Have you ever had someone tell you to just go walk into a business and demand a job, any job, doesn’t matter what it is? Or that you need to go in and ask to speak to the manager and to remember to have a firm handshake?
When I was younger and first looking for a job, I was told some version of that advice many times by my elders. When they were young, a person could get a job by doing what they suggest. But today we do things online: send mail (e-mail), read the news, chat with family, and even apply for jobs.
Almost every company has an online application process that candidates go through. It usually involves filling out your past employment experience, answering some questions and attaching your resume. This kind of hiring software has become so ubiquitous that it’s an industry in and of itself.
If you’re a company that is looking to try and streamline the hiring process by using an online system, there are a lot of vendors that will be more than happy to sell you their solution. A lot of the time these online forms are also used to reject candidates. They’ll sometimes do simple word matching. If a company wants the candidate to be familiar with xyz application or have abc skill, the software will automatically reject the candidate if it doesn’t find that anywhere in the resume.
We’re now learning that these programs are rejecting good candidates for arbitrary reasons that often aren’t good. Some of them reject candidates that have gaps in employment without asking what the reason for the gap is. Perhaps they recently became a parent and decided to take some time off. Some of them have questionnaires that will reject you if you don’t fill out every question to their liking (such as marking expert in every skill it asks about). It’s an aggravating situation to be in if you’re looking for a job. Many times, you’re forced to lie on these online applications just to get through the system so you can talk to an actual human.
This situation is just as aggravating for executives. When a company wants to fill a position, they want to make sure they get the best possible pool of candidates. And when their hiring software is rejecting perfectly good candidates for arbitrary reasons, it frustrates the executive as much as the candidates. Most executives acknowledge the issue, but at the same time they also can’t do much about the issue.
In the corporate world, hundreds of people apply to each job opening. A person can’t go through all of those resumes to ensure the good candidates get interviews, it costs too much time. And usually, by the time the executives learn about how bad their hiring software is, the company is too entrenched in it to do anything about it. They’ve already signed a contract with a vendor to screen the applications for them, and it’ll cost a lot of money to cancel the contract and try to build or vet another piece of software.
So, what can we do about it? Well, sometimes the old advice can work.
I’ve read several success stories of people that dressed up, went in person and handed a physical copy of their resume to the hiring manager. No, you can’t just barge into a business and demand a job. But you can look online at their job postings and you can go to the business and personally hand your resume to someone that will look at it.
If you’re a good fit, then you’re much more likely to get an interview. It shows motivation and it does work.
