Two years ago I was laid off from three jobs in nine months. Talk about an emotional roller coaster. I got the second job almost the same day I lost the first one, which was a relief. Then I got laid off at Christmas. Two months later in Bangkok I had a conversation with someone who was really excited to hire me. I got the job, and three months later the work was gone, and so was I.
But surely I can get another job, right? I got the last two pretty easily. Alas, no. I’ve applied to nearly a hundred jobs since then, and I’ve learned a few things. Here are some things I’d like employers to take to heart. These are things that the majority of places I’ve applied to failed it.
Send me an auto response
I can’t tell you how many jobs I’ve applied for and once I hit submit nothing happens at all. Did it go through? No idea. Send me an automated email saying “Thanks for applying, we’ll get back to you!”
Tell me when I’ll know either way
Include it in the auto response. “We plan to make a decision by Date”. Then I don’t sit staring at my inbox for days. And then weeks. And then months.
Let me know if I don’t make the cut
Don’t ghost the people who don’t make it. Give them closure. Waiting is super painful. “But we get 5,000 applications!” Fine, send an automated message to ALL of them.
Don’t list jobs that aren’t available
A few weeks ago I spent an hour pulling together a cover letter and tailoring a résumé, and the email I got back said “Oh sorry, we’re not actually hiring for that position, we just list all jobs all the time”. What a huge waste of my time, AND an emotional let down.
Post your jobs on your own site
You want to cast a wide net, I get it. You post on LinkedIn and a zillion other places. The problem with that is that Job Spam is a real thing. People post fake jobs for real places all the time, and I could waste my time, or worse give them my personal info on a fake job. When I see a job listing, the very first thing I do is leave the site I found it on and go to the site of the company and find the job.
The listing is usually much better because lots of job sites simply scrape the internet and de-format the listing, which make it look terrible and is hard to read.
Posting it on your own site lends it credibility, usually tells me a lot more about the job.
Have an RSS feed for your jobs
There are two types of applicants:
- Those who script their application and spam hundreds or thousands of jobs, whether they qualify or not.
- Those who carefully hunt for good jobs and then carefully apply for those they’re qualified for.
You want the second type, and you want to make it easy for them to find your position. Requiring those people to manually go to several different sites daily or weekly looking is a huge blocker.
If you want quality applicants, publish your open positions via RSS. I’m astounded by how few companies leverage this very simple power tool.
If you’re doing it right, your jobs have a custom post type. If you instead simply make them posts on your WordPress site, make it a category. Then WordPress MAGICALLY makes an RSS feed for your jobs. No work involved.
Tell me the pay scale
It’s very difficult to find out late in the process that the pay scale is ridiculously low. Just yesterday my wife sent me a job listing that looked pretty great. Fortunately they did the RIGHT thing, and said right up front that the pay scale was 80% lower than it should have been.
Finding out after interactions have begun, or in a first interview, that the pay scale is wildly out of scope is hard. Tell me right in the job listing what the range is, so I don’t waste my time applying for a job that isn’t a fit.
Be human
Some of the very best rejections and interactions I’ve had were because someone communicated with me personally. I recently called a phone number on a website and the CEO of the company answered. I asked if I could come in and say hi and he said yes. We had a great conversation. He then ghosted me, but that doesn’t change the fact that the whole thing felt more real because I talked to someone.
Summary
If LinkedIn is to be believed, finding quality applicants is difficult. As some who has been trying to be a quality applicant for 2 years now, I can tell you employers are NOT making it easy, and they ARE streamlining for poor applicants. Please don’t do that. It’s bad for you, and it mentally and emotionally depressing for those of us trying to find a job.
Every listing that looks good creates a spark of hope. Not getting a job because they picked someone else is hard, but understandable. They can’t hire everyone.
Not getting a job because the employer failed at the things above is depressing. Having it happen 100 times over the span of years quells hope. And one you loose hope, life can get pretty dark.
Banner image by gabypunk15. It’s cropped, but no other modifications were made.
