Job-seeking can be a real exercise in immersive futility. It often feels like you’re tossing your resume into the abyss and praying to the recruitment gods for a response. If and when you get that response, the landscape doesn’t always get easier. Companies are seemingly coming up with new, higher, and harder hoops to jump through at every turn. That translates to endless rounds of interviews, various arbitrary tests, and complex exercises and presentations that entail hours of work and prep. There can be good reasons for firms to do this — they really want to make sure they get the right person, and they’re trying to reduce biases — but it’s hard not to feel like it can just be too much.
So, those rules making it illegal to ask if you’re a criminal, deranged and all that, they really worked in making job gaining easier, didn’t they?
Might be better to go back to the old system of being allowed to ask, taking your choice as you wish and then being able to fire immediately if it doesn’t work out…..
If the people hiring are incompetent then they will use multiple rounds of interviews and tests to cover for the fact they haven’t got a clue.
I’ve had loads of job interviews. One job was a 45min interview, followed by one day working, then asked if I could start properly the next week. Worked there for five years. Another job I had two interviews each one with 3 interviewers including top HR person. Stayed in that job for a year then left.
Part of the recruitment treadmill is that all employers demand the top 10% of the employment pool, instead of the top 10% of what they can get. Which then follows through into screaming demands for immigrants, ‘cos “the skills aren’t available”.
If you really are desperate for *anything*, you’ll take whatever you can get, not stubbornly shoot your feet off refusing to take anything until the exact match you want magically turns up. Consequently, I consider all these screaming harpies in media interviews to be just plain liers. (The female ones are probably the same who assert they can’t get a man, because they use the same selection criteria.)
I’ve lost count of the number of jobs I’ve been turned down for because my latest experience was WibbleFlop 3.496 and they demand WibbleFlop 3.497.
Well they do make easier to get a job if you are a criminal and/or deranged, so job successfully done. I suspect that the incompetent hiring/interview processes have another cause. Anyone that has ever workd with HR departments can probably guess what.
Could explain (in part) why the Met finds it so difficult to spot/eliminate wrong’uns
Sister’s kid works for American bank – following 5 interviews.
I’m so old that this is all a foreign world to me. Thank Christ.
The best hiring policy I’ve read about lately was a Royal Navy one many years ago. There was a skilled “role” that required some demanding training first. So the applicants had to take an exam to see whether they were fit for it. There was a blanket exemption for youngsters who’d been educated in Scotland – they were admitted to the course automatically.
The Scottish Nazi Party government has put a permanent stop to the superiority of Scottish schooling. It’s a wonder they’re not all dangling from trees.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in an interview that wasn’t a formality (at least since I was a youngster). If you don’t already know who’s getting the job, it’s probably not you.
Being a Spurs supporter was always a bonus with a couple of managers I knew……..
Ours favoured Palace or Charlton. The department to which you were asigned was club dependant. Applicants had to be related to or friends of current employees who would have to vouch for them.
Most successful strategy these days must be, if straight. white. middle-aged and male (like me), to black up and/or wear a dress, high heels and lipstick and claim to be effnic minority and/or trans.
The media in the UK now asks the applicant to give details of their own educational background, the educational background of the siblings. And their parents. And if that is not bad enough, they also want the same for the social and class backgrounds.
I heard about this from the daughter of a friend who is trying to build a career in the media.
Job-seeking can be a real exercise in immersive futility. It often feels like you’re tossing your resume into the abyss and praying to the recruitment gods for a response.
Must be the benefit of all those university degrees. On the rare occasion I worked for someone else, usually took about 5 minutes. Benefit have having some useful experience, I suppose.
The idea that the harpies in HR can make a judgement about suitability for a position when they usually have not the slightest what the entire firm is about strikes one as a mystery.
@jgh – “If you really are desperate for *anything*, you’ll take whatever you can get”
If you want your business to be successful, you can’t just take anyone. You can only take those who will make a profit for you. If you want someone to pick fruit, for example, it’s not sensible to hire someone who spends an hour doing it, eats a bunch of poroduce, and then quits saying it’s too hard.
But, of course, many hirers are far too demanding.