To think job application forms have become nuts?

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Why does everyone have an online form lately?

20+ criteria boxes to write in at length? It seems counter intuitive. Surely with cover letters and CVs you can judge much better the candidates literacy, ability to write at length and capabilities using computers? Particularly if they’ll be writing reports in the job.

Drop down menus for employment history, an hour or more of slow clicking instead of a few minutes typing up an employment record.

I’m looking at a shortage area too, with real recruitment issues. Disproportionately low pay too. Yet they give themselves another hoop with a 15/16 section form with fiddly drop downs.

The process with applying for someone jobs has become so lengthy it puts candidates off. I’ve just applied to two jobs with reasonable forms and ignored three with stupid forms. One of these contacted me to ask me to reply, I was eager, but I’m busy. I don’t have a life where I can or want to waste 6-8 hours on forms which could be potentially skim read and ignored.

Even a preliminary stage of CVS would be useful, before expecting candidates to wade through hoops.

Before my current role I withdrew from a job I wanted because they had a form, then test, then more online forms, then more tests (all with massive time delays too) for a 28k position!

I used to recruit, like of CVS and cover letters. Easy to read, simple and spoke volumes. I wouldn’t as a recruiter either want to deal with the fuss of online forms sectioned into many pages on my
screen.

I'm going to have this issue in future as I have young children and have decided to set up alone, doing the things I used to do professionally across a couple of sectors. I've set up a company for this reason - it took a few minutes online and I'm taking advice from an accountant to make sure it's the right structure and so on for me.

I figure if it works out, great. If I want to return to one job in future, I have a tidy basket to put it all in for my cv, and I may even look at restructuring and routing a part time role through the company as I understand this might simplify things like our childcare eligibility. I was surprised how straightforward it was though.

The job application process should be one of mutual respect and effort - it benefits the company to hire the right person, and it benefits the applicant to be hired for the right role. These forms are disrespectful to the applicant as they demand they waste time copying and pasting information that they will already have laid out in a CV into a specific format for no real or good reason. Doing this for your education history, work history, training and professional qualifications etc can take ages. The only thing that should take time is the statement laying out your suitability against the person specification, why should you spend hours (unpaid) making the life of the recruiter (paid) easier? I vowed never to bother with one of those and when I was recruiting for my last project I pushed back and refused to use application forms. It was all the rage in my sector for a while but funnily enough it seems to be falling out of fashion. We have mostly staff from diverse backgrounds coming through non-traditional routes and the idea that these terrible forms improve DEI is just silly. They are a massive barrier to a huge subset of the population. I've recruited several times and I believe strongly in respecting your applicants.

I end up ‘lying’, being asked to provide the exact date I left a role in 1994 or the date a qualification was issued in 2001 is frankly guesswork on my part.
Stuffing self-employment into the employment boxes requires more fudging.
It may have worked when I was a graduate, but these dates stuffing in details to drop down boxes is mind boggling.

I’ve only ever really applied to jobs that use online application forms (been working for the past 15 years) so I’m completely used to it, even though I agree it’s tedious. What irritates me though is when they have a long application form AND ask you to uploaded a CV. If I have to go to the trouble of entering it all into many, many boxes on a form then why do you need it uploaded in my CV too?

I don't think recruiters look at the forms, the point is to sift out anyone who doesn't meet the criteria - i.e. get candidates to filter themselves out of the process - like education level, location, salary expectation etc. I understand it's a pain but when you're hiring hundreds of people I think manually reading CVs would be much, much more time consuming for the employer.

This is my thinking. What are my chances of being respected in a company with these processes.

I look at too many friends on p/t contracts working all the hours every day. They eat their time with meetings online on days off etc.

I don’t want that kind of job. I’d earn more in a far simpler role on an hourly rate than they often do in f/t high level roles working this way.

I also end up "lying" when they want to know qualifications, because their boxes tend to have predefined inputs that don't match what I have — I have an Access to HE diploma rather than A levels or BTEC, and sometimes end up having to put something like the A level equivalent according to the UCAS points tariff, which doesn't do me any favours.

We mainly use application form which is 2 A4 pages
when we have tried cvs we just get loads of people who aren’t interested submitting generic cvs to fulfil their job searching criteria
shortlisting cvs takes longer and it’s harder to remove details
we shortlist blind without knowing age, gender etc

I'm about to do an application form, I'm sat here procrastinating about it as I don't want to have to sit and enter everything with the god dam drop down menus. Hours it'll take. I have a cv ready to go, it could take me an hour to tweak a personal statement and add a line to my cv, but no. Stupid form it is.

I helped to sift for a job that had 180 applications recently, we literally binned anyone who didn't have the correct degree when the person specification had said "or equivalent experience" it wasted so many people's time. Just put that in the add if that's your criteria!! I felt awful the speed people were binned when I knew the form must have taken hours.

Yup. If I was job hunting again, I would just use agencies.

I was unemployed and doing several applications a week. Sent in my (fully comprehensive) CV with cover letter to a junior job, got a form back in the post, so I binned it and moved on to the next application.
I was simultaneously signed up with a few agencies to find me a permanent job. One agency later sent my CV in to the employer whose application form I had binned, I went along to an interview and got the job. The employer had to pay a hefty finder's fee to the agency!
A few weeks later, someone in HR put two and two together and I was asked if I had already sent in my CV before the agency did, so of course I said I had, and they were a bit put out to find out that I had just binned their form. They were of the opinion that if a candidate couldn't be bothered to fill in the form, then they shouldn't get the job. I was of the opinion that if they really wanted to recruit, they should have accepted my CV. It was clearly a job-hunter's market, as was proved when they ended up paying an agency just to get someone.

This was not even an online form - just a paper one sent in the post.

I’ve had such awful experiences with companies I don’t want to devote hours to the process.

One of my worst was an observation for a teaching role. I was given a rowdy class, nice enough but with clear needs, by a TA who then informed me it was just their role to show me to the room. I’d prepared a good lesson and no one showed up. After 20 min I was pretty annoyed and stuck my head out the door. No one in sight, no internal phones and I wasn’t sure about which pupils it was safe to send out or even where to send them (it was a funny layout, they’d just moved into a new building and where the only occupied room on the corridor).

After 55 min the deputy strolled in! I was annoyed and just left her with the class to dismiss them for lunch, having wasted a whole observation of planned sideways. As well as dealing with some significant SEN needs that were unclear.

The bizarre bit though is they ring me an hour later to offer the job.

Op, it is to make candidates fill up the data for their candidate database, in the end they also ask you to attach CV which is used for interviewing.

Woo hoo found my people. Down ere in Cornwall we often get application forms dated from the 90s to fill in. Seasalt even asked for a presentation and an application form - for a NMW marketing job. 😂

Anyway, I'm unemployed thanks to redundancy. And desperately want a job so I'm focusing on remote jobs now (for a bit of diversity & an interesting role!) Can anyone recommend any decent recruiters?

My brain is FRIED from scanning LinkedIn. But since it's the topic of this thread I just thought I'd ask.

So yeah... digital marketing recruiters. Anyone? 😊

Yanbu. What are CVs for? What a fucking waste of time for everyone.

It's insane. HR teams take note.

I switched jobs last year and one of the things that really sold me on the organisation was the ease of their application and interview processes. All very candidate friendly. It spoke volumes about the company culture. A year in and I'm very happy 😊

It’s the several interviews as well as tests. And a partridge in a pear fucking tree. Not sure how the expect you to take time off for all those stages.

At the age of 61 I do have an issue with having to retype the details of every single job I've had in 40 years of working, especially as I spent a fair amount of time in contract roles, when they've also asked for a CV. And guess what - no I don't have available the details of my line manager or HR department from 25 years ago when the company folded a few years after I left, or they were taken over, or they moved head office a number of times since

I'm a bit older than you, temped for years, and when I was offered a temp to perm had considerable problems with the external reference checker company that Could Not Understand that temping is a) sporadic b) can be for a few weeks and I'm not clogging my CV up with the time a local charity needed an accounts stand in for a couple of weeks. And half of those jobs I either can't remember or don't want to. They wanted to know what I did with my time off between every assigment and back up from friends that I was actually between jobs and not, as I assume they suspected, in prison. Pointed out that I didn't keep my social circle THAT updated with my work history and take what I'd told them or leave it.

One reason why I'm going back to temping via an agency next year. They know me and can vouch for my work.

Thinking of the UK where I taught for 25+ years, all jobs were application forms, and it's about uniformity of response, and accuracy. Supporting statements were allowed, but covering letters had to be just the indication of what was in the envelope, i.e application for X job. Specifically no CVs.

A CV can be full of irrelevancies and omissions, a form can't. Or at least you can be pulled up for lying. I remember there used to be a question asking had you ever taught under another name - to weed out the serial shit/weird teachers.

I once was asked to do a presentation I wasn’t expecting. Left with a flipchart and 4 different coloured maker pens.

On feedback I was told my use of colours made it look ‘unprofessional’, as I used all 4.

I stopped giving a fuck halfway through tbh, they are lucky I didn’t just doodle rainbows.

The ‘other name’ question is just to cover those of us who taught under both married and maiden names. My QTS certificate is not in the same name as my most recent job, it’s pretty common in female dominated industry.

😂 omg that's so funny!

Well in true Cornish style I was asked "who'd be home cooking tea if you were ere working?"

For a sizeable well known charity with a 14 page application form

as soon as mortgage rates come down, I'm off

My issue is that a lot of jobs dont even state salary or claim some 'competitive' BS and yet they want you to complete a tiresome application.

Don't get me started on the full career history, including any gaps.

My 20s were interesting. Quite a few jobs, travelling. Is that relevant many years later? It does put me off job applications.

YES. It’s like a NMW klaxon

I get that it’s annoying but I wouldn’t want to hire someone for an admin job if they couldn’t navigate an online application from… surely that means that their IT skills aren’t up to scratch?