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Looking For A Job Is Harder Than I Remember
12 years ago
General
O_O OMG, has looking for a job gotten like twice complicated and a thousand times stupider in the last six years or is it just that I have less of a tolerance for bureaucratic bullshit than I used to? Seriously. Half the time I want to apply for a job I found on one job site, I have to fill out a profile and submit a resume and everything. Takes awhile. Then I click the "apply for job" link only to be sent to a different job site that requires the exact same information. The best (read worst) one was when I filled out two separate profiles on two separate sites only to have the second site send me to the company's homepage and have me apply for the job through their site's interface which requires the EXACT same info I just filled out twice already.
It seems like most of these businesses are completely missing the point of these job sites. They collect all this information for you. More over, what is the point of having someone submit a resume if you're still going require that they fill out every single thing that's on the resume already through your stupid little web interface that makes the whole process take a half hour to complete? If someone already has a resume ready to go then they've already done the work. Now all you have to do is read the resume. Ya know, doing your job. If the resume doesn't have all the info you want then you can disregard it and be done. For god sake people at least invest a little time and have a script that at least searches the document submitted for all the relevant info. Most of the job sites do this which makes me so very grateful every time, but I've seen maybe one or two business websites that do this. Not small ones either, I'm talking international hotel chain level business. Hell that application included filling out the in depth application, a personality questionnaire and then taking a 50 question long quiz that wasn't even specific to the job I was applying for and they estimated it would take you an hour to complete.
Ok, done ranting. Long story short, applying for jobs is taking up a LOT more of my time than I anticipated. So apologies to those who are still waiting on stuff. I am still working on art, I just don't have the kind of time that I thought I would have to be working on stuff. I will get there though.
It seems like most of these businesses are completely missing the point of these job sites. They collect all this information for you. More over, what is the point of having someone submit a resume if you're still going require that they fill out every single thing that's on the resume already through your stupid little web interface that makes the whole process take a half hour to complete? If someone already has a resume ready to go then they've already done the work. Now all you have to do is read the resume. Ya know, doing your job. If the resume doesn't have all the info you want then you can disregard it and be done. For god sake people at least invest a little time and have a script that at least searches the document submitted for all the relevant info. Most of the job sites do this which makes me so very grateful every time, but I've seen maybe one or two business websites that do this. Not small ones either, I'm talking international hotel chain level business. Hell that application included filling out the in depth application, a personality questionnaire and then taking a 50 question long quiz that wasn't even specific to the job I was applying for and they estimated it would take you an hour to complete.
Ok, done ranting. Long story short, applying for jobs is taking up a LOT more of my time than I anticipated. So apologies to those who are still waiting on stuff. I am still working on art, I just don't have the kind of time that I thought I would have to be working on stuff. I will get there though.
Best of luck to you sir.
The companies of the USA know they have the advantage and they fulling use it to hurt applicants to get the most over qualified for the cheapest possible. I know all of this because I do head hunting as a side business.
Sadly, if you read statistics and news, but if you have not worked in the last 6 months, you have a very tough battle a head of you. I recommend starting a side business.
Let me know if you ever want to just chat about said topic
I apply for a job, do my best to write an interesting application, send them all the information, only to get told that they don't actually read the application, or when you are at the job interview they first want you to fill out a form were they want all the information you've given already them again.
Worse are the job interviews. 12 years I worked for the same boss before his business went belly-up. And after 5 years, including two 1-year jobs (which didn't count as jobs and weren't from a monetary point of view) the job agency has the grace to send me to a seminar were I learn how you apply for a job nowadays. You know what? No wonder I couldn't find a job. Job interviews have become an arcane ritual you can't answer right unless you know the quesrtion. Essentially I have to bend my work history and nearly lie about what I have done or how I work to fit the worker they want. Unless I can make them believe that, I won't get the job. The question if I can do the job or not has become secondary. I have to convince them I am what and who they are looking for.
By the way, the information how to apply at the job agency is completely out of date. Oh, well the job agency here in germany (the federal one) is only driven by one thing. Not that you find work, no, that you are no longer part of the statistic. I'm a salesman and what do they have me do? Send me to a seminar to get a license for a forklift. An idiot would look at my job history and see, that while I am now qualified to drive a forklift, I have no experience driving one, nor working in a warehouse. Now I have to apply for such a job, knowing nothing will come of it.
Liek I said, I understand how you feel.
P.S. the two one-year jobs were for 6 hours a day for a pittiance, but I was out of the statistics and they still paid my dole.
Just today we had a report in germany, that more and more people take drugs to be able to work more, alcohol or drugs to cope with it and already costing the german economy 60 billion Euros a year because when they finally crash, they can't work for months, somethimes years. The psycological reasons are bad enough, but if they have to go through a drug withdrawl it's really bad.
And still no one in charge is doing anything about the workloads assigned. I mean, for humanitarian reasons alone the goverment should step in, but the economical costs will only go up, so it would also be in the corporations interests to stop that practice. But hey, short-term profits are more important than general health and long-term stability of the economy.
The problem gets worse. The people who we expect to solve our problems for us, do not have a clue as to how to solve them since they have never had to deal with them themselves. How many elected politicians have ever lost their homes to foreclosure? How many HR reps have spent a couple of months going from one web-site to another filling out the same stupid forms?
Because of that, we get one bizarre government-funded social-help program, or have to go through one bureaucratic "maze” after another, all created by people who never had to deal with the problem they have been put in charge of solving. But that’s okay. They went to college where professors, who had spent their adult life in school, taught them how to solve life’s problems -- based on books they read.
These problem solvers we look to save us, institutionalize the problems they have been put in charge of solving, or direct us to some other “department", while all the time enjoying lucrative careers and perpetually blaming their inability to solve the problems they have been put in charge of solving 'on a lack of funding'. The U.S. educational system is an example.
And all the while we sheepishly accept it as "the way things are done". Welcome to the 21st Century. “Baaa, baaa, baaa.”
The problem isn't even that these people don't know how to solve these problems. If they honestly wish to fix the problem and help the American people then all they have to do is ask people who do know how to fix these problems and take their advice. Our major problem is that they don't honestly wish to fix the problem. Their core concern is getting reelected and nothing else. To that end they have to appear to be standing up for Democratic or Republican values. So instead of trying to create more good, well paying jobs or protect the American people from corporations screwing them over left and right we fight over Voter ID laws, attempts to close abortion clinics, attempts to legalize gay marriage and various other less important and polarizing issues.
Long story short, it's not that people have gotten into the habit of having other people fix their problems (as a core issue, there are plenty who have though) and it's more that there are certain things that other people are suppose to be fixing for us and they aren't. So a lot of people don't have the tools they need to actually take care of themselves. Sure, you have a job, but if that pays minimum wage you can't live on your own. Even if you're in one of the better cost of living areas like I am. Hell, if that job pays $10/hour even, you can't live on your own here, much less take care of someone else.
People should have realized by now (I know they will never be educated to the thought), that every person cannot stand around waiting to have his or her individual needs satisfied by someone else. When we fall down, we do not lie there waiting for someone else to pick us up. That’s a belief we should all have given up when we reached the age where we were supposed to stop standing around wanting for Mommy & Daddy to take care of us and to start taking care of our selves and others.
“… all they [the American people] have to do is ask people who do know how to fix these problems and take their advice”. That is just my point. Those people in places of authority do not know how to fix the problems. If they did, then the problems would have been fixed long ago instead of going on and on year after year.
It’s satisfying to point one’s finger at Congress and blame them for being inept, but are voters voting for candidates for Congress, or even the Presidency, who stand for office based on their work experience in the problem areas? No, they are voting for novelty candidates who are “different” because of their skin color, gender or physical attractiveness. Eventually Congress will come to resemble the building the Tower of Babel with the same consequences.
Yeah, I've heard that argument, yet while Oil Companies and other billion dollar industries are making record profits while paying comparatively low taxes to what they were during the Clinton Administration and we don't have the booming economy that argument would suggest we should have. In an ideal world those record profits would be going to fund new research and expanding the job base and upgrading facilities and things like that created not only more jobs, but more happy, productive and loyal workers. The problem is that in the real world the super rich tend to get that way by being super stingy. Sure, upgrading a facility and hiring more workers might mean happier and more productive employees, but why do that when they can just require the employees they have to be more productive with what they have already? Why put more money into the situation when you don't absolutely have to? Sure that will increase turnover, but it'll still be cheaper overall to just train new people. This is why the "well they'll have more money so they'll be able to hire more people" line falls flat when you're talking about anything accept small and new businesses. Which everyone who's not getting gifts (read: bribes) from lobbyists agree that they are the ones that need the most help. Small businesses should be getting the tax breaks and incentives because they turn around and spend that money on making their stores better which enhances the community and the economy. The oil companies on the other hand, regardless of how many people they employ, act more like leeches on our economy than all of those people getting unemployment while they desperately try to find someone who'll hire them ever could. Case in point there are four counties in South Texas and two counties in West Texas that are turning their roads into gravel because they can't afford to repair them anymore and have sited that the damage is due to increased traffic by the energy companies.
“That is just my point. Those people in places of authority do not know how to fix the problems. If they did, then the problems would have been fixed long ago instead of going on and on year after year."
I think you misunderstood me here. I wasn't saying that they knew how to fix the problem. I'm not even saying that they should know how to fix the problem. What I'm saying is these people are supposed to be consulting experts about said problem. People that are devoted to studying and learning about the thing you need answers on. These people aren't being elected because they're experts on everything that ever did a thing. They're elected (at least they're supposed to be) on their ability to lead and to stand up for their constituents. Part of that job would be consulting with experts who help them understand the problem better and give them recommendations on what they should do as well as talking to their constituents and seeing what they would prefer be done about the issue. While I think we both agree that people are being elected for all the wrong reasons these days I'm trying to make the tower of babble metaphor work for this situations and I'm just not seeing it.
"People should have realized by now (I know they will never be educated to the thought), that every person cannot stand around waiting to have his or her individual needs satisfied by someone else. When we fall down, we do not lie there waiting for someone else to pick us up. That’s a belief we should all have given up when we reached the age where we were supposed to stop standing around wanting for Mommy & Daddy to take care of us and to start taking care of our selves and others."
I'm gonna be quite frank here, that is just down right insulting to the vast majority of the population of this country and I'm really getting sick of all the variations of the "welfare queen" line. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. Yes, there are people in this country that don't want to work and think everything should be handed to them. They are a very small minority. The vast majority of Americans want to work. They want to be financially independent and successful and they are willing to work to get there. The problem isn't that American's don't want to work. The #1 problem (there are more, but this is most pressing in my opinion) is jobs, especially your "lower level" entry level jobs don't pay anywhere close to enough for someone to live off of. When McDonald's budget plan assumes you have a second job and that you don't have to buy food in order to make the numbers work right then there is something wrong.
Do you honestly think that ‘business research, expansion and upgrading of facilities’ is done just to create happy, productive and loyal workers?
What exactly do the “super rich” do with all their money?
The people and companies who freely use the roads you mentioned are not held accountable to keeping the infrastructure (roads and city and county utilities) functioning. That is the job of the elected officials of the city and county governments using your tax money -- no matter who uses the roads. Deteriorating infrastructure is one of the first signs of a corrupt local government.
At basic level, anyone who invests their time, effort and personal funds to create a business does so for their own benefit (to make money or perhaps altruistically, to provide a product or service for others), not as a social/welfare relief project for the unemployed.
Workers who do not invest their own time and effort into making themselves more valuable to a potential employer (who wants to make money by employing them) are more than likely to become unemployed and stay unemployed. A grammar school educated ditch-digger is not as employable as an university engineering graduate.
If the people in authority are supposed to ‘consult with experts who will help them understand the problem better and give them recommendations on what they should do as well as talking to their constituents and seeing what they would prefer be done about the issue’, what then if the experts’ advice conflicts with what the elected official’s constituents want? Experts recommend elimination of half of the gasoline powered automobiles in the country for example while the constituency want cheaper gasoline to run their automobiles.
Or perhaps even more basically, when there are many “experts” with different opinions as to how to solve a social problem. How’s an elected official to know which one to follow? Hire another expert to tell him?
Juvenile delinquency has been a recognized US problem since the 1950’s, but it still exits and has become part of low-level Organized Crime. Why haven’t the experts solved that yet? Lyndon Johnson (a fellow Texan) declared War on Poverty in the 1960s, why hasn’t poverty been eliminated? Obesity affects more than half the U.S. population and creates a large percentage of the medical problems straining the Health System. Why haven’t the experts solved that problem?
Exactly which major social problems have been solved by the politicians?
As for my Tower of Babel analogy, every small social element has some sort of problem that they look to their elected officials (who somehow are supposed to find the right “expert”) to solve for them. Economic problems, racial problems, old-age problems, drug problems, crime problems, housing problems, obesity problems, lack-of-jobs problems, lack-of-education problems, immigrant problems, sexual orientation acceptance problems … each making their different demand on society, each adding their different voice to the babble and taking attention away from the continual social task of building our “tower”.
When are people going to accept that the solution to most of their own problems are in their own hands and give up their “Poor Me I Am A Helpless Victim” attitude, complaining and waiting for some “Super Parent” (i.e., the Government) to step in and solve their problems for them?
Where you see people saying "Poor me I am a helpless victim" I see people saying "I'm working 70 hours a week at two minimum wage jobs. I get to choose between seeing my kids and sleeping and I just want all of this effort to matter."
You see politicians dealing with the problems of their constituents as distractions from continuing to build the tower. I see people trying to make the foundation of the tower more stable. There are things we forgot to include, structural integrity problems that need to be addressed, etc...
So basically, I think we're just going to have agree to disagree on this issue.
People should not judged by their intentions, but by the outcomes of their actions.
Regardless there is no doubt that people are responsible for the outcome of their actions. There is also no doubt that people are going to make stupid choices during their lifetimes. Everyone, no exceptions. I personally don't think we, the richest and most powerful nation on the planet should be letting our people drown under the consequences of their actions.
Also, I'm pretty sure this isn't how capitalism is supposed to work. I mean, the company controls the whole hiring process. They decide who they are going to interview, they write the contract that you have to live under and they determine your salary. There's no barter, no negotiation. I don't get to demand that my job provide insurance if they want me to work there. I don't have any recourse if my boss starts making demands that are just this side of impossible. It's just a take it or leave it scenario, and since they know they can do that they give you the bare minimum they think they can get away with and still keep their turnover in an acceptable range. (Which can be incredibly high in some jobs) And, lucky me, I live in a "right to work" state. I really freaking hate that phrase. It doesn't mean that. If anything it means "right to fire for any virtually any reason" state.
Thus, you're encountering the wonderful things known as Applicant Tracking Systems. They're not any less obnoxious from the other side of the desk, really; they generally don't work very well.
You need a healthy dose of patience to navigate the hiring maze these days. Case in point, I just had interview #4 today. May you have a little bit less "fun" than I've been having. :P
They make you spend 2 hours filling out crap(my favorite is the irrelevant stuff like "why do you want to work here?") and taking that stupid personality test just to MAYBE get a call about an interview. I find that most companies don't even look at references. For a long time I had three of them, one of which changed their number years ago, and one of which wouldn't give a very good reference. I still got calls for interviews. It's so stupid. -_-
I pent three and a half hours doing the online application. Then had to wait thirty minutes for a fifteen minute phone call with an automated machine.
Many of the questions were the tedious ones, like:
"Why do you want to work here?"
"Who was your role model as a kid?"
"What time do you wake up in the morning?"
and my favorite: "What will you do if you get the job?"