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?
HR? What HR? (Score:4, Informative)
I find it humorous that most of the comments are decrying the "HR" departments, when in reality a number of businesses using applicant tracking platforms are small business and do not really have any HR department to speak of.
They (and I, as I am a small business owner myself) use them so that I can 1. have one place that IS NOT my inbox to manage candidates, and 2. I can ensure that I am getting consistent info across all candidates.
And while I do not ask people to upload a resume and then fill out previous work experience fields, I can understand the necessity for such things, so that the small business owner can quickly scan over each applicant quickly, rather than trying to decode various resume layouts.
Because at the end of the day, my time is valuable, and any system that let's me spend less time doing things is going to be a boon to me, even if the downside is that I lose an applicant here and there in the process.
I work for a major provider of ATS (Score:4, Informative)
Here are some excuses
1) Employers can get sued if it isn't done a certain way. All of the laws are based on horrible paper applications.
2) Employers are scared of "the cloud" so you have to fill out a new application every time you apply to a new job even though the last 10 places you applied were using the same software
3) The perspective employees "candidates" are not the customer, the HR Director is the customer.
4) Statistically, longer, harder application processes result in higher employee retention rates.
that last one is a big one. My software can do all kinds of pre-employment testing for all kinds of things... skills, personality, mental alertness, etc.
The longer the testing process, the more "candidates" quit before completing. HOWEVER, the longer the testing process, the more likely an employee will be successful at their job.... To put it frankly, if you will wade through the shit to get hired, you will wade through it to stay employed. It doesn't even statistically matter what the results of the test were. Simply testing for anything at all will reduce employee turnover. The same can be said for unwieldy applications. If a candidate is not serious about filling out an application, they will not be serious about work either.
That said... I promise our applications are better than most, at least our javascript works, and progress is automatically saved... Still it all sucks (blame the lawyers), we just try to suck less.