Mumsnet Talk

wow

This is the reality for many job seekers.

Yep.

This is the reality of job seeking today. We had 350 applicants for our last 2 TA jobs.

I cannot believe so many experienced people from collapsed chains, joined the others who seek their first job . It was once not difficult to get a job in a bar as a second one for extra income or or when you lost the PT job you had. But now people depend on them as a main job.

We had one single post going at my work place. We had 75 applicants.

Yup - we've just had about 300 applicants for a £15k admin role, some from people 100s of miles away willing to re-locate.

It's terrifying

Perhaps a lot of the applicants couldn't make a hot beverage slow enough to get the job though. <joke>

I am applying for jobs at the moment. I haven't heard back from any yet.
I applied for a retail assistant role on an agency website, this morning, which had 100 applicants - this is a part time minimum wage job!

Totally depressing and demoralising

A friend is the manager of a restaurant that advertised for staff recently. He was inundated - said he had close to 800 applicants for two quite menial jobs and a lot of them offered to work the first week for nothing to 'prove' themselves. V. sad.

As a recruiter, it's sad now to see so many of the applications with the first page blank, meaning the person has no current employer. We never used to see that.

We regularly get over 100 applications for a basic library assistant job. Effectively it just rules out everyone who has no previous experience inthe field from being interviewed because you have to use so many of the essential, and then desirable criteria to get the number of candidates down to an interviewable number, if you have no previous experience of libraries at all and, on occasion, of our kind of library, you won't get an interview. It's really sad to have to turn away so many obviously capable people, but you can't interview 80-odd people for one part time post.

Back when I was working it wasn't unusual to have at least 2/3 CV's handed in daily

And that was when we didn't have a situation vacant...

Ha, I even remember one poor woman getting quite arsey with me because I laughed when she asked if there were any jobs going. Couldn't help it, we were 2 weeks from closure, the shop was half empty and we were all being made redundant!

I don't think it's the application process that's the issue here Rhiannon!

I don't think you are right Rhiannon. Why would these people be applying otherwise? Most of the posters here are listing low skilled jobs that attract lots of applicants isn't it? I think at the more professional end, you have a lot less applicants. But it doesn't make it easier to get the job though. You only need one other applicant to make yours unsuccessful, isn't it?

Rhiannon, please tell me you aren't as dim as your last post made you sound???

i can see rhiannon's point though. it is easy to apply on line and are people who apply Really interested in these jobs,?

and it is not a bad idea to go back to paper, then you would get the actual interested people.

don't think it's easy to apply online and most online recruiters look out for key words which ignore thousands of capable applicants before a human person has actually looked at the form.

dp got his current job by actually going in and talking to the HR department as he got nowhere applying for the same job online. it's pretty mad out there!

also the costa job would interest lots of people including students wouldn't it, so i can see why so many applied.

My H just applied for a job (turned out to be 18 trainee positions).
He doesnt have experience in that particular role (trainees wanted) but does have 15 years experience in a very similar job with mucho transferable skills.

2,300 people applied (inc already qualified people from around the Uk, I believe).
Local MP went into the papers and said what a 'good sign it was that people would be moving into the region'. Stupid stupid stupid cow.

I don't think that's the case Rhiannon. I remember the last recession (I am so depressingly old), and exactly the same thing happened, lots of applications for every job, just by post instead of online.

dh has been turned down for Tesco, on line applicant.
what is it they want fgs!

And, yes, H was REALLY INTERESTED in the job (so we can pay bills...).
And he would apply online (which was the format) by post, in person, or by signwriting aeroplane, should it prove necessary.
The 'no thanks' was a misspelled email, sent at 9pm one evening. 5 days after application.

you dont want to work at Costa Coffee, ds thought he had a job there, they took him on and trained him up for several shifts, and then said No. even though they'd booked him for shifts. they then said it was for training

Have you thought, maybe, just maybe that these people actually need a job?

My dh has been searching and appyling for 6m solid for a job.
His applications, never get answered and quite frankly any job is better than no job! 15k is a job, it puts food on the table and me or my dh would be quite happy to get a 15k job as living of JSA is quite frankly a nightmare.

We have had our Jsa suspended for 2 weeks as someone who was having a bad day, decided to stop it on a whim, believing my dh to not have done enough this week, our bills have eaten the housing benefit as that went in, as the jsa never went in
We have four dc, dh had worked 11yrs before being made redundant and is treated like shit by the jobcentre. In my area there isn't any work for the semi-skilled above 15k and mostly mw. But guess what we apply for all that we see because we don't want to be on jsa anymore

It is scary, although where I work we are desperate for weekend staff (up to 20 hours a week approx, maybe more) & have no takers .

I know care work isn't everyone's cup of tea but it pays more than minimum wage & experience is not essential (so long as you are willing to learn).

I think Rhiannon does have a point - I worked for an online job hunting website at the turn of the century, and part of my job was monitoring the applications- some people did apply for hundreds of positions, some clearly unsuitable and based all over the country. At the same time, I was job hunting myself and remember one guy saying he'd been inundated after the Guardian put his ad online compared to the response he got from just print.

I don't think it's the full story, but it does account for part of it.