Trials of Finding New Job

[anonymous-user]

MitchT said:

OK, new one...

Applied for a job last November. Didn't get an interview but got a "we'll keep your details on file as you're obviously a good fit for the role" type response. Now the same job has been advertised again. Do I apply again fresh or drop them an email highlighting their response last time and the fact that I'm still interested?

Forget it. Most of this hiring he stuff are made by people with zero life experiences and will decide if get an interview based on a set of arbitrary rules.

Forget

[Countdown]

MitchT said:

OK, new one...

Applied for a job last November. Didn't get an interview but got a "we'll keep your details on file as you're obviously a good fit for the role" type response. Now the same job has been advertised again. Do I apply again fresh or drop them an email highlighting their response last time and the fact that I'm still interested?

Drop them an email to remind them They will either dust off your old application OR let you know they’re not interested. Either way it will save you having to submit a fresh application.

[deckster]

The Spruce Goose said:

MitchT said:

OK, new one...

Applied for a job last November. Didn't get an interview but got a "we'll keep your details on file as you're obviously a good fit for the role" type response. Now the same job has been advertised again. Do I apply again fresh or drop them an email highlighting their response last time and the fact that I'm still interested?

Forget it. Most of this hiring he stuff are made by people with zero life experiences and will decide if get an interview based on a set of arbitrary rules.

Forget

I wouldn't put it quite so bluntly, but I do mainly agree with the sentiment. There is no harm in a quick email to remind them but I wouldn't get your hopes up too highly.

[Countdown]

The Spruce Goose said:

MitchT said:

OK, new one...

Applied for a job last November. Didn't get an interview but got a "we'll keep your details on file as you're obviously a good fit for the role" type response. Now the same job has been advertised again. Do I apply again fresh or drop them an email highlighting their response last time and the fact that I'm still interested?

Forget it. Most of this hiring he stuff are made by people with zero life experiences and will decide if get an interview based on a set of arbitrary rules.

Forget

That’s never been the case in any of the 10 organisations where I worked.

The person doing the hiring is usually the one who is responsible for the performance of the new hire. If they appoint somebody useless then it’s the hiring manager who has to carry them. If they appoint somebody good it’s the hiring manager who benefits (from having less rubbish to tidy up)

[anonymous-user]

Countdown said:

That’s never been the case in any of the 10 organisations where I worked.

The person doing the hiring is usually the one who is responsible for the performance of the new hire. If they appoint somebody useless then it’s the hiring manager who has to carry them. If they appoint somebody good it’s the hiring manager who benefits (from having less rubbish to tidy up)

Really all companies over a hundred people, the manager submits criteria to hr who then decide who is progressed. Been like that for at least a decade. Hr people usually take their role with gusto and how they feel on the day will decide if you get progressed. I know as I've had managers tell me they would have hired people if they had been progressed. It all sounds extreme but is real world experience. These hr people are just power freaks.

[NewNameNeeded]

The Spruce Goose said:

Really all companies over a hundred people, the manager submits criteria to hr who then decide who is progressed. Been like that for at least a decade. Hr people usually take their role with gusto and how they feel on the day will decide if you get progressed. I know as I've had managers tell me they would have hired people if they had been progressed. It all sounds extreme but is real world experience. These hr people are just power freaks.

Just to add a different experience - I've worked for three multi-national companies across two decades and two different sectors, each with tens of thousands of staff and in every case HR provided assistance with the process, but the hiring manager played a central role.

And now as a manager myself I take personal responsibility for who to shortlist and who I interview. I had a number of positions to fill over the last couple of months and for each I reviewed all 300+ CVs for suitability to interview, and had my contact details on the ad on LinkedIn so applicants could reach out. It took up a huge amount of my time, but I absolutely believe it pays for itself in ensuring the right candidate joins my team. And I also want the interview process to reflect the culture within our company and my team, not some cold and clinical process.

[Countdown]

The Spruce Goose said:

Countdown said:

That’s never been the case in any of the 10 organisations where I worked.

The person doing the hiring is usually the one who is responsible for the performance of the new hire. If they appoint somebody useless then it’s the hiring manager who has to carry them. If they appoint somebody good it’s the hiring manager who benefits (from having less rubbish to tidy up)

Really all companies over a hundred people, the manager submits criteria to hr who then decide who is progressed. Been like that for at least a decade. Hr people usually take their role with gusto and how they feel on the day will decide if you get progressed. I know as I've had managers tell me they would have hired people if they had been progressed. It all sounds extreme but is real world experience. These hr people are just power freaks.

I recruit mainly for the Finance team and our HR Department wouldn't know what a good Accountant looked like. Anybody can blag a CV/Application form but you do really need people who do the job day-to-day to interview them. In the same vein I wouldn't dream of recruiting somebody to work in HR or IT unless there was at least one technically qualified HR or IT person on the panel.

Also its in the interests of BOTH HR and the recruiting dept to get the best person for the job. Otherwise it's going to be headaches for BOTH further down the line.

[Flooble]

I think people arguing both sides may be looking at different types of roles. For example:

Graduate vacancy in a huge corporate? Quite possibly HR filter the mountain of applications, run the assessment centres (possibly with support from the "business" - e.g. a techie gets sent to interview 10-20 grads per day on the specialist aspects of the role). Then after making offers HR circulate the "Pool" of new grads to managers who pick the one they want (or try hard not to get dumped with someone they have to train, depending on many variable factors that change from year to year!)

Senior or specialist vacancy? HR probably don't do much other than filter out the obvious spam CVs/agencies not on the PSL and make sure the hiring manager complies with the law (No, don't ask that woman if she's planning to start a family etc.)

Anything in between probably really dependent on the organisation. I've worked for places where HR did all the first round of interviews on general competency/aptitude/whatever. That probably lost a few decent candidates who just weren't polished in the techniques HR wanted, but it probably also filtered out a lot of time wasters. Other places it was all on the hiring manager (who sometimes delegated first round to team members).

So I don't think anyone is necessarily wrong in what they say on this thread, it all just depends on too many variables.

[anonymous-user]

Flooble said:

So I don't think anyone is necessarily wrong in what they say on this thread, it all just depends on too many variables.

The point from my experience is don't get disheartened if you are not shortlisted. Always keep applying.

[vindaloo79]

Tesla are hiring: https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/battery-jobs?redirect=... (Berlin sadly)

[NewNameNeeded]

The Spruce Goose said:

Always keep applying.

But please, dear god, only apply for relevant positions. I'd say one third of the applicants I get provide no cover letter, a generic CV, and have absolutely nothing on their CV that would make them a suitable candidate. They've clearly put in zero effort and are spamming everything out there. I appreciate it's horrid out there, but that's just a waste of your time.

[singlecoil]

NewNameNeeded said:

The Spruce Goose said:

Always keep applying.

But please, dear god, only apply for relevant positions. I'd say one third of the applicants I get provide no cover letter, a generic CV, and have absolutely nothing on their CV that would make them a suitable candidate. They've clearly put in zero effort and are spamming everything out there. I appreciate it's horrid out there, but that's just a waste of your time.

Some of the time wasters will be people who need to prove that they have applied for so many jobs a week lest they lose benefit entitlements.

[NewNameNeeded]

singlecoil said:

Some of the time wasters will be people who need to prove that they have applied for so many jobs a week lest they lose benefit entitlements.

I hadn't considered that. Although a lot of the spam comes from applicants in employment.

[lyonspride]

NewNameNeeded said:

The Spruce Goose said:

Always keep applying.

But please, dear god, only apply for relevant positions. I'd say one third of the applicants I get provide no cover letter, a generic CV, and have absolutely nothing on their CV that would make them a suitable candidate. They've clearly put in zero effort and are spamming everything out there. I appreciate it's horrid out there, but that's just a waste of your time.

I don't put a cover letter on applications going via an agency, the CV gets syphoned off into their ATS system, nobody reads the cover letter or the CV unless the ATS system matches you to a job. Plus most jobs ads are fake, so i'm not going to waste hours of my day writing tailored covering letters that don't get read, and for jobs that don't exist.
If the job is real and your skills are on point, the agency will contact you regardless of whether you did a cover letter.
Only do cover letters when applying direct to a company.

[NewNameNeeded]

lyonspride said:

I don't put a cover letter on applications going via an agency, the CV gets syphoned off into their ATS system, nobody reads the cover letter or the CV unless the ATS system matches you to a job. Plus most jobs ads are fake, so i'm not going to waste hours of my day writing tailored covering letters that don't get read, and for jobs that don't exist.
If the job is real and your skills are on point, the agency will contact you regardless of whether you did a cover letter.
Only do cover letters when applying direct to a company.

These were all direct applications.

[Pit Pony]

MitchT said:

Recently applied for a design job at the Civil Service for which I would be a really good match. Didn't get an interview and they scored me only 2 out of 7 on their feedback system. I can only surmise that the person screening the applications is a 0 out of 7 in their ability to identify suitable candidates for roles. Someone I worked with at a previous employer is already doing the same job and she has no design background whatsoever so this and my having applied, unsuccessfully, for a number of jobs at the CS leads me to conclude that success is not a result of being a good match for a role, but more some kind of witchcraft that makes you good at navigating their horrifically convoluted and irrelevant application process.

The only people I know personally, who work forvthe Civil service, have or had parents who were civil servants.
Make of that what you will.
They came across in school, as academically mediocre, perhaps a little stupid, but not too stupid and lacking in initiative or creativity.
I guess that if you are recruiting in an organisation like that, you don't look for some one that might risk being better than you.


I have also met some professionally who have moved from the Armed forces, into the civil service, often the MOD who don't have those qualities.
I guess there's some sort of shoo-in ?

[anonymous-user]

NewNameNeeded said:

But please, dear god, only apply for relevant positions. I'd say one third of the applicants I get provide no cover letter, a generic CV, and have absolutely nothing on their CV that would make them a suitable candidate. They've clearly put in zero effort and are spamming everything out there. I appreciate it's horrid out there, but that's just a waste of your time.

Keep applying to jobs, is vastly different to your interpretation of spamming jobs. The context of my reply was not getting disheartened by rejections as they are not always related to your qualifications and skills.

[Countdown]

MitchT said:

Recently applied for a design job at the Civil Service for which I would be a really good match. Didn't get an interview and they scored me only 2 out of 7 on their feedback system. I can only surmise that the person screening the applications is a 0 out of 7 in their ability to identify suitable candidates for roles. Someone I worked with at a previous employer is already doing the same job and she has no design background whatsoever so this and my having applied, unsuccessfully, for a number of jobs at the CS leads me to conclude that success is not a result of being a good match for a role, but more some kind of witchcraft that makes you good at navigating their horrifically convoluted and irrelevant application process.

By "2 out of 7" do you mean that you met only 2 of the "Essential Criteria" they had listed in the JD/PS?

The 1st stage sift tends to be people going through the applications and trying to pick out examples which demonstrate how the candidate meets the Essential Criteria (and they'll get scored somewhere between 0-4). One of the issues I noticed when i was in the CS was that private sector applicants didn't focus on the Essential / Desirable criteria - you would get basically a summary of their overall experience. The CS used to send out guidance on exactly how the scoring would work but applicants ignored that (maybe it was just easier to C&P from their other applications)

TL:DR - for Public Sector roles you literally have to say "I meet X requirement as I have 5 years experience of X where I did this/that/the other"

[Countdown]

Pit Pony said:

The only people I know personally, who work forvthe Civil service, have or had parents who were civil servants.
Make of that what you will.
They came across in school, as academically mediocre, perhaps a little stupid, but not too stupid and lacking in initiative or creativity.
I guess that if you are recruiting in an organisation like that, you don't look for some one that might risk being better than you.

I have also met some professionally who have moved from the Armed forces, into the civil service, often the MOD who don't have those qualities.
I guess there's some sort of shoo-in ?

Re: the bit in bold - that's never made sense to me. Why would you deliberately recruit somebody who was worse than you? It would mean that, for as long as they were your direct report, you would be carrying them. You'd constantly be checking their work, having to motivate them, and also know that its unlikely they will move on. Why would any Manager make more work for himself when, instead, they could recruit somebody capable of taking on MORE work, reducing the amount of management required, making the Department look good.......?

[rog007]

Countdown said:

Pit Pony said:

The only people I know personally, who work forvthe Civil service, have or had parents who were civil servants.
Make of that what you will.
They came across in school, as academically mediocre, perhaps a little stupid, but not too stupid and lacking in initiative or creativity.
I guess that if you are recruiting in an organisation like that, you don't look for some one that might risk being better than you.

I have also met some professionally who have moved from the Armed forces, into the civil service, often the MOD who don't have those qualities.
I guess there's some sort of shoo-in ?

Re: the bit in bold - that's never made sense to me. Why would you deliberately recruit somebody who was worse than you? It would mean that, for as long as they were your direct report, you would be carrying them. You'd constantly be checking their work, having to motivate them, and also know that its unlikely they will move on. Why would any Manager make more work for himself when, instead, they could recruit somebody capable of taking on MORE work, reducing the amount of management required, making the Department look good.......?

Absolutely!

Perceived wisdom is to always try and hire folk that will one day be better than yourself. It’s a sign of great leadership and confidence, and hopefully increases the organisation’s competitive advantage.

Plenty written about such strategies, including:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbessanfranciscocou...