As a highly educated job seeker with many years of experience in a variety of environments ranging from the military to education to technical theater and even call centers, I find the response to my job search puzzling. It has become clear, through hard earned experience and lost opportunities that the job-hunting process has become a codified and staged process devoid of nuance and critical thinking.
First an advertisement for a position is released. Something that seems to be more of a press release for the company involved than a description of duties and skills desired. It extols the corporate ‘vibe’, community and supportive atmosphere of the institution while seeking an impersonal and necessarily incomplete representation of how the applicant might fit into the corporate puzzle as the completing piece.
Second, is the resume submission process. Crafting a set of keywords and achievements that might match whatever elusive tangible requirements were provided in the job listing and forwarding the resume through a job forum, company portal, or contracted applicant tracking system (ATS) along with a cover letter extolling experiences, skills and aptitudes covering decades in a set of single page documents.
Third, is the screening interview. Here, a brief set of three to four questions are asked of the applicant. Simple questions the answers to which could be found on the resume or within the cover letter. The screening questions are often formulaic and provide little opportunity to expand on the information already in the recruiter’s possession. It seems the only truly reliable information to be gleamed from a screening interview is that the applicant was successful in penetrating the bastion walls of the ATS keyword system as evidenced by the call in the first place.
I currently have no experience beyond this step. I understand there may be further interviews and even salary negotiations. Of these, I have no current knowledge. It seems, upon considered reflection, there are a few considerations that might address this deficiency.
There seems to be failures in the system at several points and levels.
I know my experiences, my skills and aptitudes. Through trial and error and with assistance I have crafted a resume that represents these strengths in a format that meets, for the most part, the formatting requirements of the dreaded ATS or “Applicant Tracking System”. This is a significant hurdle in any job search as key words are the linchpin upon which all initial hopes hang. The job seeker only has a vague idea which keywords may be significant to the human resources clerk assigned to review the processed hash that remains of any resume post ATS processing. Incoming resumes and curriculum vitae hurl keywords at the ATS hoping that “MS365 expertise” substitutes for “MS Office Suite”, “MS Excel”, “MS Word”, and or “PowerPoint”. These subtle distinctions in terms are lost on the ATS, and subsequently the HR clerk, as resumes without the ‘correct’ keyword are chucked into a digital “File 13”. The time saving selling point of an ATS seems to have been lost. Too many examples of positions for which I am qualified yet have been rejected are reposted month after month. It seems that qualified applicants are being missed because keywords are not matching. The losers are both the company and the applicant. Though one wonders who would want to work for a company where the HR cannot reason the congruence between “Photoshop” and “Adobe Creative Suite”.
Often, the position descriptions are of little help as their content seems to wander from the obtuse and obscure to the utterly vague. Mind you, the clerk on the other side of the ATS does not seem bothered as they are only concerned with the “garbage out” part of the old IT adage. HR processes whatever the computer tells them is acceptable and the machine grinds on. Whatever happened to the humans of HR?