To think applying for jobs should be made easier?

[lisasimpson]

I'm so bloody fed up with the employer's market at the moment! I have been applying for umpteen part time jobs which I am more than capable of doing and getting nowhere.

What makes it worse is that the majority of employers are

1. paying peanuts
2. expecting the earth in terms of experience/qualifications
3. asking for ten pages completed of an application form with 'supporting evidence' which has to be tailored to each job
4. never giving any responses to applications
5. expecting candidates to go through hoops in the interview

I'm trying really hard to give each application an individual approach but it takes so much time!

and all this for a few hours work a week.

well with so many people applying for each job the company needs a way to sift and weed the applications. not many places will just accept a cv and covering letter.

Sorry yabu

Lots of people want jobs and its a competition. Its life and you need to get used it.

What sort of part time job are you looking for? Maybe mumsnetters would be able to give you advice on how to improve your chances.

YANBU - I completely understand where you are coming from and I am in the same position.

Employers in this country are complete and utter bar stewards determined to get their pound of flesh out of every living member of staff, especially the lower paid ones.

I am pissed off about it. The gap between the people at the top of organisations and people at the bottom is 75 X pay. That is, those at the top are paid, on average, 75 x more than those at the bottom. How fucking fair is that.

It really isn't fair. When it's an employee's market (rarely) we don't exploit employers! We ask for a fair wage for a fair job.

Hundreds of thousands of people in this country are forced to apply for tax credits to bring their standard of living up to the bare minimum because employers are not paying a living wage. FFS, it's not the tax-payers job to top up peoples wages.

Rant over.

Yes I know that it all has to be standardised and there are so many applicants blah blah I suppose I am pissed off because I don't remember it being so hard in the past!
My background for over 20 years is customer service and I am applying for this or admin jobs. I spent the last nine years working my way up in a specialist area so it's only my word on paper rather than qualifications iyswim.

The trouble is I know if I can't meet every essential/desirable criteria on the person spec. then I am probably wasting my time

It baffles me. I don't get the job, even though I meet the criteria, most of the time I don't even get an acknowledgement. Then, a couple of times, I've gone to temp at the same organisation, seen the person who DID get the job, and am just totally puzzled as to why they choose them and not me when I honestly think I'm just as well qualified as they are?

The only possible explanation I can think of is that they already know who is going to get the job before they advertise it, but can't promote from within before properly advertising so have to go through the pretend motions of looking for other prospective candidates. what a waste of everyones' time.

I know! I keep asking to my DH - (who like me has previously been on the recruiting end also) to read the forms and see if I have made any glaringly obvious mistakes. sometimes I just want to ring up the organisation and say "why didn't you like me I spent days trying to get that bloody thing done - i know I would have been perfect for you!"

what I find difficult is that you have to jump through the same hoops for a saturday job as you do for the top-end jobs!
I'm finding it harder each time to gush about how much I would love to work in whichever organisation it is on that occasion with their minimum wage job when the reality is it is probably one of 10 I have done that week!

YABU. Thee is often 100's of people applying for the each job.

It's funny, I can apply for dozens of highly paid IT jobs in an hour, sitting on my arse clicking buttons. But when it comes to retail jobs and the like they want you to come into the shop, collect the form, fill in 15 pages, and then send it back.

Totally disproportionate.

When I've been the recipients of CVs, I have to say I'd hate these stupid forms - just send me them by email, I can review them online much faster (even hundreds).

usually retailers ask you to fill in an online form which sifts out many candidates. then it goes on to a telephone interview before an in store interview/role play.

exactly my point ruddynorah - what a lot of palava, I'm only after a few hours a week - not Managing Director!

YANBU, especially when you get the form and find loads of punctuation and grammatical errors.

'Oh, okay, you want me to do all this to earn minimum wage, how much did you pay the semi-literate person who wrote this tosh?'

Yeah, and wait till you get to the interview stage when you'll have to face the

"do you prefer working alone or as part of a team" question

and then they want you to be available for work 24/7.

'what do you consider your greatest weaknesses?'

'that i'm in a place where i actually have to apply for shite excuses for jobs like this. next question.'

PMSL expat, don't tempt me for Gawds sake.

'a difficult customer comes in and demands a refund, what do you do?'

that's why the manager gets paid more than i do. next question.

'where do you see yourself in five years?'

hopefully not in front of someone like you, still applying for shite jobs like this. next question.

I tend to agree with you ..... and it's especially galling, like you say, when, despite a CV full of experience and qualifications, you also have to devote up to 2 hours making up, errr, I mean "tailoring" examples of when you did this, that or the other, and what the outcome was, for an entry level job (because you, and 1000s of others are bloody desperate) that's paying minimum wage.

The very worst thing about an employer's market for me though is the disdain with which so many treat prospective applicants long before you've even applied. I mean the job adverts where "salary" is described, not in monetary terms, but in lying through your teeth insulting psychobabble such as "competitive", "very attractive", or "great package". Okay ...... you usually have some idea of the range in a particular role, but it's not always clear, and conversely (and more so these days) obviously a lot of employers are looking to pay the minimum possible so the range applicable 2 or 3 years ago may actually have reduced now. I've called places up to try and establish what the pay is before wasting hours on an application form and even then have often been met with an awkward silence and claims that the person I'm speaking to "doesn't know" and that it'll "be discussed at interview". It makes me so mad ...... when you literally can't get a straight answer out of them, you end up nonetheless spending loads of time on an application for a job which might not be financially viable for you anyway (but you worry about any possibility slipping through your fingers). The worst thing is that these "competitive" salaries seem increasingly to apply to jobs that are paying shite - and I mean real shite - minimum wage or just above .... how on earth can these people describe the pay as "very attractive". I actually find that really insulting ..... like the people who apply must be so thick and undeserving that they won't notice they're being offered £6 an hour.