{"id":30622,"date":"2014-12-11T13:53:57","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T21:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/?p=30622"},"modified":"2017-10-17T13:20:21","modified_gmt":"2017-10-17T20:20:21","slug":"why-the-hiring-manager-should-use-the-companys-recruitment-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/why-the-hiring-manager-should-use-the-companys-recruitment-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Recruiter Should Use the Company’s Recruitment System"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally published as “The Horrible Truth About Online Job Applications.”<\/em><\/p>\n

A guy called us up and said \u201cI have a story I have to tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTell us!\u201d we said.
\n
\n\u201cOkay,\u201d said the young man, whom we\u2019ll call Jim.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got laid off from my job in September, but I wasn\u2019t panicking because I got a little severance and also because I can still do a small amount of consulting for my old employer. I\u2019ve just been applying for a few jobs here and there. Last night I saw a job ad that looked perfect for me.<\/p>\n

\"application<\/a>\u201cIt\u2019s a job opening\u00a0for a Technical Project Manager, which is what I am, and I know there are a lot of us, but I have literally every single qualification listed in the job ad. The company makes medical equipment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the kind of product development I\u2019ve been involved in for ten years. I figured I\u2019d apply for the job and hopefully at least get an interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took about an hour and a half to fill out the online job application. I hit the SUBMIT button at nine-fifteen last night and sat down to watch TV. Before I went to bed around eleven, I checked my email, and sure enough there was a response from the company I had just applied to. It was one of those auto-responder messages.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt said \u2018Thank you for your application for the Technical Project Manager job. Unfortunately, your background is not a match for our requirements. We will be sure to let you know about other openings that are closer to your area of expertise.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t understand it. The application I submitted along with the resume I uploaded matched the job spec exactly. I couldn\u2019t believe they were telling me that I wasn\u2019t a good fit. Was there someone working in HR<\/a> that late at night, or had the keyword-searching software tossed me out? If I got rejected for not having the keywords, how could that happen, considering that my resume and application had every single keyword they might have been looking for?<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to bed. When I got up this morning, there was a new email message from the same employer in my inbox. This one said \u2018Good news! We think we\u2019ve found a position that is a closer match to your skills.\u2019 I was curious. I opened the message. It was a job ad for a Food Service Technician in the company cafeteria, paying eight-fifty an hour.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I was curious, and frankly, pretty irritated. I\u2019m not working, so I have all the time in the world. I got on LinkedIn<\/a> and started looking for a recruiter<\/a> in that company, and I found one!<\/p>\n

\u201cI called the company\u2019s main switchboard and got connected to this recruiter, named Donna. She said \u2018That Project Manager opening is being handled by my colleague Andrea. Let me connect you to her.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now I\u2019m talking to Andrea, who\u2019s the recruiter in charge of the Project Manager opening. I explained my situation to her. She was silent for a minute, and then she said \u2018Okay, I understand what happened.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI was all ears, of course. Andrea is one of three recruiters in a company with 5000 employees in one location. Andrea and her two colleagues each have over a hundred job openings to work on at any given moment. Andrea is required by her job to list every job opening on the company website. That\u2019s where I found the opening, after being directed there through Indeed.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing is that Andrea doesn\u2019t have time to screen resumes that come through the company website. She finds her own candidates using LinkedIn,\u00a0instead. So when she input the Technical Project Manager job into her company\u2019s jobs portal, she set it up so that every candidate gets a No Thanks message, the same message I got.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn other words, if you follow the directions in the job ad<\/a> and apply through the company website, you\u2019re guaranteed not to get the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWHOA!\u201d we said. \u201cBut what about the Food Service job?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, that\u2019s the best part!\u201d said Jim. \u201cOf course, the careers site<\/a> in Andrea\u2019s company gets confused when you set the parameters to reject every single job-seeker. The site prompts you to give the people who fill out applications a side route, if you will \u2013 some other path to follow, since every one of them will get an instant rejection notice for the job they applied for, no matter how well qualified they are.<\/p>\n

\u201cAndrea set up the parameters to send those poor job-seekers every new job opening the company posts on the site, from the mailroom to the cafeteria.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just a coincidence that they happened to post that Food Service job the very next morning, after I was rejected by the website.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWould Andrea ever have seen your application if you hadn\u2019t called her?\u201d we wanted to know.<\/p>\n

\u201cNope,\u201d said Jim. \u201cShe has her own system for filling jobs. The applications that come through the company website go straight into the virtual trash.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, what did Andrea do once you called her?\u201d we asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe set me up for an interview next week,\u201d said Jim, \u201cbut I gotta be honest, the red flags<\/a> don\u2019t really get any bigger than this. Can I work with such a broken organization?\u201d<\/p>\n

Now you know why I\u2019m always telling you not to pitch resumes and applications into automated recruiting sites. You will never get a hiring manager\u2019s attention<\/a> that way. Send a Pain Letter with your\u00a0Human-Voiced Resume directly to your hiring manager at his or her desk, instead.<\/p>\n

Jim learned a powerful lesson about corporate and institutional stupidity today, and I am happy to pass it along to you!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article was written by Liz Ryan from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. SmartRecruiters<\/a> is the recruiting platform to find and hire great people.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She has her own system for filling jobs. The applications that come through the company website went straight into the virtual trash.","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":28363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":""},"categories":[8,838],"tags":[],"series":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/How-Technology-Killed-Recruiting.png","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Podcast-icon.jpg","download_link":false,"player_link":false,"audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/hiring-success-podcast\/id1472174987","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oaXJpbmdzdWNjZXNzcG9kY2FzdC5jYXN0b3MuY29tL2hpcmluZy1zdWNjZXNzLXBvZGNhc3Q","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"soundcloud":{"key":"soundcloud","url":"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/smartrecruiters\/sets\/hiring-success-podcast-1","label":"SoundCloud","class":"soundcloud","icon":"soundcloud.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/3bM8YzLjM2G9qJXLBBySaB","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/feed\/podcast","embedCode":"

Why the Recruiter Should Use the Company’s Recruitment System<\/a><\/blockquote>