What I wish recruiters knew
I’m currently in the process of finding a new job, after my previous employer sadly had to close down.
I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had a time limit before — it’s always been with the luxury of time, and waiting for the right job, so this is very new to me and probably adds to my heightened sense of panic and therefore, limited patience with job applications.
This time around, I’ve noticed some really frustrating things about job hunting that I think many people experience, so I decided to make a list of things I wish recruiters knew when hiring people for roles. When I say recruiters, I mean both recruitment companies and internal recruiters within companies.
We hate filling out forms with info that’s on our resume
I understand the purpose of filling them out — it helps with searching your database later — but there is nothing more disheartening and frustrating than opening a job application (for the twentieth time) and finding that you have to enter in your work experience from present to your first job ever. We’ve already done it. It’s in our resume. We don’t want to have to open our resume, copy/paste the details or use a terrible UX to type everything in manually. It’s painful.
Quite honestly, I’ve given up on a few applications for jobs I really like the look of simply because of the application process.
If you offer the option of ‘Easy Apply’ on LinkedIn, don’t ask for a billion-word Cover Letter
LinkedIn careers is great. It’s super easy to see the company you’re applying for, and apply directly to them. The Easy Apply option is fantastic; it saves your resume and details so you just have to click a few buttons and your application is sent off.
But it’s really frustrating when potential employers enable the Easy Apply option (yes, it’s an option), but ask for a cover letter with 2309834 requirements, or request selection criteria to be responded to. Don’t tempt us with that Easy Apply button! Don’t show us the holy grail and then take it away!
I’ve actually used it a few times out of spite — whether or not that’s impinged on my success, I don’t know, but by that point I’d lost the will to live and didn’t care anyway!
We are stressed, worried and panicked about our job situation
Generally, if someone tells you they have 2–3 weeks left of work before they’re unemployed, they’re going to be in a pretty negative state of mind (unless they’re sitting on a few million bucks in the bank). Somehow, we still have to be able to pay our rent/mortgage, bills, family expenses AND keep positive enough to apply for job after job after job.
When you say you’re going to give us an update on a certain day, please stick to that — even if it’s simply “I haven’t got an update yet”. We’re waiting by the phone, jumping at every call in the hopes it might be the one to solve our problem. We’re going over our family budget trying to figure out how to manage the worst case scenario if we haven’t found a job.
A day late might only seem like a day to you, but to us, it’s one more day closer to our nightmare scenario.
It’s really hard to sell yourself when you’ve had multiple rejections
When I first started applying for jobs, I was feeling confident and buoyed. I knew I could do my job, and do it well. I knew I had great skills and experience.
After the 20th odd rejection, that feeling changed. Why bother applying for that job when that recruiter has already knocked me back a few times? Why bother applying for a senior role that I’m qualified for, when I can’t even get a more junior role in the same industry?
At a certain point in the job hunt, you start to feel so down on yourself that you tell yourself you might as well take a job at McDonald’s.
When a recruiter says “tell me all the things that you can do” — it’s really hard to answer — so please forgive us! Please don’t sigh and make us feel worse than we already do. We know we are good at our jobs, we’ve just forgotten our worth briefly.
