manager (because you can only go "through HR") you're not a candidate--you're a person whose application is being used to justify the payment of salaries to HR people because otherwise "Who will deal with all these applicants?"

In fact, a any job you get from a corporation of any kind of size, you are going though HR and the only thing your contact can buy you is priority treatment (getting put top on the stack) and possibly having an advocate with the hiring manager.

It really depends on the company. Most organizations I know/have interviewed at intentionally recruit via third parties and "fix it on the back end" with HR because before they started doing so the HR "screener" disqualified all the good candidates and sent up clunkers with no employment "gaps," but no real achievements, either.

My last 3 jobs which cover the last 15 years of my life all came via HR and not direct contacts. In fact, most of my jobs came though the HR process and didn't involve an insider at all.

How many applications did you fill out to get those three jobs? 10? 50? 100? 1,000? 10,000? In the same 15 years, I've gotten six jobs. Five of them were recruiters, referrals, or placements. Only one involved "going in the front door" and that job paid the least of all the jobs, had the worst benefits, the longest hours, zero advancement opportunities, and generally sucked donkey-ass. And as for applications: I haven't filled one out since I started working with recruiters exclusively. "Fill out an application" is the same as being told "We'll call you"--it's a euphemism for "you aren't going to be hired."

Since I stopped doing the "front door" my salary has quadrupled (granted, I've also added a great skillset in the intervening 14.5 years,) my working hours are sane, and permit working remotely when going to the office is inconvenient. That "front-door" gig? If there was enough snow to make going to work dangerous, but the roads were open, you have to go or use a vacation day. Literally every job I've ever had has been better than the "front door" place. But I also spend less time interviewing and filling out pointless paperwork (that you'll have to fill out again when hired, because they can't just "type in what you put on your application" in your new hire paperwork, of course.

The bigger they are, the more likely HR is going to be in firm control of the initial vetting of possible candidates and having an inside contact is much less valuable. But in the small company, where they don't have an HR department., contacts are the only route to get in. So it just depends on what kind of company you are looking for.

Here's my advice, do with it what you will: If you're trying to get a job and the HR department is so "firmly in control" of hiring that they have total trump over every hiring decision run away as fast as you can. Don't walk--RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN. Why? Besides the nightmare of getting yourself hired, every time your team has an opening

Re:The larger problem..

[buchner.johannes]

This addon is a life-safer, for lost text input: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

Human Resources

[globaljustin]

the problem is HR

the *concept* of an online job application is fairly simple from a coding perspective...making some kind of form requires some choices but this is basic stuff

the systemic issue is with the people who define the parameters for the information...the HR people

HR is usually full of people making decisions that affect whole systems they have no understanding of and have no way of receiving feedback systemically to improve, part of the general problem in US biz structure

applying for a job is excruciating in the US today...it's just layers and layers of bad management

Blame HR ...

[gstoddart]

Online job application systems aren't intended to find good candidates.

They're designed to allow HR and recruiters to select the specific set of buzzwords they're looking for but have no understanding of, all while doing the minimum amount of work and the least amount of understanding.

You don't really think HR reads and is capable of evaluating all of those resumes, do you?

Re:Contact Us

[killkillkill]

If they won't mail it, assume the company tries to force every employee into a rigid structure where you will not be free to operate in the manner that best suites you. Your day-to-day work life will be subject to procedures as frustrating as the online form and endless TPS reports.

Re:No relationship between online app & gettin

[Frobnicator]

There is no relationship between an online job application and getting a job. Online job applications are neglected because no one needs 10,000 online forms filled out for 1 job.

It is well established (through most of history) that direct contacts and personal networks are the most likely way to get jobs. A few seconds on Google pulls up many research studies and sites that maintain real statistics (rather than just made-up numbers) on the topic. Like this one among many.

That one linked to is interesting because of the various charts. For those companies they track, direct referrals are only 6.9% of the applicants but represent 39.9% of those actually hired. Job boards and web sites account for 74.9% of the job applicants and 35.8% of the hires. This means that while it is still important to apply through the web because they pull many workers through there, it is far more effective to get an employee referral. In other words, one hour of working your social network looking for a referral is equivalent to roughly 12 hours of submitting web-based job applications.

The Internet is great for research and finding people in the organization, great for learning about openings. But when it comes to actually applying for a job, spend your time farming your social network to find someone who knows someone at the company rather than just applying through their site.

HR? What HR?

[sehryan]

I find it humorous that most of the comments are decrying the "HR" departments, when in reality a number of businesses using applicant tracking platforms are small business and do not really have any HR department to speak of.

They (and I, as I am a small business owner myself) use them so that I can 1. have one place that IS NOT my inbox to manage candidates, and 2. I can ensure that I am getting consistent info across all candidates.

And while I do not ask people to upload a resume and then fill out previous work experience fields, I can understand the necessity for such things, so that the small business owner can quickly scan over each applicant quickly, rather than trying to decode various resume layouts.

Because at the end of the day, my time is valuable, and any system that let's me spend less time doing things is going to be a boon to me, even if the downside is that I lose an applicant here and there in the process.

I work for a major provider of ATS

[netsavior]

Applicant Tracking System - This is the buzzword for an "apply online" type thing. I work for one of the big ones.

Here are some excuses
1) Employers can get sued if it isn't done a certain way. All of the laws are based on horrible paper applications.
2) Employers are scared of "the cloud" so you have to fill out a new application every time you apply to a new job even though the last 10 places you applied were using the same software
3) The perspective employees "candidates" are not the customer, the HR Director is the customer.
4) Statistically, longer, harder application processes result in higher employee retention rates.

that last one is a big one. My software can do all kinds of pre-employment testing for all kinds of things... skills, personality, mental alertness, etc.
The longer the testing process, the more "candidates" quit before completing. HOWEVER, the longer the testing process, the more likely an employee will be successful at their job.... To put it frankly, if you will wade through the shit to get hired, you will wade through it to stay employed. It doesn't even statistically matter what the results of the test were. Simply testing for anything at all will reduce employee turnover. The same can be said for unwieldy applications. If a candidate is not serious about filling out an application, they will not be serious about work either.

That said... I promise our applications are better than most, at least our javascript works, and progress is automatically saved... Still it all sucks (blame the lawyers), we just try to suck less.