The Truth Trap

hile applying for a volunteer position last week, I wrote myself into a corner and a confession.

The position is at a local animal shelter. I didn’t want to be too cliché and say I love all animals—largely because it isn’t true. (Back when I was a hiring manager, countless applicants for editorial positions wrote “I love words” in their cover letters. I believed them, but I also grew weary of the repetition. I assume it’s the same for hiring managers at shelters.)

I told the volunteer coordinator that I had a reverence for most animals, with the exception of clothes moths. I didn’t tell her just how much I loathe the little critters. Even writing about them gives me a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. Makes me want to burn the clothes they light on and take a bath.

I have, in fact, killed clothes moths. We had an infestation of them one year in our apartment and lost countless cashmere sweaters and woolen goods. I’ve held it against them ever since.

Do you think I blew my chances at the position? Can a moth murderer be accepted in the animal welfare community?

[Drop cap by Jessica Hische.]

Test Your Integrity

just finished reading Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr. If you’re an aspiring poet or essayist, a lapsed church-goer or doubting Believer, a recovering alcoholic or recovering from a tragic childhood, you should read this. I don’t fall into any of those categories and I still inhaled the book, just as I did Karr’s earlier memoirs, The Liars’ Club and Cherry.

The other night as I was applying for a job online, this passage from Lit came to mind:

“I need his unbudgeable integrity. I mean, when a big-deal magazine requested changing some of his poems, he pulled them rather than compromise. I’d have typed mine backward in Urdu to see them into print.”

Some folks fudge their work history just to land the position. I’m not one of them. In fact, I probably (stupidly) err on the side of modesty about my skills and experience. So when I got to this question in the application for a university job—
How many years of clerical/administrative experience do you have working in an academic setting?
—my answer was easy: I’ve never worked in an academic setting.

Except, of course, it wasn’t easy. I had to choose from this multiple-choice list of answers:
No Response
More than 0, up through 1 yr
More than 1 yr, up through 3 yrs
More than 3 yrs, up through 5 yrs
More than 5 years

This hardly seemed like a deal-breaker question, but university applications contain all sorts of warnings about being factual and truthful and passing background checks and drug screenings and if I lie about ANYTHING at all the consequences will be yada yada yada. In truth, I HAVE worked in an academic setting if you count the time I spent teaching high-schoolers. But because the job ad stated a “scholarly” background is preferred, I assume the question refers to the college-level community. So which answer would you choose?

I selected “No Response” and continued with the process. But when I was finished, a red warning popped up telling me my application was incomplete. I had “not answered” the very question that had stumped me.

Well, technically, I guess No Response is not an answer. But why in bloody Hell is it listed and formatted as if it were? The problem isn’t my integrity; the problem is a writer’s inability to form sensible questions with appropriate multiple-choice answers.

So I selected the next answer on the list—“More than 0, up through 1 yr”—then addressed the matter (as vaguely as possible so as not to offend anyone) in my cover letter.

What would you have done?

[Drop cap by Jessica Hische.]

In Which Lill Reminds Managers of Their Humanity

This week my sister applied for a marketing position at an upscale food market. She spent a great deal of time customizing her cover letter and résumé because she was genuinely excited about the job. She WANTED the job. She NEEDED the job.

She hand-delivered her bid for the position to the manager of the market. And he personally accepted her envelope. It's unusual for managers and HR folk to meet candidates in person at this stage of the hiring process. So he gets points for showing his face.

But his face was hardly welcoming. Never cracking a smile, he warned my sister that he's received more than 100 applications already (a few more than the 6 the press tells us about) and he'd only be contacting the cream of the crop.

I'm sure what he said is true. And perhaps he meant well. But with a dour disposition, he dashed every hope my sister had for the job. He could have conveyed the same information with a smile and a caring tone in his voice.

Dear Managers and HR professionals,

Who made you the Royal Guard of the company? Who said you have to maintain a poker face and act like a bloody robot to protect the company? Who do you think IS the company?

It's the people, of which you are one.

Job candidates aren't the enemy; employees aren't the enemy. So why treat them as if they are?

Obviously you know what the job market is like. You're the one who has to sift through hundreds of résumés. Now imagine, for a moment, what it's like to be the person represented by said résumé. Imagine a person whose unemployment benefits have run out, a person who is relying on the kindness of friends for shelter, a person who still has financial obligations and no way to meet them.

Or forget the hard-luck scenario. Just see people as people. Your first goal is to Do No Harm, regardless of how you may feel.

Respectfully,
Lill

I can say this because it used to be my job to advise managers and HR folk on how to communicate and behave with employees and colleagues in the workplace. I can say this because I used to be a manager and I understand the difficulties of the role.

So I hereby decree that anyone involved in the hiring process of an organization take a deep breath and summon a little warmth into their "game face." It's not an indicator of the job candidate's chances. But it does make you a better ambassador for your organization. And a better member of society.

I’m TRYING to Be a Good Little Job-Hunter, But…

Once I finally left my tangle of covers yesterday—and had my coffee and ate my breakfast and finished reading Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero and pilled the pooch and took her for a walk and tried to get her to eat some breakfast—after I was finally ready to face the day, I got down to the business at hand. Namely, to finish my application for a particular job.

I thought I’d applied for the job on Monday. I saw the job opening last week. I’d researched the community this job is in and shared my excitement with my husband. I’d sent my résumé and carefully worded cover letter to the e-mail address listed in the ad. It had been a stunningly simple and hopeful process, and maybe a little too easy.

Then the e-mail came through saying I also had to apply online on the university’s hiring system.

Ugh. Another step, but no big deal. Yet I’d done enough of these to know I needed a chunk of time to complete the online application.

So on Wednesday, just as I pressed the button that said I promised I hadn’t lied about anything, just as I was feeling self-satisfied about finishing the application just in time to go to a writers’ meeting I really wanted to attend, they popped up.

THEY were 8 questions, 6 of them requiring essay answers.

BLIMEY!

I was nowhere near done! And I couldn’t sit through a meeting with this on my mind.

So I skipped the meeting and outlined what I wanted to say. On Thursday I wrote; on Friday, I wrote some more. I did the final editing today, including a paragraph regarding the typo in one of the questions.

Now if I wanted a job as sous chef or scenic designer or manicurist, the typo would have been a nonissue. But when you’re applying for an editorial position, it’s a hateful little Pandora’s box. Was it intentional? What do they prefer I do? Here’s what I wrote on the subject (and didn’t submit):
[Regarding the last word of this “question”: Is the spelling intentional? Are you monitoring which candidates bring up the extra i? Which candidates make snarky comments and which ones try to be tactful? Do you assume that candidates who don’t mention it don’t notice it? I confess I’m conflicted about how to respond in these situations. But if by not mentioning it you perceive me to be a bad editor, I thought it best to note it.]

Now to the reason I didn’t submit it.

After I copied and pasted each of my spectacular answers and reworked them to look good on-screen in the too-tiny boxes (that didn’t expand for easier viewing) with the too-tiny type, after I agreed to background checks and other snooping, and after I hit SUBMIT with relish, red instructions spilled over my window. The red said my application had serious errors in it that I needed to correct.

What had I done wrong? I had exceeded the 1,200-character answer limit.

They couldn’t have told me that UPFRONT?!

I would have followed a character count if I’d been given one. Now I had to hack away at my prose. And that’s about all I’ve been doing today. I used the Word Count function in Word to monitor my success, adhering to the character count WITH word spaces. My comments about the typo were the first to go. And finally, I was ready to hit SUBMIT again.

And guess what? According to this application system, Word doesn’t know jack about counting characters. Now I had to keep cutting and submitting and cutting and submitting until my answers got accepted.

THEN it was time to attach my cover letter and résumé and optional attachments. There were all sorts of rules about how my documents were to be formatted—rules about fonts, columns, software programs. It was at this point that I decided they would have to take what I had for them. I wasn’t about to reformat anything after already spending days on their application. I thought I’d address the typo in one of those “optional attachments,” but the system skipped over that part.

C’est la Vizsla. Time to move on. Life’s too short.

(And I dare just one of you blaggards out there who think the jobless are lazy parasites to comment on this. Go ahead; test my wrath.)

[See “Rage Against the Machine” for my previous rant against HR and their choices of technology. Art courtesy of Frida Kahlo.]

Reporting on Job-Search Results

If you're on the dole, you have to track your job search for the government. And one of the columns you have to complete is labelled "Results."

Now this is where time matters. At what point do we give up hope and call it "Rejection"? I've left this column blank because I've not heard back from anyone. Not even an automated Thank you for your submission. Now you can forget you ever applied here cuz you're not going to hear from us again.

It's not that difficult to set up an automated response that lets applicants know their applications went through. (Okay. I'm exaggerating somewhat. I've had less than a handful of automated thank-yous. You know who you are.) These are major, recognizable companies I've been applying to so I expect their hiring process to be a bit more polished than small, family-owned operations.

Searching for a job is beginning to look like a numbers game to me: The more jobs I apply for, the better my chances of getting one. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Which is why I applied to a terrorist organization. (I hope this proves to the government how much I want a job rather than my failure at patriotism.)

And I've got to hand it to these guys: They blew away the Fortune 500 in the etiquette-of-hiring department. I know exactly where I stand with them and can now report this in the Results column: REJECTED.

What?

Yes, REJECTED. I can't even get traction with a bunch of terrorists. Which casts the rest of the Results column in a new light. As a new season sets in, I suppose I need to re-examine my hope approach.

One Job App. Down, How Many More to Go?

Whew! I just submitted a very long online application for a government job. It's taken forever to complete and has been the anvil on my head for days. 

Now I feel lighter. And I can't imagine that many other application processes will prove as daunting as that one was. Easy times ahead!

A Note for HR Folks and Their Suppliers

Hunting for a job is a daunting task for me. I'm squeamish about self-promotion and absolutely refuse to "fudge" about any skills I have or wish I had. I don't submit my résumé to you unless I'm certain I can succeed at the position you are advertising.

And that's where things get iffy.

The Job Board

My hunt takes place exclusively online. I visit a number of aggregate sites that pull in ads from a variety of job boards, so I'm familiar with a variety of formats. Some are inadequate for an HR specialist to properly list an opening; few allow for creativity in the description. The immediate workaround is a link to the more desirable listing on the advertising organization's Web site. Beyond this, I would encourage job boards to survey their users—both employers and prospective employees—to continue to improve the sites.

But job boards are the least of my problems with job-hunting. 

The Ad

The first obstacle to my quest is the person (or committee) who wrote the ad.  Kudos to the folks who understand the difference between "preferred," "desired," and "required"—and actually include this language in their job ads. And kudos to the folks who can put one word in front of another and have them make sense. But a pox on the rest of you. 

I've seen ads for positions that carried the title I'm qualified for, but described tasks in such jargon-laden language that I had no idea what I would be expected to do. I've also seen ads that didn't use jargon but still failed to make sense. I know that job-seekers apply to your ads in spite of these shortcomings. But don't take that as evidence that your ads work. It's merely evidence that some people are desperate enough for work that they'll take a stab at any opening, appropriate or not. 

I'm not interested in working with people who can't put a sentence together. Nor am I keen on working in an organization that depends on jargon to communicate. The sad truth is that in many cases, these bad ads don't reflect the culture or nature of the organization or department. They merely reflect the writing skills of the person (or committee) who put the ad together. Which means that you are likely screening out many qualified candidates who could have been a great fit for the position (me, for instance!).

The Process

The second obstacle to my quest for employment is the application procedure. I realize that automating this part of the hiring process is a boon for HR departments and a nice revenue stream for suppliers of the software. But when was the last time you asked job-seekers for feedback on your application procedure? 

I understand that asking 20 essay questions weeds out the tire-kickers. Here's what I don't understand:

• Multiple-choice questions that don't provide a space for additional comments. I find that in many cases, my answer is not among the list. I could randomly select an answer, but that would be a lie. And at the end of every application I've seen so far, I'm not supposed to press "Submit" unless I verify that everything is true. I could leave the question blank, but then I couldn't even move on to the next screen because the software requires an answer to every question. So please leave a space in which I may provide an explanation.

• No way to "Save" my responses. Some programs allow this, others don't. Think about this for a moment. During the course of the one or two hours it can take to complete an application, any number of things can go wrong—a power outage, an Internet disconnection or timeout, an interruption or personal emergency, a mistakenly pressed button or key. Without a Save feature, all the work prior to these calamities is lost. I realize this has no direct impact on you, but it does show your lack of regard for the job-seeker.

• No overview. Most of the software is structured so that every question has to be answered on one screen before being allowed to continue to the next screen. How many screens are there? How long will this take? I know I can put in bogus answers just to go from screen to screen and then edit every answer afterwards. But what a waste of precious time! Why not present a screen that shows the entire application? Then I can work on the questions offline and submit thoughtful, informed answers later.

I could go on. But I'm wondering how enlightened some HR people are. Here are a few Web sites and blogs to enrich your career:

Bob Sutton—Work Matters

Dr. John Sullivan & Associates

Evil HR Lady

Fistful of Talent

Jessica Lee Writes

Punk Rock HR

The HR Capitalist

Your Hr Guy .com—HR for the Masses

It's time for me to get back to those essay questions.