Job Hunting - Is The Modern Approach Working?


PAST
  • The most reliable and fruitful media for job hunters were always the newspapers and professional magazines where you were always assured of finding suitable positions that matched your skills and ambition.

  • Ads were clear and concise, quoting brief background of the company, job description and requirements and salary package offered.

  • Contact name and telephone number were usually included and what was more, if you needed to make contact with the company, you could usually get to speak with the person named who would be happy to answer questions.

  • A current CV or Resume that could be submitted with a specific 'hand written' covering letter

  • Applications were submitted by post, ensuring that it would land on the desk of the requested contact

  • From the closing date for applications, a favourable invitation for interview or a polite reject letter would usually follow within 7-10 days. Irrespective of the outcome, you could generally trust that your application had been given due attention and consideration.

  • An interview was guaranteed to be uninterrupted time in a scheduled appointment and an opportunity to sell yourself to a prospective employer.

  • Rejections after interview, although disappointing, followed quickly and were, for the most part, constructive and polite. It was closure.

Job hunting today has become a cold, clinical and demoralizing process. Labelled now as 'Human Resources' rather than 'Personnel' the name contradicts the fact that, very often, it is far from a ' human friendly' resource at all.
PRESENT
  • For large multi-million dollar companies to local businesses, looking for company directors to factory workers, the internet has now become the most widely used job market in the world.

  • The scope of the internet is so large that it can be a painstaking and time consuming job searching countless web sites to identify potential positions

  • Very specific, technical and often lengthy Job Descriptions that are not 'candidate friendly'

  • On-line skill and aptitude tests that may have little or no relevance to the position advertised.

  • No identifiable contact to help steer you through the application process

  • Although accepting Resumes or CVs from candidates, there is often a quite time wasting process of duplicating the information on to a company Application Form.

  • Applications only invited through e-mail without any other form of contact being available, i.e. name or telephone number of company contact.

  • A very curt and decisive paragraph that informs all candidates that if they do not hear back from the company within a certain period, they must assume that their application has been unsuccessful.
  • Spending countless hours in front of a computer screen, firing off applications to nameless, faceless human resource departments, never sure if your e-mail will even be opened, is a soul destroying process.

  • Checking daily for the e-mail that will bring an invitation for interview is even worse. To have to assume that you have been unsuccessful shows a distinct lack of professionalism and integrity on the part of the company.

  • Interviews, when granted, that have become more of a questions and answers session, leaving little opportunity for either party to really get a 'gut feeling' about the job or the candidate. This is not helped by computer screens and cell phones that are constantly competing for attention with the unfortunate interviewee sitting on the other side of the desk
Today it would seem that most employers are simply too busy to reply to every job application that they receive. I don't buy that. A simple two line e-mail using mail merge would take minutes. There were still the same number of working hours in a day years ago and that two line letter would have been generated on a golf ball typewriter, photocopied with each candidates name inserted and mailed out as a matter of courtesy.
We may live in a high tech environment, heavily reliant on automation, but we still need a degree of human interaction and communication, especially in the field of recruitment. It is no wonder that there are so many disillusioned job hunters out there who just don't feel that their voice is being heard.
My name is Deborah-Ann Pearman. My career background is in human resources. With many years experience both as a business owner and in the public sector, I am aware that very few of us ever maximize our potential and often struggle so hard to achieve so little. My philosophy that you are never too old to learn and all of us, whatever our age, have the potential to do something spectacular. Click on my link to find out how you can achieve your potential. http://getupandgo-online.com