Job hunting in the age of automation

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

:smack: You have got to be kidding me!

So, I put together a very comprehensive resumé package. For the sake of argument let’s pretend my current job title is Director of Marketing and Publishing and I have 12 years experience.

A publishing position was available at my buddy’s firm and I sent my package away. He was excited because my skill set is right on target and exactly what they were looking for. Basically, I’d be going into an identical position to my current job. First two items in both my cover letter and resumé extol the virtues of my 12 years of publishing experience.

My buddy went to put in a good word for me and found out that they had discarded my stuff right away. Saying “Oh, yeah. He was a Marketing Director, we’re looking for someone in publishing.” My buddy did a :confused: and asked if they looked at stuff. The publishing boss had ignored everything else they had specifically requested, skipped to work experience and had read the first three words of my title, not my whole title, just three words and stopped there.

When my buddy said “My friend is the Director of Marketing and Publishing, he has 12 years experience in [all the stuff their company does]” they got excited. They want me to resubmit because they already purged my stuff. The job requires “attention to detail” and they are having a hard time finding qualified people.

On the opposite end of the spectrum:

Annoyed by an on-line submission form for a different job (you know the kind that take your beautifully formatted stuff and clump it together in one giant run-on string of unbroken text? that kind of thing), I got pissed with ii, and I must admit I got a little cheaky: they wanted a bulleted list of key skills, one sentence each.

For the third bullet I wrote “3) You’re not reading this anyway, so here’s a bunch of keywords: keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, keyword4.” Further along, there was another box in which I put “Turing test! Keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, keyword4.”

If figured they’d just think “Jerk.” and hit delete. But no! I got a call. They said based on my (totally full-of-nonsense) on-line application, they wanted to see me. When I asked a few questions, it became clear that no one there had looked at my stuff at all. Some keyword search 'bot spat out my name, someone called me, and if I was lucky maybe a human would review what I’d input prior to interview.

Geez! At least I now how to play the game now and I can reformat my stuff and spam them with keywords.

2

At least they’re letting you reapply. I went after one job recently at a place I had applied to a couple years ago. Not only was I an excellent fit for the job, I had been a finalist for the previous job, AND have a friend in the organization who volunteered to push me internally.

My friend was surprised to learn 1) that the opening was only posted in one place, 2) the organization won’t accept any applications that aren’t made through the online procedure and 3) only the HR manager is allowed to see who applied and sort the applications.

Somewhat similar, I had a friend who put in a good word for me at another company, which prompted a frosty email from HR to the effect that if I was so damn good, my application would naturally rise to the top of the pile without any prompting, and she should just butt out.

3

Academia has gone to automated at most schools and it sucks donkeys. I particularly hate having to type the same damned info into every different database (name, address, schools attended, jobs held, duties, references, etc.) when IT’S ALL ON MY FRIGGING VITA!

I posted on here an irritation on one site that I’ve now found others which do the same thing: when asked if I’ve ever been convicted of anything illegal it gives me the options of yes or no. Well, yeah, I’ve had traffic tickets and I paid them- that’s technically a conviction for illegal activity- but it doesn’t let you specify and checking yes looks the same for running a red light 6 years ago as it does for getting convicted of felony cocaine possession with intent to distribute last year.

There are also some that skip ahead, or leave out rather important instructions (e.g. do you want me to go last job first or reverse, how far back do you want me to go in employment, etc.). Then they ask you to attach your cover letter, vita, and references.

I’ve started just saying “See attached vita” for duties, but it irks me that I even have to double enter the information about jobs and education and references and the like (and it won’t let you skip ahead or accept “see vita” as an option on most of them).

4

Ummm… most traffic tickets are not considered to be convictions, so you don’t have to put them on an application.

5

I won’t be. I’m leaving my current job because the writers in the department I work with have cast aside all efforts when it comes to fact checking and basic attention to detail. (See this thread for details.)

Most recently we had a publication cover with 12 high-level professional contributors… 6 of which were submitted by the writer incorrectly (some embarrassingly, so Eg/ if your contributor is the Vice-President of Major Big Bank, don’t refer to him in your copy was the Vice-Principal of Major Pig Bank). The mistakes were accepted as “correct” by our VP and now we’ve got a costly mess on our hands.

If the person who would be my future boss threw out my entire package because he didn’t read beyond three words in a professional job title, then it isn’t any better than where I am now.

6

If you’re tardy paying them, you get a notice in the mail that says “Notice of Conviction” or some equivalent and something in the letter part that says “You have been convicted under the highway Traffic Act…” or similar wording. My mom, who always forgets to pay her parking tickets has a bunch of “convictions” on record somewhere.

7

Most traffic violations are not considered criminal offenses, and hence do not meet the definition of a crime or “illegal activity”.

8

I’ve written code to extract information from reports that come from supposedly very structured environments with rules. You’d be amazed at the variance. Sure, a company can spend a lot of money on text data mining, but a lot of the time you won’t quite say the right things in the right way, and will get skipped. 20 years ago I used to sort through hundreds of resumes - but no one has the time for that anymore, half of HR has been laid off, so key word search is the name of the game.

However, not reading the resumes kicked out by the search is inexcusable.

9

1 I can kind of see. Not 2. Your friend might ask HR and his line management why HR thinks they know what is needed to do a job in his department better than he can. (Or she.) I’ve heard about this problem, but have never experienced it, since I work in areas which HR people don’t even pretend to understand.