Rant: The Job Hunt

You know what bugs me about online job application websites? They're all different.

And I don't mean different in the way that the 'submit' button is on the left instead of the right, but in the way that they are so varying in terms of their ability to understand the input of the end user.

In short: they're poor.

This website accepts 30 types of documents, but another only understands Microsoft Word. After all, who uses anything else but Microsoft Word? Has anyone heard of Adobe PDF documents, perhaps? They're only everywhere on the internet where standardization is of any interest. Certainly don't inform me in any way which file types you do accept, given it is this limited.

Some websites do not accept attachments at all. So that cover letter and resume you spent hours carefully crafting and agonizing over? The nice tables you used to get that perfect alignment? Forget it. Just copy and paste them into these basic text boxes here that are no larger than a sticky note.

As an alternative, why not let the iResume system make you stand out more? It will take your resume and process it using the latest analytic and querying algorithms, then automatically populate the required fields... all to save you time. Sounds great!

If only it worked.

My job as an IT Analyst for ABC Inc., from February 2003 to June 2009, has now been translated into a job at Mississauga, Ontario, with unknown job title, from September 2001 to September 2001.

So, tell me: what does your tool populate, exactly?

Inconveniently, iResume also picks out your most applicable job skills, by searching for the most random strings of text in your resume, and letting you select them as a skill, like "bank", "analyst" or "Ms" - whatever that is (I still don't know where that came from). Who thought this was a good idea?

It reminds me of older job application software five years ago, where you could select from a hundred words, like "Microsoft" or "security" or "eCommerce". Do those words mean anything by themselves? Would you hire me because I put "security" down as a skill? What does that even mean?

Even better, if two companies you are applying for use the same vendor's job application software, rest assured that your resume is not stored in a central location; instead, and predictably, it exists only on the servers of each individual company.

So though the login screen and questions are identical to that last job you just applied for, because the same company wrote that code, this one will not know the username and password you used for the last one, as it is a completely disparate system.

How 1990.

This makes sense when companies have their own team of HR staff to sift through resumes - why would you store your data elsewhere? But if you hire an external company to build software to save your recruiters' time, why not save the applicant's time, also? Because "why bother?", that's why. "Who cares?" is another good reason.

What is also ironic, is that many of the jobs I am applying for lately are asking for detail-oriented people with excellent written communication, yet many of the job postings demonstrate that nobody like this was involved.

Well, I suppose that's why they need them.