A Click Too Far (The Painful Recruitment Process)

March 11, 2010

Recently, while deeply engaged in one of my typical “the Internet has revolutionised recruitment” rants, I was cut off mid-sentence by the comment “yes, but not all revolutions are for the better”.

Despite my protests, my Job Seeking Friend (JSF) quickly demonstrated one of the problems online recruitment has brought to the process.  Let me lead you through the conversation:

JSF: “I want a PHP developer role in London”

Me: “Workhound is a good place to start, try that”

JSF: “Ok, here’s what I get”

Me: “The second one looks good, click on that”

JSF: “Ok, but now I’m on another site”

Me: “That’s because workhound is an aggregator”

JSF: “I thought I was on a job site”

Me: “No, we’re using an aggregator so we can look at jobs on lots of sites, like you would with Google or GoCompare – do you really work in IT?”

JSF: “OK that makes sense.  I want to apply for this job, I click on Apply…”

JSF: “…now I’m on another site, and there’s another Apply button” (looking smug)

Me: “That’s because JobSearch is also an aggregator (sort of), you’ve not reached the original advert yet” (looking like it should be obvious)

JSF: “So one alligator searches another alligator?”

Me: “It’s aggregator not alligator, and yes that’s right, keep going …”

JSF: “Look, there’s an ASP Web Developer role for 40k” (moving mouse towards the More Jobs Like These Box with clear intent to click)

Me: “Stay focused, your trying to apply for the PHP job”

JSF: “Fine, I’ll click on Apply again”

JSF: “Still no application form, just the job advert again, great this Internet recruiting” (smirks)

Me: “Click on the apply button” (frustrated)

JSF: “Oh look, the job advert again, another alligator?” (poor attempt at humour)

Me (triumphantly): “No, you’re into the Application Tracking System now, click on Apply and you’ll be able to put in your details” (punches the air)

JSF: “No, it originally had a salary of 45k now its 25k – 45k”

Me: “Oh go and see a recruitment consultant!”

In the space of a five minute conversation I was forced to accept the fact that for all of the good online recruitment brings, from a job seeker’s perspective it can be a painful process.  And that’s before the application process has even started.

Try it yourself with a Job Seeking Friend (one that’s not got aspirations of being a comedy stand-up), it’s an education.

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3 Comments »

1. A excellent blog post and illustrative of just how incomprehensible and convoluted the job seeking process has become.

   What should also be remembered is that if your JSF had actually applied for the job, it is highly unlikely that they would have even received a response. One can only feel sorry for them. Wasn’t the internet supposed to make things easier? For candidates as well as advertisers?

   Comment by karl — March 11, 2010 @ 9:40 am

2. Great post Julian,

   We go through the same analysis all the time, our research watching job seekers using the web illustrates the same confusion.

   This is NOT GOOD, our mission at Allthetopbananas.com is to be HELPFUL to the job seeker. I feel there are a few issues:

   1. Aggregators, aggregating other aggregators - this would be like Google indexing Yahoo - it is not going to help anyone.

   2. Aggregators / Job Search Engines failing to communicate what they do for the job seeker.

   3. Aggregators / Job Search Engines have built in biased to getting a click instead of helping the job seeker, as the revenue model is typically CPC for aggregators it is easy to see how this has happened. Our latest beta site (private but you can have a login if you want) attempts to resolve this by taking notice of Amazon (who aggregate stores), finance aggregators and shopping aggregators. We work on CPA and CPC so quality of click to our client is critical.

   4. In the finance and shopping aggregator space the search / comparisons typically offer more search features and tools than the target site, in Jobs this is often not the case. Again our Beta makes a start to change this.

   5. The ATS issue does not look like it was handled well bu Fish4 in this case - our focus is the other end of the process so I can not comment too much.

   Job seeking is horrible, it is not fun, it is often demoralizing and whilst the web has exposed more opportunities it has scattered them across 100s of job boards across the UK. There are about 490,000 available jobs in the UK - but the large general boards each carry 40-70k jobs forcing the job seeker to keep looking to see all potential. Then niche job sites increase this difficulty. There is a need for aggregation - but it needs to be more HELPFUL, we are trying!

   Please keep up your great posts!

   Speak soon,

   Dave

   Comment by Davd Martin — March 11, 2010 @ 10:15 am

3. Speaking from the aggrator’s perspective, and as host of the candidate-awarded NORAs, I couldn’t agree more. Every time some smart-alex techie or marketeer sneaks yet another click into the process, they further frustrate the candidate.
   Continual obfuscation, mis-direction and clutter only alienates the customer.

   Comment by Stephen O'Donnell — March 11, 2010 @ 10:38 am

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