How To Create Respectful Electronic Job Application Systems

Just as the internet has changed how many of us read the news, watch entertainment, do research, and/or even date in the hope of finding that “special someone”, it has dramatically changed the way in which many of us search for that special job. Or any job. Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Indeed.com, and many other sites have sprung up in order to aggregate jobs by career area, geographic location, salary, and education level.

Some employment sites have amassed such a dizzying array of career positions that they far exceed what any print newspaper could have ever hoped to feature. With this seemingly endless “banquet of jobs” has come a nearly ubiquitous, arduous application process, however that leaves many feeling like they're fishing in a black hole. 

Here's how the current system works (many of us know it far too well)...  

• Find a job you’re interested in and qualified for. You can do this either by going to an aggregation site (like CareerBuilder) or directly to an employer’s career page (like Apple) and doing a keyword search. Various occupational social media sites like LinkedIn.com also post career opportunities. 
• Regardless of the site, most of them list a job description with some variation of the following in common (listed in order of appearance): 
• A long, broadly written “boilerplate” section that speaks through loving, non-specific platitudes about what a great company you’re applying to, and how the organization rewards employees, empowers customers, and gives back to the company. Specifics are often in short supply. 
• The list of “responsibilities”, “core competencies”, or other key skill areas the employer expects the prospective employee to have. For instance, a Technical Writer candidate may be expected to have the ability to, “manage, organize, and communicate project information and activities”. Like the boilerplate section, a lot of this is open to interpretation. 
• Thirdly, a “requirements” section, where (2/3 of the way down) the job description finally starts to get into specific expectations. For example, “Bachelor’s degree required; degree in Communication, English, or similar field preferred”. Less definitive items may also be listed, such as, “must have extreme attention to detail”. Oftentimes a “show-stopper” requirement is listed at the very bottom of this section: “5+ years of experience required” or “government security clearance level of ‘secret’ or higher required” will appear. 
• Finally, a statement about being an Equal Opportunity Employer (EOE) or Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) provider will often appear, sometimes even listing the different groups not discriminated against.

• Presumably if the position is one you’re interested in (and the opportunity is inline with your skills and abilities) you would click the “apply” (or similar) button. 
• After clicking “apply” the applicant is usually taken to a secure site where s/he answers a series of questions (assuming there isn’t a pre-screening process asking for a code to be entered from a picture to ensure the applicant is human) before being asked to upload a résumé, cover letter, and provide a list of references. Often this is done through one of a few systems, like Taleo (Oracle) or Kenexa. 
• Both these services are capable of scanning a résumé for keywords (names, addresses, etc.) to plug into the appropriate digital fields. Oftentimes, however, they miss, putting the first name in the field for the last name, the name of the street one lives on where the city goes, and so forth. It is necessary to carefully double-check each field. 
• Despite Taleo, Kenexa, and other services (like Jobvite) being so popular, there is no readily available way to port one’s profile from “company a” to “company b”. This increases the total amount of time the applicant needs to spend filling out the same fields over and over.

• Careers are about diligent hard work. Applying for a career can be one of the hardest steps an employee ever has to go through with an employer. Combined with the incredible competition out there, this process of applying for a job is repeated dozens (or even hundreds) of times by a jobseeker. Putting forth the required effort, an applicant can spend between 20 minutes and 3 hours working on a single application. 
• After the application has been submitted to the candidate’s desired future employer a message displays (and sometimes is emailed) stating something to the following:

“Thank you for applying for the [position]. We are currently reviewing your application materials. If your skills and abilities match what we’re looking for someone from our team will be in touch with you to discuss next steps. Thank you again for your interest in [name of the company].” 

• What the automated message is saying is, “don’t expect to hear from us if we’re not interested in you” (providing zero closure to 99 percent or better of applicants), and effectively removes any future responsibility on the part of the would-be employer. It is interesting to point out that the would-be employer is also the only party in this equation being paid for their time in this entire process. Oftentimes application materials are electronically filtered as well, meaning that many résumés and cover letters are never even read, thanks to having missed a few keywords required by the sorting process.

Here’s how I wish the process worked: 

• At the top of the job description page, make sure to include the following information: 
• Job title, location, if the position is full-time, part-time, contract, contract-to-hire, or a full-time employee role. 
• List the salary (“$40,000”) or salary range (“$40,000 to $60,000, depending on qualifications”) and any benefits. Employers intentionally don’t list salaries most of the time and instead often make the candidate bid through the Taleo/Kenexa/Jobvite/other process in an effort to find out how cheaply they can recruit qualified labor. This creates lower wages for the industry overall, meaning it takes longer (through raises and promotions) for applicants to reach their actual desired salaries. If the employer lists the salary up-front it will also help to avoid discussions that break down from, “I want the job, but not for that rate”, particularly when recruiting highly specialized talent.

• Provide a brief job description—what will the candidate actually be expected to do if s/he is offered the job? 
• List the “requirements” next, followed by the “responsibilities” in their separate sections (just as before). In both lists, start with the most important ones first. In other words, “5+ years of experience” and “Master’s degree in Chemistry” should come before, “strong interdisciplinary skills” and “problem-solver able to meet tight deadlines”."Most important" usually also means, "most tangible". 
• For applicants still reading (and who haven’t determined already that the position isn’t what they’re looking for/isn’t a fit) now is the time to provide that sweeping boilerplate of information. Under the current system, most of us are skipping it anyway and going straight to the requirements—let’s make it easier and stop wasting everyone’s time.   

• It should be noted, just as the company may receive between 50-500 applications (or more) for every position most jobseekers are filling out dozens or hundreds of these things as well. If an interview (or even a phone-screening) is offered, most “good” candidates will take the few days in between the set-up call and the actual discussion to brush up on the prospective employer; otherwise, the company is just a name on a list (just like the list of applicants the company has compiled résumés from). 
• Taleo/Kenexa/Jobvite/etc. profiles should be portable between companies with a minimum of effort, accessible from a secure, cloud-based repository. We’re already doing this with no-fee-to-user programs like Facebook (where applications reuse the same user information automatically) so it stands to reason that information like one’s name, address, education, and work history (that last one takes forever to retype) should be portable, saving oodles of time. 
• The option to tweak certain details between jobs (references, for instance) should still exist. With keyword sorting, companies will still be filtering out a lion's share of the applicants. 

• It is still important to tailor the résumé and cover letter in most cases, but being able to access previous copies online from a "portfolio" would be nice. Sometimes the “Business Analyst I” position at “company a” is unsurprisingly similar to the “Business Analyst (entry level)” at “company b”, especially when they’re both in the same industry. 
• Finally, provide closure for the applicants that didn’t get an interview/the job: email them (even if it is only a form letter). Presumably, a company seeks to hire professional workers of quality. It seems only fair to demonstrate that quality professionalism in return.

In conclusion... 

The current route may save an HR department some time, which is a good thing considering the significant cutbacks some groups have had in the last 5-10 years. However, the second route could allow for both faster self-selection (reducing the total number of applicants) combined with saving the total pool of applicants a great amount of time in totality. I know it sounds crazy, but there’s something good about making the unpaid labor of hundreds of hopeful strangers a less time-intensive, more dignified process for each available position.