Ask Slashdot: Why Are Online Job Applications So Badly Designed? 278
First time accepted submitter GreyViking (3606993) writes Over the past few years, I've witnessed a variety of my intelligent but largely non-technical nearest-and-dearest struggling to complete online job applications. The majority of these online forms are multiple screens long, and because they're invariably HTTPS, they'll time out after a finite time which isn't always made known to the user. Some sites actively disable back/forward buttons but many don't, and text that's sometime taken a lot of effort to compile, cut and paste can be lost. And did I mention text input boxes that are too small? Sometimes it seems that the biggest obstacle to getting a job can be being able to conquer the online application, and really, there has to be a better way: but what is it?
Re:Pete and Repeat (Score:4, Funny)
I further hate it when they insist on "plain text" for the resume too. For crying out loud, I spent hours trying to cram my 20+ years onto two pages and when I dump it to plain text it turns into like 5 pages of disjointed text. I get the problem with MS Office macros being dangerous, but plain text?
My advice to these sites is.... At least accept PDF or XPS versions of any document that's formatted like a Resume.