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Andrew Plato wrote:
> The entire process of job hunting is "applicant-hostile."
No, only the heavily restrictive application forms are hostile.
I find the social and professional networking scene to be pretty
active and friendly right now, if you do it right.
> Any time you are asking somebody else for a favor
> there is a natural power-imbalence.
You are pretty far along the management track if you think
job-hunting is "asking for a favor." (Brother, can you spare a
dime?) I prefer to think of it as a business relationship.
> They have the job, you have skills. You have to prove
> to them you are right for the job, hence you have to
> survive their challenges.
I think psyching out their screening process is a pretty good
survival skill. Besides, it's fun to see if you can do it. I
wouldn't want to depend on that as the only way to find a job,
though.
> No offense Mike...
None take, Andrew. Even management and body-shops are entitled
to their defenders.
> ...but anybody with 1/10th of a clue will see right
> through these ploys.
As I see through their web forms. It's just a game; the real
jobs are found by word of mouth. But sometimes, there is a real
actual need for your skills buried beneath the layers of crap in
the application process. As I said though, lately I have been
(fortunate?) enough to find work through networking and word of
mouth, so I really haven't been through one of those web forms
in a while. But I still look at them.
Besides, the employers are doing exactly the same thing.
Employers are concealing their identities, cross-posting in
multiple markets, salting their ads with irrelevant keywords,
posting bogus jobs, and posting the same lonely little job with
six different recruiters. If applicants wake up and use the same
tactics, well that's just business. When you are invited to a
knife fight you need to bring a knife.
> Cute tricks and pages of searchbait look awfully desperate.
The desparate ones are the managers or recruiters who use layers
of restrictive web forms instead of actually reading resumes and
having human conversations with people. Their cute option lists,
radio buttons, and cookies are the real desparate stuff.
> Somebody does read those forms, eventually.
The recruiters themselves told me they didn't read them. I
actually discussed this with many of the people who called me
back. They usually say "Yeah, the forms are really ugly... Can
you send me a Word doc?" Remember, I'm not relying much on
Monster et al anymore, I no longer take them seriously. In fact
I think my accounts expire next week. I mainly use the
activity/quality on the job boards as an unscientific barometer
of the market.
> And the original material will probably go past the
> junior level person on up to the regular person.
Cool!
> And that regular person may see those tricks and think,
> "this dude can't even follow directions on a web site"
> and toss your resume into the trash.
Yes, come to think of it I _have_ noticed fewer callbacks from
bottom-feeders recently.
> Moreover, some companies have security measures on their web
> databases that will automatically kick out text in fields
> that is too long or contains long strings.
Well, if you successfully retrieve your data and it's intact,
that's a pretty good indication the database didn't kick it out.
Sounds like FUD to me.
> Attempts to repeatedly bang against the web server
> could get your IP address dropped into a kill file
> and blocked.
More FUD; let me know if you have evidence (I'll even take
anecdotes!)
> It would be more beneficial for job hunters to network with
> decision-makers and technical staff then trying to outsmart
> web servers.
Don't you just HATE it when a web server thinks it is smarter
than you are!!
> Now, a really clever person would take the time to figure out
> what the employer wanted and then custom design a resume
Resumes are _so_ 1990s... send them a corporate brochure
instead.
> without having to
> resort to cheap web server tricks.
I think the restrictive application forms are the cheap tricks.
Happy New Year! and happy job-hunting.
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