Sloppy MS Word application forms (public service/county councils etc.)

BrianD3

Has anyone noticed how abysmal electronic format application forms for many public sector jobs are. I have looked at a few from various organisations recently and they are all rubbish. It is as if the people who produce the forms have no IT skills and don't know how to use a word processor. I wonder if they have completed the ECDL :rolleyes: Paid for by the employer of course :rolleyes: .

The first issue which is slightly annoying is when a form is made available in electronic format but the organisation won't accept electronic submissions. Instead, the applicant must post or fax 4 hard copies of the form, 4 copies of their leaving cert, 4 copies of their degree results etc.

Another slight annoyance is, when applying for a position that requires a degree and work experience, being required to include details such as your leaving cert results and exam number, the primary school that you attended etc.

Then there is the fundamental issue of making forms available only as MS Word documents. As far as I know, it is good practice to do use dynamic pdfs or similar instead of Word docs.

But no, it will usually be a MS Word document with

-Spelling mistakes

-Boxes which cannot be filled in

-Text which doesn't wrap

-Margins all over the place

-20 different fonts used with various combinations of italics, bold and underlined text appearing on the form

-Lines instead of text boxes, try to type above the line and the line moves

etc.

At one stage I was wondering if the above is done deliberately to test the applicant's attention to detail, spelling and word processing skills, the idea being that the applicant must correct the form while filling it in.

On second thoughts - no, I think it's just that the people producing the forms are sloppy, lazy and useless.

It gives a very bad impression and an applicant may ask himself if he wants to work for an organisation that can't get basic things right.

Now this is not a problem in ALL of the public service. Forms hosted on the publicjobs website are far better. Dynamic pdfs, clear and user friendly. However some ads on publicjobs.ie refer the applicant to forms on other public sector websites which can be very poor.

Tails142

Yeah they're abysmal, text positioned with a line of spaces etc. I think it is a test, as you can be sure that the people on the panels reviewing the completed forms won't know how bad the formatting of the original template was.

Gumbo

Dublin City Councils electronic application form hasn't changed in over 10 years. It's a mess tbh. It's a pain to fill in electronically as there's no standard formatting so if you tab something out it can disappear a whole page, so I feel your pain. It's the same for internal applicants.

Public Jobs use an interactive PDF form and it's much better alright. I've used this recently too.

Gumbo

Dublin City Councils electronic application form hasn't changed in over 10 years. It's a mess tbh. It's a pain to fill in electronically as there's no standard formatting so if you tab something out it can disappear a whole page, so I feel your pain. It's the same for internal applicants.

Public Jobs use an interactive PDF form and it's much better alright. I've used this recently too.

BrianD3

Tails142 wrote: »

Yeah they're abysmal, text positioned with a line of spaces etc. I think it is a test, as you can be sure that the people on the panels reviewing the completed forms won't know how bad the formatting of the original template was.

I was recently talking to a senior public servant who does a lot of interviewing and he mentioned that when he sees handwritten forms or typed forms with mistakes and sloppy formatting, it gives a bad impression - particularly if the person has mentioned their IT skills in the application.

I explained to him that actually the form may have been produced that way and that perhaps the applicant was unsure whether they were allowed to "improve" the form or not. He didn't seem to comprehend this.