Sunday, 7 September 2014

Applying for jobs online is giving me suicide.

I'm suffering from a severe case of suicide after ragequitting another 400-page choose-your-own-adventure novel known as an online application form, in which the possible endings range from "An unknown error caused our shit website to lose all the data you just entered. Please start again" to "thanks for your reply. We will never get back to you, making the last four hours you spent telling us your dead dog's middle name and which aisle of your local supermarket is your favourite a spectacular waste of time".

What blows my tiny mind about this is that there are people without jobs, and there are people who are employed to design websites, and this is the result. Writing as someone slowly suffocating from a noose that would make my scoutmasters proud, and suffering as I may be from Owl Creek Syndrome, this still strikes me as fucking bullshit. My favourite examples are the websites that require you to enter each job, school and meal you've had individually, and then still ask for your CV at the end, which is like sending someone on a hike across country to pick up a train ticket to where they've gone.

So as I sway here in the early evening breeze, several things occur to me:

1. Application forms are overwhelmingly designed to filter out applicants, in response to the perpetually flaccid economy driving up applications into the thousands.

2. Employers show their contempt for the people they supposedly want to hire by flagrantly disrespecting our time with their poorly thought out forms.

3. All employers should be required to pay a small fee for each line applicants are required to write about themselves. Half this stuff they have no earthly reason to ask anyway, and the rest is already more easily covered elsewhere.

4. By "small fee", I mean £10 million.

Let me know what you think. Should I run on this platform? Should I cut the noose? What would make you happy? Leave a comment (in my spam folder).

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