Trials of Finding New Job
Discussion
Ah but you are both assuming that the manager recruiting is invested in the success of their organisation.
For a private sector firm these days that is pretty much a given - perform badly and the firm goes under. Granted in a huge multinational you can be so distant from any kind of "bottom line" that it would be possible to think yourself untouchable - but these days how many corporates go more than a few years without a takeover, restructure or bankruptcy?
In the public sector I think you possibly still *could* find a manager who felt quite comfortable in their little enclave, distant enough from any interference that their only concern is to continue their comfortable existence - they hardly need to worry about going bust or being taken over so the only real risk is a reorg. I suspect that it is less and less likely to find someone like that these days thanks to many factors including computerisation (much closer tracking of performance) and outsourcing. However, picture someone who has accumulated 30+ years service and is just counting down to their pension, totally lacking in motivation.
For the most part I agree though - the recruitment process is rigid and leaves little room for the reviewer to infer evidence. Wilful sabotage I think is unlikely for exactly the same rigidity reason.
For a private sector firm these days that is pretty much a given - perform badly and the firm goes under. Granted in a huge multinational you can be so distant from any kind of "bottom line" that it would be possible to think yourself untouchable - but these days how many corporates go more than a few years without a takeover, restructure or bankruptcy?
In the public sector I think you possibly still *could* find a manager who felt quite comfortable in their little enclave, distant enough from any interference that their only concern is to continue their comfortable existence - they hardly need to worry about going bust or being taken over so the only real risk is a reorg. I suspect that it is less and less likely to find someone like that these days thanks to many factors including computerisation (much closer tracking of performance) and outsourcing. However, picture someone who has accumulated 30+ years service and is just counting down to their pension, totally lacking in motivation.
For the most part I agree though - the recruitment process is rigid and leaves little room for the reviewer to infer evidence. Wilful sabotage I think is unlikely for exactly the same rigidity reason.
Hi,
Does anyone have any experience of using any CV reviewing websites or similar for both their CV and Linkedin Profile?
Having been more or less forced to resign from my current role after 18 months, and with the current pandemic, I am feeling a bit anxious and overwhelmed with trying to secure a new role.
I suppose my age doesn't help being 49, and the main source of income at home. Thankfully, I have savings to fall back on, however I am finding the uncertainty difficult to deal with, and becoming more withdrawn as a result.
Thanks.
Does anyone have any experience of using any CV reviewing websites or similar for both their CV and Linkedin Profile?
Having been more or less forced to resign from my current role after 18 months, and with the current pandemic, I am feeling a bit anxious and overwhelmed with trying to secure a new role.
I suppose my age doesn't help being 49, and the main source of income at home. Thankfully, I have savings to fall back on, however I am finding the uncertainty difficult to deal with, and becoming more withdrawn as a result.
Thanks.
Paulog13 said:
Hi,
Does anyone have any experience of using any CV reviewing websites or similar for both their CV and Linkedin Profile?
Having been more or less forced to resign from my current role after 18 months, and with the current pandemic, I am feeling a bit anxious and overwhelmed with trying to secure a new role.
I suppose my age doesn't help being 49, and the main source of income at home. Thankfully, I have savings to fall back on, however I am finding the uncertainty difficult to deal with, and becoming more withdrawn as a result.
Thanks.
No experience with reviewing websites but I recommend doing a web search for "good linked in profiles". I'm 46 and feel similar to you. I have savings to fall back on but finding the prospect of staying put hard and jumping ship even harder. I've changed my profile on linked in based on "good" profiles similar to what I do. It reads much better now and I'm getting more traffic as a result. Does anyone have any experience of using any CV reviewing websites or similar for both their CV and Linkedin Profile?
Having been more or less forced to resign from my current role after 18 months, and with the current pandemic, I am feeling a bit anxious and overwhelmed with trying to secure a new role.
I suppose my age doesn't help being 49, and the main source of income at home. Thankfully, I have savings to fall back on, however I am finding the uncertainty difficult to deal with, and becoming more withdrawn as a result.
Thanks.
Just popping back into this thread to say I'm on the hunt again. Have managed to find one job, but it's only an hour a day.
Lost my last one due to a bad illness last September as I was on probation. Also now primary carer for a 6 year old due to school closures. Its bloody hard work trying to find something at the moment
Lost my last one due to a bad illness last September as I was on probation. Also now primary carer for a 6 year old due to school closures. Its bloody hard work trying to find something at the moment
Anyone here encountered the "Workday" platform? What a crock of s
t!
I'm unlucky enough to be currently fighting with it for the third time during my protracted job hunt.
1:
Despite the platform being common to all the prospective employers that use it, you have to register separately for each one and it doesn't keep all the information you filled in when you used it for another employer to pre-populate fields with.
2:
It tries to populate the fields with information from an uploaded CV or your LinkedIn profile. It fails spectacularly at both leaving you having to delete what it's put in there are type it all in manually.
3:
In the "Education" section it...
A:
Refers to everything as a "degree" and formats the fields accordingly, so you can't input relevant industry related qualifications and training that are more recent and, frankly, far more relevant.
B:
In the case of my current struggle, only seems to cover subject areas starting with the letters "A" to "D" so I can't choose, for example, User Experience because it doesn't go as far as "U" and tells me there's no result if I type it into the search box instead.
I'm starting to wonder if I should take this as a red flag. Any prospective employer using this platform is oblivious to the fact that's it's woefully unfit for purpose or, perhaps, simply doesn't care.
t!I'm unlucky enough to be currently fighting with it for the third time during my protracted job hunt.
1:
Despite the platform being common to all the prospective employers that use it, you have to register separately for each one and it doesn't keep all the information you filled in when you used it for another employer to pre-populate fields with.
2:
It tries to populate the fields with information from an uploaded CV or your LinkedIn profile. It fails spectacularly at both leaving you having to delete what it's put in there are type it all in manually.
3:
In the "Education" section it...
A:
Refers to everything as a "degree" and formats the fields accordingly, so you can't input relevant industry related qualifications and training that are more recent and, frankly, far more relevant.
B:
In the case of my current struggle, only seems to cover subject areas starting with the letters "A" to "D" so I can't choose, for example, User Experience because it doesn't go as far as "U" and tells me there's no result if I type it into the search box instead.
I'm starting to wonder if I should take this as a red flag. Any prospective employer using this platform is oblivious to the fact that's it's woefully unfit for purpose or, perhaps, simply doesn't care.
Yes, I have encountered it from the other side too. I remember when it was fairly new but was the "in" thing as it was "cloud based".
It has incredibly slick marketing and very very pushy sales people as well as implementation teams and partners who are highly motivated to get it in.
They also, interestingly, have a very rigid methodology and are not very flexible. When I encountered it there were amusing things such as this conversation I had:
"Consultant": "Booking a holiday. The employee goes to the "New Leave Request" page and enters the day they wish to take off"
Me: "Erm, what if they want a couple of weeks off?"
Consultant: "They will need to enter each day individually"
!!!
Presumably it's better now but I got the impression it had been built for the US market (holiday? What's that?) and everyone else had to live with it.
It has incredibly slick marketing and very very pushy sales people as well as implementation teams and partners who are highly motivated to get it in.
They also, interestingly, have a very rigid methodology and are not very flexible. When I encountered it there were amusing things such as this conversation I had:
"Consultant": "Booking a holiday. The employee goes to the "New Leave Request" page and enters the day they wish to take off"
Me: "Erm, what if they want a couple of weeks off?"
Consultant: "They will need to enter each day individually"
!!!
Presumably it's better now but I got the impression it had been built for the US market (holiday? What's that?) and everyone else had to live with it.
MitchT said:
Anyone here encountered the "Workday" platform? What a crock of st!
I'm unlucky enough to be currently fighting with it for the third time during my protracted job hunt.
1:
Despite the platform being common to all the prospective employers that use it, you have to register separately for each one and it doesn't keep all the information you filled in when you used it for another employer to pre-populate fields with.
2:
It tries to populate the fields with information from an uploaded CV or your LinkedIn profile. It fails spectacularly at both leaving you having to delete what it's put in there are type it all in manually.
3:
In the "Education" section it...
A:
Refers to everything as a "degree" and formats the fields accordingly, so you can't input relevant industry related qualifications and training that are more recent and, frankly, far more relevant.
B:
In the case of my current struggle, only seems to cover subject areas starting with the letters "A" to "D" so I can't choose, for example, User Experience because it doesn't go as far as "U" and tells me there's no result if I type it into the search box instead.
I'm starting to wonder if I should take this as a red flag. Any prospective employer using this platform is oblivious to the fact that's it's woefully unfit for purpose or, perhaps, simply doesn't care.
I've across something similar, I can't remember the company, but the section about qualifications was a complete joke, at 40+ I don't consider my GSCEs to be remotely relevant, I always rolls my eyes when I see this, especially given that I got an E in English and can formulate a sentence far better than most graduates. I got dumped into the lower level group at school, I actually have a really high IQ (which was a surprise to learn, after being called an idiot my entire life), but I get bored really easily and struggle with repetition based learning...........t!I'm unlucky enough to be currently fighting with it for the third time during my protracted job hunt.
1:
Despite the platform being common to all the prospective employers that use it, you have to register separately for each one and it doesn't keep all the information you filled in when you used it for another employer to pre-populate fields with.
2:
It tries to populate the fields with information from an uploaded CV or your LinkedIn profile. It fails spectacularly at both leaving you having to delete what it's put in there are type it all in manually.
3:
In the "Education" section it...
A:
Refers to everything as a "degree" and formats the fields accordingly, so you can't input relevant industry related qualifications and training that are more recent and, frankly, far more relevant.
B:
In the case of my current struggle, only seems to cover subject areas starting with the letters "A" to "D" so I can't choose, for example, User Experience because it doesn't go as far as "U" and tells me there's no result if I type it into the search box instead.
I'm starting to wonder if I should take this as a red flag. Any prospective employer using this platform is oblivious to the fact that's it's woefully unfit for purpose or, perhaps, simply doesn't care.
Well, on this website the dropdown menus for GCSE were all populated with subjects that I don't recognise the names of, there was no "science" or "double science", no "English" or "Mathematics", they'd clearly taken the names from the US or similar and I literally couldn't fill it in correctly.
Then we had higher education and they did have BTEC qualifications on there, but my subjects were not listed and the pass grades were not in the correct format and I couldn't put down my grades.
Both the GCSE section and further education section were mandatory fields, so I had to fudge them.
Then in the section below, titled "other qualifications" I wrote everything out clearly, but to someone simply looking at the data it must look like I have no idea what i'm doing, as they probably have never tried to actually use that system themselves.
Next time I get one of these I really want fill in any "free" field with "Please contact me for qualification details, as they are not listed here", but then that will go through an ATS and no human will see it.
lyonspride said:
MitchT said:
Online form moans.
More online form moansRecently I decided to advertise some vacancies on LinkedIn. They have a section where you can require the applicant to have to tick boxes to confirm that they have licences/certifications which are mandatory for the job. Great idea!
Except, the fields are finite and limited to those certifications which a bunch of 20-something Americans have come up with. So plenty of Microsoft This and PMI That, but a UK HGV Class 1 driving licence? No chance.
Would it really have damaged the digital eco-system for employers to be able to have free text fields to populate with required qualifications?
V8mate said:
Would it really have damaged the digital eco-system for employers to be able to have free text fields to populate with required qualifications?
This, or simply let them upload their CV.The problem - while this would identify the strongest candidates - is that it would also require recruiting managers to spend some time reading applications and matching candidate specifications with role requirements, thus depriving them of valuable time spent sitting in a dark room w
king themself into a coma while a piece of stty software does the work.MitchT said:
This, or simply let them upload their CV.
The problem - while this would identify the strongest candidates - is that it would also require recruiting managers to spend some time reading applications and matching candidate specifications with role requirements, thus depriving them of valuable time spent sitting in a dark room wking themself into a coma while a piece of stty software does the work.
Should it be the job of the Recruiting Manager to go through a generic CV and try and pick out the skills/experience they think is relevant for the role, or for the Applicant to highlight the bits of their career history which fits the Job Description and Person Spec? The problem - while this would identify the strongest candidates - is that it would also require recruiting managers to spend some time reading applications and matching candidate specifications with role requirements, thus depriving them of valuable time spent sitting in a dark room w
king themself into a coma while a piece of stty software does the work.We don't use any software but we do expect applications to be tailored to the vacancy we're filling.
Well, if you're going to use software to do it then the software has to be fit for purpose. Also, I tailor every application to the role, make a bespoke portfolio, etc. I've spent up to 14 hours on applications so the least I can expect is for a little effort to be made at the other end.
MitchT said:
Well, if you're going to use software to do it then the software has to be fit for purpose. Also, I tailor every application to the role, make a bespoke portfolio, etc. I've spent up to 14 hours on applications so the least I can expect is for a little effort to be made at the other end.
See I stopped doing that, especially when applying for roles via an agency, I have one CV which includes EVERYTHING, if the job is real and they want something more suitable to send to a hiring manager, THEN i'll tailor it to the role.It is extremely hard on job sites to tailor a CV to every role, hell some even send your last cover letter if you're not careful.
Countdown said:
Flooble said:
However, picture someone who has accumulated 30+ years service and is just counting down to their pension, totally lacking in motivation.
You'd never get that in the Private Sector. 
Gassing Station | Jobs & Employment Matters | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff