Job hunting - has it all changed?

Pross

bobmcstuff said:

Pross said:

MidlandsGrimpeur2 said:

I don't usually whinge but the OH is currently job hunting and I am amazed by the lack of courtesy and professionalism many employers show.

Some of the recent examples include:

- having an interview and then chasing them for 2 months for a response! (was told "sorry, we were really busy").
- invite to interview but then no follow up to actually book a date and time (contacted four people within the same organisation who all said someone would be in touch to arrange).
- Invited to an 'informal chat' and was told this was not part of the interview process only to be then told it was and didn't get offered the job.

She has just interviewed for another role, was told she would have an answer last week at the latest and no reply.

Having not interviewed for a job for some years, is this standard practice now? I have never experienced anything like this when applying for jobs over the years, did I just get lucky?

Most of those seem very familiar from my own job searches of the past decade. The worst was a headhunter who approached me for a senior role at a new office a company were opening. I had an initial chat with him, then a more formal interview and also had to submit a video interview answering some online questions (which was horrible). In the face to face interviews with him he'd said I had all the skills they were looking for in the role and even suggested I increase the pay I was looking for as the amount I'd said was below the minimum of the range they were looking to pay! I didn't hear anything for a good few weeks but didn't want to chase. In the end I'd been offered a few interviews elsewhere and decided to call the headhunter, he said the role was still open and the client was impressed with my CV and interviews but they were just trying to get an MD for the office sorted and a few other things in place before making other senior appointments. That was now over 18 months ago and in the meantime I've moved on and still never heard anything further. Very strange behaviour considering they'd initially approached me.

Was this an internal headhunter or a recruitment consultant? Sounds to me like a recruitment consultant who thought he might be able to get a bit of commission from you but may not have been completely transparent - you have no real way of knowing what the recruiter has been saying to the company and they can be a bit unscrupulous (no offence to any recruiters here... Rick maybe? Obviously there are good ones).

We always try and give feedback one way or the other and we have a recruitment company on retainer who we trust. But even still, it can be hard to give feedback as timely as you'd like, depending the role you're hiring and who you want to have involved it can sometimes be hard to be as quick as I would prefer if I was the candidate.

It was an external ‘executive search’ company that were appointed by the company looking to recruit. The guy seemed a cut above most of the standard pimps I’ve dealt with and knew the company and role well, I was impressed by him through the process until communication just stopped for no obvious reason. With the salary on offer I always knew I’d be in a bit of competition for the job especially as it was a new office where work winning was probably a big factor and I was very open all along that this isn’t a strong point of mine and fully expected a knock back but the failure to communicate anything either way was very odd in the circumstances.

rick_chasey

I can guess what happened.

You were probably interesting enough to the client to keep you in the process but not #1 or #2, then the search gets put on hold and you’re out of sight and out of mind and the HHer forgets.

Pross

Jezyboy said:

Pross said:

Eh?

I assume the point is that for millennials this is just the job hunting process, we haven't been party to any "change".

Aside from the fact that people of all ages look for jobs it's not a great example of how tough things are for millenials though really. The actual process of applying is significantly easier than it was when I first entered the job market at the end of the 80s and also from when I was looking to move jobs for the first time in the late 90s.

I think most of the apprenticeships I applied for back in 1989 came through the school's career advisor but you then had to write to or, in some rare cases, phone the personnel department to request an application form. That was then posted to you and you had to complete it by hand in black ink before posting it back. You then waited a few weeks to hear if you had been given an interview (again, usually by post) and would be told when and where it was with no option to agree a convenient time. After the interview you would then have to wait for days or weeks for a letter telling you whether or not you had an offer but despite it being more difficult I think they all contacted me one way or another. If looking for a normal job rather than an apprenticeship it was a case of browsing the job pages in the paper, word of mouth from people working in a place or a speculative letter to the personnel department to see if there were vacancies. My first job came from an internal job list my friend's sister brought home for him.

By the time I was looking to move on in 1997 it was still a case of looking through the job ads in local papers, they would all have a job day and you would see people in the office with a paper that didn't normally buy one, or from the weekly professional journal - in my case everyone would get their NCE magazine on a Thursday and go straight to the job section at the back. The application process was still a phone call or letter to the personnel department to request an application form that had to be filled in by hand in black ink and then posted back.

These days you can either email a CV to a recruitment consultant and leave everything to them or, if you want to be proactive, browse the likes of Indeed / LinkedIn or look on the websites of companies you are interest in joining and then either send a CV / covering letter using a template that you just tweak to match the job description or, in the more onerous cases, complete an online application form (which is usually a precursor to a very formulaic interview process and a company with ridiculous amounts of policies and procedures to follow when you work with).

All in all job hunting is terrible example of how tough things are for millenials.

Pross

rick_chasey said:

I can guess what happened.

You were probably interesting enough to the client to keep you in the process but not #1 or #2, then the search gets put on hold and you’re out of sight and out of mind and the HHer forgets.

Yep, sounds about right. I had another job I went for about 8 years ago when I was looking to leave the company I'd been with for about 17 years. The interview lasted over 2 hours and seemed to go really well, they said all the right things and although I was at the top of / slightly above the salary range they were looking to pay I also had a huge amount of experience at the level they were hoping to groom someone to move into and they said the money was flexible. I left feeling very positive that an offer would arrive, the recruitment consultant called me to say the feedback and been excellent and hinted I would be getting an offer. That was on the Friday before a Bank Holiday weekend and I was hoping to get an offer on the Tuesday. I heard nothing and a few days later called the recruitment consultant who said they were trying to choose between me and someone who only had a fraction of the experience, was currently employed at least 2 levels below the grade they were interviewing for but who was going to be about £15k cheaper. I never heard anything after that so assume they gave him the job, I didn't bother chasing as I decided I didn't want to work somewhere that would recruit on the basis of who is cheapest when there was such a gulf in experience levels.

MidlandsGrimpeur2

in the more onerous cases, complete an online application form (which is usually a precursor to a very formulaic interview process and a company with ridiculous amounts of policies and procedures to follow when you work with).

Certainly in the sectors the other half is looking at, a full online application is the process for every job. They are completely ridiculous, they will have a job spec that covers 30 or more essential points, many of which are just riffs on the same theme and essentially just pointless jargon, and expect you to write a paragraph with work related examples as to how you meet each point. She is sometimes submitting applications that are 8-10 pages long!

This is my main source of frustration, you take a huge amount of time and care to draft a long application, then prep for an interview (many of which have an additional job skills test) and after all that nobody bothers to actually let you know you were unsuccessful.

Tashman

never entirely sure which "Generation I'm actually in! Having just googled it apparently I'm formally a Millennial being born in '77 but can also be referred to as a "cusper" as that's when Gen X changed to Millennial. Don't know what traits I should work on now to match expectation any more!

Pross

MidlandsGrimpeur2 said:

in the more onerous cases, complete an online application form (which is usually a precursor to a very formulaic interview process and a company with ridiculous amounts of policies and procedures to follow when you work with).

Certainly in the sectors the other half is looking at, a full online application is the process for every job. They are completely ridiculous, they will have a job spec that covers 30 or more essential points, many of which are just riffs on the same theme and essentially just pointless jargon, and expect you to write a paragraph with work related examples as to how you meet each point. She is sometimes submitting applications that are 8-10 pages long!

This is my main source of frustration, you take a huge amount of time and care to draft a long application, then prep for an interview (many of which have an additional job skills test) and after all that nobody bothers to actually let you know you were unsuccessful.

Yeah, charities along with public sector and big private sector companies seem to love the rigid recruitment process whereas my experiences with smaller private companies are that they review a CV to ensure the skills and experience are about right and then have a much more informal interview process to just check the credentials and see how they'll fit into the way the company works. I see the complicated application process as a red flag of how working in the place will be i.e. loads of box ticking before you can get on with doing the job but I suppose they have to cover themselves to show they've done all the equality stuff properly.

MidlandsGrimpeur2

Which is a much better way of doing things @pross. There should be room for the hiring Manager to use some intuition and take on the candidate who they feel meets the job criteria but will also fit in to the organisation. Having worked in lots of charities and PS roles, the number of times I saw colleagues hire the candidate that ticked all the HR boxes and ended up being a complete disaster were numerous.

pangolin

Tashman said:

never entirely sure which "Generation I'm actually in! Having just googled it apparently I'm formally a Millennial being born in '77 but can also be referred to as a "cusper" as that's when Gen X changed to Millennial. Don't know what traits I should work on now to match expectation any more!

Surely that is Gen X

Tashman

Seems to vary depending on your source. One I read had

Boomers: 1946–1964
Gen X: 1965–1976
Millennials: 1977–1995
Gen Z: 1996–2015

I really don't care all that much but proves it's all just nonsense labelling anyway.

ugo.santalucia

My Gen. Z students struggle to lace up their shoes… just sayin’

Tashman

Tashman said:

Seems to vary depending on your source. One I read had

Boomers: 1946–1964
Gen X: 1965–1976
Millennials: 1977–1995
Gen Z: 1996–2015

I really don't care all that much but proves it's all just nonsense labelling anyway.

Also what happens in 2016, do we have Gen AA?

Pross

Tashman said:

Seems to vary depending on your source. One I read had

Boomers: 1946–1964
Gen X: 1965–1976
Millennials: 1977–1995
Gen Z: 1996–2015

I really don't care all that much but proves it's all just nonsense labelling anyway.

It's all a load of bollox. I'm not sure why anyone would think someone born in 1995 would be more similar to someone born in 1985 than 1996. It just allows for lazy stereotypes.

Stevo_666

rick_chasey said:

I can guess what happened.

You were probably interesting enough to the client to keep you in the process but not #1 or #2, then the search gets put on hold and you’re out of sight and out of mind and the HHer forgets.

This is the most likely cause. As you can't tell the second or third place candidate that you're not interested/process is finished, but on the other hand you can't really say 'well you're not as good as someone else but we're keeping you as a spare in case our top choice doesn't work out'.

ugo.santalucia

Tashman said:

Tashman said:

Seems to vary depending on your source. One I read had

Boomers: 1946–1964
Gen X: 1965–1976
Millennials: 1977–1995
Gen Z: 1996–2015

I really don't care all that much but proves it's all just nonsense labelling anyway.

Also what happens in 2016, do we have Gen AA?

Gen Y… Y did you bother with kids, if you are not prepared to educate them?

First.Aspect

rick_chasey said:

I can guess what happened.

You were probably interesting enough to the client to keep you in the process but not #1 or #2, then the search gets put on hold and you’re out of sight and out of mind and the HHer forgets.

So I'm not quite in HH territory, more a target for highly specialised recruitment consultants.

In your line of work, is the relationship with the organisation doing the hiring vastly more important, or is building some trust with the candidates also important.

Even for me, there are recruiters I just wouldn't bother with a second time. And the total number of people at my level is probably in the 100s, with the total number in a given UK region probably in the 10s or single figures.

MidlandsGrimpeur2

As you can't tell the second or third place candidate that you're not interested/process is finished, but on the other hand you can't really say 'well you're not as good as someone else but we're keeping you as a spare in case our top choice doesn't work out

Sometimes it pays off to be persistent in these cases. A mate of mine went for a very senior job at a London Local Authority a few years back. He was second choice (unaware of this at the time) and kept pestering the hiring Manager for feedback.

After about 3 or 4 months it turned out the first choice was a bit of a disaster. As my mate had kept in touch throughout that period still trying to get his feedback, they ended up offering him the job, no need for another interview.

He now runs the department and ended up taking the job of the bloke that originally hired him!

kingstongraham

Tashman said:

never entirely sure which "Generation I'm actually in! Having just googled it apparently I'm formally a Millennial being born in '77 but can also be referred to as a "cusper" as that's when Gen X changed to Millennial. Don't know what traits I should work on now to match expectation any more!

If you were Gen X you wouldn't have bothered googling it.

Jezyboy

Pross said:

Jezyboy said:

Pross said:

Eh?

I assume the point is that for millennials this is just the job hunting process, we haven't been party to any "change".

Aside from the fact that people of all ages look for jobs it's not a great example of how tough things are for millenials though really. The actual process of applying is significantly easier than it was when I first entered the job market at the end of the 80s and also from when I was looking to move jobs for the first time in the late 90s.

I think most of the apprenticeships I applied for back in 1989 came through the school's career advisor but you then had to write to or, in some rare cases, phone the personnel department to request an application form. That was then posted to you and you had to complete it by hand in black ink before posting it back. You then waited a few weeks to hear if you had been given an interview (again, usually by post) and would be told when and where it was with no option to agree a convenient time. After the interview you would then have to wait for days or weeks for a letter telling you whether or not you had an offer but despite it being more difficult I think they all contacted me one way or another. If looking for a normal job rather than an apprenticeship it was a case of browsing the job pages in the paper, word of mouth from people working in a place or a speculative letter to the personnel department to see if there were vacancies. My first job came from an internal job list my friend's sister brought home for him.

By the time I was looking to move on in 1997 it was still a case of looking through the job ads in local papers, they would all have a job day and you would see people in the office with a paper that didn't normally buy one, or from the weekly professional journal - in my case everyone would get their NCE magazine on a Thursday and go straight to the job section at the back. The application process was still a phone call or letter to the personnel department to request an application form that had to be filled in by hand in black ink and then posted back.

These days you can either email a CV to a recruitment consultant and leave everything to them or, if you want to be proactive, browse the likes of Indeed / LinkedIn or look on the websites of companies you are interest in joining and then either send a CV / covering letter using a template that you just tweak to match the job description or, in the more onerous cases, complete an online application form (which is usually a precursor to a very formulaic interview process and a company with ridiculous amounts of policies and procedures to follow when you work with).

All in all job hunting is terrible example of how tough things are for millenials.

To be fair I didn't say it was terrible! Simply that (at least anecdotally), the poor/rude lack of responses seems to have become the norm at around the time millennials started applying to join the workforce in large numbers.

Possibly this is partly due to the ease with which you can now apply to jobs, which means that many applications flood in.

veronese68

kingstongraham said:

Tashman said:

never entirely sure which "Generation I'm actually in! Having just googled it apparently I'm formally a Millennial being born in '77 but can also be referred to as a "cusper" as that's when Gen X changed to Millennial. Don't know what traits I should work on now to match expectation any more!

If you were Gen X you wouldn't have bothered googling it.

But if he was a millennial he'd say being on the cusp had led to psychological problems caused by the identity crisis that came as a result of not knowing. Then he'd have to take time off work for mental health reasons. The fact that he's not bothered shows he's Gen X.
Or it's all a load of bollox as Pross says above.

pangolin

veronese68 said:

kingstongraham said:

Tashman said:

never entirely sure which "Generation I'm actually in! Having just googled it apparently I'm formally a Millennial being born in '77 but can also be referred to as a "cusper" as that's when Gen X changed to Millennial. Don't know what traits I should work on now to match expectation any more!

If you were Gen X you wouldn't have bothered googling it.

But if he was a millennial he'd say being on the cusp had led to psychological problems caused by the identity crisis that came as a result of not knowing. Then he'd have to take time off work for mental health reasons. The fact that he's not bothered shows he's Gen X.
Or it's all a load of bollox as Pross says above.

77 is definitely Gen X - if he was a millennial he'd have been better at googling the answer.

rick_chasey

First.Aspect said:

rick_chasey said:

I can guess what happened.

You were probably interesting enough to the client to keep you in the process but not #1 or #2, then the search gets put on hold and you’re out of sight and out of mind and the HHer forgets.

So I'm not quite in HH territory, more a target for highly specialised recruitment consultants.

In your line of work, is the relationship with the organisation doing the hiring vastly more important, or is building some trust with the candidates also important.

Even for me, there are recruiters I just wouldn't bother with a second time. And the total number of people at my level is probably in the 100s, with the total number in a given UK region probably in the 10s or single figures.

The product is who you can bring to the table.

Having good relationships with people helps you do that.

Plus at the top level the candidate can also do lots of hiring and visa versa so you need to manage the relationship quite deftly.

The HHer who cheeses candidates off will have a short career

orraloon

Erm, point of order m'lud: Billy Idol was born in 1955 so bzzzt Gen X can't be 1965-76.

bobmcstuff

Jezyboy said:

Possibly this is partly due to the ease with which you can now apply to jobs, which means that many applications flood in.

We get literally hundreds of applications when we post our own ads. We got nearly 200 for our 2 graduate spot this year.

This is one of the main reasons why we use a recruiter for most of the non graduate roles - the other being that they proactively approach people who may not be actively looking.

bobmcstuff

pangolin said:

veronese68 said:

kingstongraham said:

Tashman said:

never entirely sure which "Generation I'm actually in! Having just googled it apparently I'm formally a Millennial being born in '77 but can also be referred to as a "cusper" as that's when Gen X changed to Millennial. Don't know what traits I should work on now to match expectation any more!

If you were Gen X you wouldn't have bothered googling it.

But if he was a millennial he'd say being on the cusp had led to psychological problems caused by the identity crisis that came as a result of not knowing. Then he'd have to take time off work for mental health reasons. The fact that he's not bothered shows he's Gen X.
Or it's all a load of bollox as Pross says above.

77 is definitely Gen X - if he was a millennial he'd have been better at googling the answer.

Pretty sure it's usually 1980 or 1981, I was bang in the middle of the range when I looked ('80-'96, I'm '88).

Agree there is a danger in over generalising, but like any model that doesn't mean it isn't useful (all models are wrong, some models are useful etc etc). It also doesn't account for regional or socio-economic variations so it's missing that as well.

The millennial stuff certainly resonated with me anyway, although I guess that can be a bit like a horoscope.

pblakeney

bobmcstuff said:

Jezyboy said:

Possibly this is partly due to the ease with which you can now apply to jobs, which means that many applications flood in.

We get literally hundreds of applications when we post our own ads. We got nearly 200 for our 2 graduate spot this year.

This is one of the main reasons why we use a recruiter for most of the non graduate roles - the other being that they proactively approach people who may not be actively looking.

When I applied for an apprenticeship I was one of the lucky 16 out of 400+ (unknown).
This was the 70s so it's not a new thing, it just took longer to process back then.

The process was an annual event. Everyone knew. You applied direct (by post) and if successful you attended for a theory test in a huge hall. This was the 400.
If you passed this stage you were invited (by post) for an interview and practical test.

TheBigBean

bobmcstuff said:

Jezyboy said:

Possibly this is partly due to the ease with which you can now apply to jobs, which means that many applications flood in.

We get literally hundreds of applications when we post our own ads. We got nearly 200 for our 2 graduate spot this year.

This is one of the main reasons why we use a recruiter for most of the non graduate roles - the other being that they proactively approach people who may not be actively looking.

How many applications does the normal person do? I think I applied for 40 jobs after I graduated and had 39 rejections before getting my offer (from probably the 20th application by date). Your job has a higher ratio, but I suspect many apply for more jobs than me.

It's a brutal process.

Pross

pblakeney said:

bobmcstuff said:

Jezyboy said:

Possibly this is partly due to the ease with which you can now apply to jobs, which means that many applications flood in.

We get literally hundreds of applications when we post our own ads. We got nearly 200 for our 2 graduate spot this year.

This is one of the main reasons why we use a recruiter for most of the non graduate roles - the other being that they proactively approach people who may not be actively looking.

When I applied for an apprenticeship I was one of the lucky 16 out of 400+ (unknown).
This was the 70s so it's not a new thing, it just took longer to process back then.

The process was an annual event. Everyone knew. You applied direct (by post) and if successful you attended for a theory test in a huge hall. This was the 400.
If you passed this stage you were invited (by post) for an interview and practical test.

That was similar to my experience in 1989 when I was trying for M&E engineering apprenticeships. There were written tests followed by practicals. If you did well you got invited back for an interview. There were probably around 50-100 at each test day but several days.

First.Aspect

TheBigBean said:

bobmcstuff said:

Jezyboy said:

Possibly this is partly due to the ease with which you can now apply to jobs, which means that many applications flood in.

We get literally hundreds of applications when we post our own ads. We got nearly 200 for our 2 graduate spot this year.

This is one of the main reasons why we use a recruiter for most of the non graduate roles - the other being that they proactively approach people who may not be actively looking.

How many applications does the normal person do? I think I applied for 40 jobs after I graduated and had 39 rejections before getting my offer (from probably the 20th application by date). Your job has a higher ratio, but I suspect many apply for more jobs than me.

It's a brutal process.

I applied for more than that, but at 29 after I came out of academia, I suffered from rampant ageism believe it or not. Early Ricktopia.

What I did find though was that many of the same candidates apply for all the same jobs. So not 200 applicants for each position, but 200 applicants for a position at each of 20 firms, or somesuch. Many of whom aren't being realistic.

Stevo_666

veronese68 said:

kingstongraham said:

Tashman said:

never entirely sure which "Generation I'm actually in! Having just googled it apparently I'm formally a Millennial being born in '77 but can also be referred to as a "cusper" as that's when Gen X changed to Millennial. Don't know what traits I should work on now to match expectation any more!

If you were Gen X you wouldn't have bothered googling it.

But if he was a millennial he'd say being on the cusp had led to psychological problems caused by the identity crisis that came as a result of not knowing. Then he'd have to take time off work for mental health reasons. The fact that he's not bothered shows he's Gen X.
Or it's all a load of bollox as Pross says above.

If he was a Millennial he would have just assumed that he was right.