randomness of interviews / getting a job

miec

A comment that was made in another thread about the job selection process got me thinking, along side an article I read somewhere (sorry I cannot remember where) but literally over a thousand people applied for one job.

My thoughts are this: let's say I advertise a job, I give a job description and a list of essential and desirable qualities and qualifications. Now let's say the company I have is well sought after one, in a sector that attracts a lot of applicants. I receive 800 applications. Now the easiest way to whittle the pile is set aside all the CVs that are messy, hard to read and don't have the exact requirements but let's say that 100 candidates have the exact experience and they meet the desired requirements. So I whittle the pile of people who have outstanding CVs and letters, along with extra experience but now here is the crunch, I now have fifty candidates in my pile.

How does a recruiter whittle down the pile after this? (Unless they are willing to interview 50 people, which I doubt it). Does it come down to location, schools attended, or other unknown factors.

Remember at this point most employers don't know age (although they can guess by the school dates and work experience) or gender (unless they can tell by the name or if there is a mention of children). So assuming they stay within the equality laws, how else can they select say 20-30 candidates (which is still pretty high) out of a pile of 50 outstanding candidates?

I raise this issue because with so many people out of work, so many going for the one job and so many people worrying about their interview performance, CV performance, cover letter performance, there is a huge amount of anxiety and sense of failure. I often wonder is the whole job seeking thing more random than we give credit for (during a time of extreme recession of course).

KillerKity

In some cases it's totally a game of luck and chance. The last place I worked randomly picked about 30 CVs and wittled them down using certin criteria i.e. got rid of the messy CVs straight away, ones with not enough experience, anyone not from Ireland or England (yeah I know...). And applied other equally questionable criteria. In many cases they never saw the best candidates CV

Mink

Where I work, we recently advertised an Engineer's position. We were absolutely inundated with CV's & a huge amount of them were really really qualified people with tons of experience. Same with another job advertised, it was a part time admin job. Even in the boom, regular part time morning work was like gold dust so again we got approx 900 CV's for that one.

You're dead right, CV's that are hard to read, very complicated, full of technical terms that may have been relevant to the person's previous job - but not this one, etc etc. These CV's slow recruiters down even more & one way or another get overlooked. Make it as reader-friendly as possible.

Also, if CV's were received of people that had no experience of that field, these were discarded. For instance a surveyor's job & someone sends a CV & they have a decade of managing a restaurant, that's not going to work.

When we got the the final 50 or so, I think we wittled it down to 40, again looking at experience in a similar company, similar functions. Then the 40 or so were all phoned & given a brief phone interview. Then let's say you have 30 (some people just don't take your call or phone back), they were all interviewed by HR. The good ones from that were then brought in for 2nd interviews with the manager over the area (approx 20)

Anyway, at no point does age come into it unless they are very young like late teens early twenties obviously. It would be impossible for them to have experience necessary for the roles. But there is no real thought of education levels, age, location etc. It really comes down to what you did in previous roles, is it applicable to the role advertised.

A big thing looked for is length of time in previous roles. Granted people may be hopping around jobs in past year or two if they were made redundant from long term roles. But we really look to see do they stick around in jobs. Nothing puts us off more when someone is going to a different job year after year. So if this is you, don't put it in your CV. Also, it's good to note why you had to change jobs. It's one of the first things we would ask.

The whole recruitment process has become a lot slower simply because there are so many applicants to go through.

Sorry for the waffle. I hope the above helps someone out there who maybe just need to adjust their CV/approach to get a look-in.

miec

@ Mink you are a star, thanks for all that info. On my CV I state why I left each job, so I'd have dates in the middle (makes it easier for reading / scanning) job title, company, bulleted list of duties and then reason for leaving underneath. I admit that my earlier CVs were messy and hard to understand until I got this aspect right.

Most of my jobs have averaged around 2-4 years, however, I went back to full time education and didn't work during that time and I think that may be a problem in some instances, in other cases, it hasn't been a problem for some recruiters.

Having read your experience though I can understand now why things are much slower. Those are some figures you gave.

@ KillerKity - thanks for that, in the case of that company you mentioned, they could have overlooked someone just right, but in a weird way it made me feel better.

Mink

No probs.

It's true, we could have missed perfect candidates but maybe because their CV was hard to read & figure out.

When listing out duties you had in positions, bullet point them as sentences, not one-liners. Also, you can adapt them to suit different types of roles you are applying for. So you'd expand on customer service/database duties & save that one for those type of roles for example.

I'd suggest putting data on experience & previous jobs before education. Put education & "interests" last on CV.

If you are 2-4 yrs in most roles, that's quite good, wouldn't worry about the break to do further education, absolutely nothing wrong with that & I wouldn't see that as a bad point on a CV for sure.

Best of luck, keep at it.

Mrs OBumble

Mink's company is one of the better employers, methinks.

Even so, I bet they didn't bother interviewing 30 candidates for the admin position!

I was one of 16 people interviewed for an office-manager position a while back - didn't get it, but if I had, one of the first things I was going to teach the bosses to do was be more ruthless about advertising and interviewing: they were totally freaked by how many applicants they got, and wasted ten hours of their time doing what should have take three. At their charge-out rate, that's quite a lot of eruo they missed earning ...

Yes, life, including employment decisions, is random. (Or pre-destined, depending on your theological position )

There are some positions where getting the perfect / best candidate is important. There are a lot more where good-enough is just fine, and (these days) really-great is achievable by a high proportion of the applicants. "Fair" is pretty impossible to achieve.

seamus

Mink wrote: »

I'd suggest putting data on experience & previous jobs before education. Put education & "interests" last on CV.

Something I've been doing for years now is a small table on the very first page giving an overview of my skills and experience relevant to the position I applied for. Haven't done an interview in a few years now, but any time I went for one, they always commented on how my CV was very easy to read. When recruiters/hr people are skimming through CVs, your application will be treated less favourably if they have to go digging for information.
I know one person who instantly discards a CV if he has to go past the first page or if he can't immediately see your skills and experience.

Everything about you should just jump out at the person reading the CV. Someone less qualified than you is more likely to score an interview if their information is more visible than yours.

omega man

Personally i believe a clear and concise 'profile' is required on a cv. If the employer's attention is caught then hopefully they will read on.

term

One of the Top Tips in Viz was:

"Avoid hiring unlucky people by throwing half the CVs into the bin before reading"

Unfortunately, this is closer to the truth than you would think!

Ouchette

term wrote: »

One of the Top Tips in Viz was:

"Avoid hiring unlucky people by throwing half the CVs into the bin before reading"

Unfortunately, this is closer to the truth than you would think!

I actually saw this happen once, working at a magazine.

They had a stack of paper a foot high. Half went straight in the bin because 'they didn't want to hire unlucky people'. Next, everything where the layout was too messy for them to bother reading it went in the bin. Then all the cvs with spelling mistakes. Then all those without the right experience or good enough university grades, or even those who'd been to the 'wrong' universities. And theeeen, there were still a good hundred left, so after a brief discussion around the table, they decided it would be nice to have a girl to balance out the all-male team and chucked all the remaining men's cvs in the bin! Then, finally, they read them properly and started looking to see which ones were outstanding.

miec

One of the Top Tips in Viz was:
"Avoid hiring unlucky people by throwing half the CVs into the bin before reading"

Unfortunately, this is closer to the truth than you would think!

Lol, that was funny.

In my CV I have a profile of key skills which I tweak according to the job. So my total CV layout is

1) Name / contact details at top (no CV of stuff - they know it's a CV) then key skills
2) Key Skills - a brief list of points (bulleted and in sentences) summarising my skills and experience.
3)Education
4) Work history
5) Other training
6) voluntary work
7) references available on request.

The thing is I have done a lot in my time, also my bullet points for each job is in sentences, but thanks for the tip Mink because I was close to using one or two key words, I'll keep them the same. I used to have my work history first but it was suggested to me a few times to put my education first, the section is pretty brief. Since tweaking my CV I am getting more interviews but not as many as I would like but I have felt there was a certain randomness to it all, some of the jobs I went for I didn't really kill myself over and I got the interview, whereas others where I put huge effort - nothing.

Mink

I guess some companies look at education first, so either way isn't a bad way of doing it.

I probably don't look for it as I put mine low on the list as I only have up to Junior Cert. But I've been working full time since I was 16 & luckily got some good breaks & have great experience & on the job training.

That's terrible re the story above of the magazine company throwing 1/2 into the bin. We make a point to go through everything. But then again we have a person hired who just looks after recruitment now as we have a high sales turnover & are constantly recruiting in that area.

But even when I was looking after recruiting for particular roles myself I made a point of going through all CV's on top of doing my own work. I would just feel bad not giving someone at least a look-in.

seamus

Ouchette wrote: »

they decided it would be nice to have a girl to balance out the all-male team and chucked all the remaining men's cvs in the bin!

:eek: So illegal!

John Mason

one place i worked in years ago had a graduate programme and got 600-700 CV'S in, what they did to narrow it down was throw every CV away that came in a brown envelope without even looking at them

then it was CV's on coloured paper
:eek::eek:

term

one place i worked in years ago had a graduate programme and got 600-700 CV'S in, what they did to narrow it down was throw every CV away that came in a brown envelope without even looking at them

then it was CV's on coloured paper


Love it! Any more stories out there of companies behaving badly in the hiring dept?

AARRRGH

miec wrote: »

How does a recruiter whittle down the pile after this? (Unless they are willing to interview 50 people, which I doubt it). Does it come down to location, schools attended, or other unknown factors.

I think people's (secret) prejudices come into play at this stage. Get rid of the Indians, the old people, etc.

miec

Some interesting stories, good job I always used white envelopes . I am glad to say my persistence, sheer doggedness, etc finally paid off, I have got a job, woo hoo. I'm so frickin' happy, I've been looking actively for a year, I was almost getting scared that I'd never get one, and it was one I wanted, permanent, nice wage and a chance to develop myself and help the company grow, I'm made up.

term

Happy days, you must be chuffed. Well done.

InReality

Without getting too abstract , its a reflection of the randomness of life itself.

Even with very highly trained interviewers and a rigid interview process you could get a job one day and not get it the next.

Thinking interviewers always pick the best "performers" is one of the faults in conventional business thinking that is hopefully being questioned a bit due to the banking crisis.

term

InReality wrote: »

Thinking interviewers always pick the best "performers" is one of the faults in conventional business thinking that is hopefully being questioned a bit due to the banking crisis.

Don't quite understand this, can you elaborate?

cronos

term wrote: »

Don't quite understand this, can you elaborate?

I think he is saying best "performers" are actually the best "actors" rather than the people that are best at the job.

confuseddotcom

irishbird wrote: »

one place i worked in years ago had a graduate programme and got 600-700 CV'S in, what they did to narrow it down was throw every CV away that came in a brown envelope without even looking at them

then it was CV's on coloured paper
:eek::eek:

Wow! I would like to know what Cvs they actually accepted eliminating the brown envelope ones? What else is there? As in those snazzy dinky little vinyl covers with clips and the clear wallets is it?

I think Companies went through a spell as well where they operated vice-versa, and used the plain old Cvs that came in in a brown envelope for the Candidate process and binned the fancy folder ones lol.

Berty

confuseddotcom wrote: »

Wow! I would like to know what Cvs they actually accepted eliminating the brown envelope ones? What else is there? As in those snazzy dinky little vinyl covers with clips and the clear wallets is it?

I think Companies went through a spell as well where they operated vice-versa, and used the plain old Cvs that came in in a brown envelope for the Candidate process and binned the fancy folder ones lol.

How about White Envelopes? The most common colour of postage envelopes.

term

cronos wrote: »

I think he is saying best "performers" are actually the best "actors" rather than the people that are best at the job.

I actually thought s/he was saying the opposite! I was wondering why they would say that, AND I was wondering how the current banking crisis had changed whatever it was that had changed in the first place.

Still confused!

merlie

Hi OP,

I read what you wrote about jobs and interviewing process. It seems such a scary thing in this day and age that it has come to this. I can recall a time when you applied for a job, you would always get an interview and feel you are in with the chance of getting the job, but those days are gone now.

It is a pity really that such times are gone. I have friends who never get to the interview stage. They send off lots of CV's per day but never get anything back and they have a wealth of experience. These days, it should not be called job seeking, it should be called interview seeking!!

Jim2007

miec wrote: »

I raise this issue because with so many people out of work, so many going for the one job and so many people worrying about their interview performance, CV performance, cover letter performance, there is a huge amount of anxiety and sense of failure. I often wonder is the whole job seeking thing more random than we give credit for (during a time of extreme recession of course).

When a recession hits employers try to hold on to their best people and let the rest go. With every company doing this, it results in more and more poor candidates been added to the job seeking pool, so the game remains the same - trying to find those 5 to 10 people who are actually worth looking at. The only difference is that it how takes a bit longer to identify those people.

The CV is the most important document you will ever write for your future employer and if you don't do a good job on that what can he expect from you in the future!

Applying that principle one easily whittle a 1000 resumes down to about 100 in an hour or two. I'm always amazed at how little time and thought people put into their application.

Jim.

Berty

This many be a TLDR post but here goes,

Unfortunately for me as a jobseeker I'm in the pool with all the other field sales people out there and from what I understand there are 1000's upon 1000's of us out there.

Securing an interview from applications in this pool has proved rather difficult. I have sent out many many applications for jobs and I was only lucky enough to secure 2 interviews in 2 months.

My only saving grace is that both of those positions were looking for something rather specific which I had. With one of the positions thankfully a lot of recruitment agencies sent "Lemons" which is what the interviewer later reffered to them as.

One Employer only interviewed 8 people for the position and only brought one person to the 2nd interview which was a practical test and tour of the factory.

The other Employer only interviewed 6 people and only brought one to the 2nd interview which was a presentation by the interviewee and tour of their factory also.

So for the 1000's of people who would have applied for both of those positions only 14 people were even interviewed and only 1 person was brought to 2nd interviews. Now that is HARD GOING as a jobseeker.

I had applied for many positions in FMCG and was never even interviewed and rarely received any PFO letters. There are simply too many people out there with more relevant experience in that field. My experience is mainly Technical/Refridgerated Capital Equipment Sales(Foodservice) whose industry experienced a massive decline when the banks closed their doors.

For me I feel the best response I received was through recruitment agencies because they do have a better ability to keep their ear to the ground for positions because like sales people they earn commission. There are good agents out there but mostly bad agents who think nothing of fobbing you off and never EVER calling you but as much as you might hate them you need to keep banging on their doors.

I wouldnt call the whole process "Random" when it comes to getting an interview or a job. Its simply "THE HUNT".

This is my last weekend out of work and I start a new job on Tuesday the 1st June. I have been unemployed 2.5 months. Many will snort at ONLY being unemployed for 2.5 months for they may have been out of work 13 months or so. So in that case I will happily say I AM LUCKY. I fought hard and kicked hard on the 19th March when my employer saw fit to meet me in a pub with my other boss, tell me to empty the car of my personal belongings and leave me on the side of the road. I must have sent out 40 applications for employment before it even hit midnight that night.

I had an interview 3 days later on the Wednsday and thought "What are people getting worked up about? That was easy to get an interview. Pah' It took another 4 weeks to secure another interview for another job and I was on the phone nearly constantly and sat staring at the computer 8 hours a day between dropping my missus off at work and collecting her. I looked at it as my JOB to look for work.

From seeing the job market with first hand experience I am going to be a model employee in my new job. I am going to work harder than I have ever worked before and happily work longer hours or even weekends. It may be for less money that I have worked for before buts it a heck of a lot more than JSB.

I pity anybody still scouring for jobs so all I can say is keep kicking.

miec

I read what you wrote about jobs and interviewing process. It seems such a scary thing in this day and age that it has come to this. I can recall a time when you applied for a job, you would always get an interview and feel you are in with the chance of getting the job, but those days are gone now.

It is a pity really that such times are gone. I have friends who never get to the interview stage. They send off lots of CV's per day but never get anything back and they have a wealth of experience. These days, it should not be called job seeking, it should be called interview seeking!!

Lol.

The thing is that in a sense knowing that job seeking, like life as one poster said, has a random element actually made me feel better not worse. I sent out first rate CVs and cover letters, not initially when I first began job seeking but after tweaking and learning from my mistakes, I knew my CV was good. I also knew that when I got an interview that I did an equally good job, researched the company, came across as likable, enthusiastic etc, I screwed up in one interview so that was my fault but in the rest of them I did well but they had better matches, etc. So I knew I was doing my best but with the sheer numbers,etc, I was being overlooked and I think it is really important for job seekers to realise that despite their best efforts, they may be overlooked and that it is not them but the current economic climate. So many people are beating themselves up (metaphorically) thinking they are failures when in reality numbers and the situation is against them. When I saw this for myself I felt better about myself and lost that sense of failure. For instance I read somewhere that 400 people in Donegal applied for one vacancy as a dishwasher. 399 people were turned away, probably all of them could do the job but one got it but I bet you most of them will feel like failures because they couldn't 'even get a job cleaning dishes' when in fact it was down to sheer numbers.

John Mason

confuseddotcom wrote: »

Wow! I would like to know what Cvs they actually accepted eliminating the brown envelope ones? What else is there? As in those snazzy dinky little vinyl covers with clips and the clear wallets is it?

I think Companies went through a spell as well where they operated vice-versa, and used the plain old Cvs that came in in a brown envelope for the Candidate process and binned the fancy folder ones lol.

it was back in the 90's, there were thousands of cv's coming in for graduate jobs.

the manager played golf so to narrow it down again, he would look at hobbies and interests and only kept those who played golf

it was one of the biggest american financial companies everyone wanted to work for them - i suppose they had to do something

shoegirl

Ok, what I used to do was remove non-graduates (sorry to the non-graduates here, but somebody who has sat and worked through a degree and passed it without being paid or coerced into doing so to me is more valuable - with special kudos to people who gained qualifications while working full time - its just something I respect). Then I'd go back to the "rejected" pile and pick out at least 2-3 completely "non standard" candidates with really unlikely backgrounds that you'd normally never pick - generally people who have something unusual on their CV - like they worked in a creative industry at some point, or travelled the world, or went back to school at 40. I like initiative, but that really is just my personal preference. I also look for honesty too - I have found in practice that when things get tough at work it can be a very positive quality in your team.

That said, I suspect most recruiters filter on a combination of relevant "key words", number of years experience and qualifications. I do scan hard for "bull****ters" - but thats a hard one to spot, without meeting the person.

shoegirl

AARRRGH wrote: »

I think people's (secret) prejudices come into play at this stage. Get rid of the Indians, the old people, etc.

I think you are right here. A lot of recruiters though just pick obvious stuff like buzz words, qualifications, number of years experience. Interesting to co-interview and listen to the "easy questions" they ask. I used to ask tough questions and liked to hear tough and honest questions from the candidate.