This story is from abcnews.com and is filled with great points. The first “bad trend” speaks straight to me:
Labyrinthine Job Application Systems
If there’s one thing I hear more job hunters harrumph about, it’s the maddening online application tools so many companies use. No one’s suggesting employers do away with online job applications altogether, just that they bring their systems up to twenty-first century computing standards.
“Not only do most of them have the job seeker input all of the information from their resume — redundantly at times — but half of them shut down, crash your computer or steer you into dead ends,” said Dick Barnes of The Freeland Group…
I hear the exact same thing from many candidates to the point where I experienced it first-hand. Some of these systems are absolutely ridiculous. My background is in sales and sales hiring so I am underwhelmed by most talent management software. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to look at a resume and talk to a candidate.
And if you read this blog regularly, you will know this is one is near and dear to my heart:
Overly Demanding Job Listings
Once upon a time, a person could apply for a job as a plumber, software programmer or public affairs officer. Now we have job listings calling for programmers with marketing experience, plumbers with a project management background and publicists who have a knack for accounting, mediating personnel issues and troubleshooting a leaky toilet.
Deirdre, an executive assistant in Los Angeles who didn’t want her real name used, said she has seen a rise in such demanding, kitchen-sink job listings during the 16 months she’s been looking for work.
How true. The need to spell out every little detail, to insert every little criteria, to require every bit of experience…this approach can actually derail the hiring process into the undesirable task of recycling mediocrity.
Salespeople need to have the ability to hunt down information. If you provide every detail in the ad, you forfeit the opportunity to see their qualifying skill in the initial stage of the hiring process.