Responses (or lack of)

DigForVictory

My lad's applying, not just to keep the JobCentre happy but as he wants a job. He's applying the 3 week rule & has taught himself to *appreciate* the thanks-but-no-thanks letters & emails. Mostly as it's that or reconsider despair.

He's sending out proper cvs & covering letters as well as the online things - I'm thinking of getting him to rock up in person, clutching ID, cv & offer to be their minion for the day to get a job, but most places freak "the insurance!" & say no.

The not wholly stable epileptic bit does make things more difficult.

Dakta

Thought i'd update this thread.

I decided to try another tack as suggested above, and rather than apply online I decided to bite the bullet and do something my natural anxiety hates me to do and thats to both visit, and phone said places. I have a tendency to be a bit anxious on the phone so this is my least preferred way but I wanted to know what would happen.

Well the difference was dramatic, and in the last few days I've had a lot of responses and technically two interviews.

Based on this experience, I've come to the conclusion you don't really exist in the eyes of recruiters unless you show some kind of physical presence, online communication (webforms, email etc) just doesn't exist.

And to test this theory I sent some (electronic) letters out over the last few days, not applications as such, but just enquiries, like 'I would like some further details about this role, does it include working with x y z' and 'is this role still available?' - this has had a 100% failure rate in getting responses. There's still time to get some but as things stand 100% failure rate.

Upon telephoning we can swing that nearly the opposite way,.

A lot of these firms are agencies which I suppose is a discussion in itself as to quality of communication.

I attended two interviews, both went badly. One led me to the head office/reception area of a group of buildings where they weren't expecting me and unable to direct me to the relevent part of the site where interviews were being held, I ended up walking around the perimeter aimlessly for half an hour without finding the location and nobody else in sight, left a message on the answerphone of the chap who organised the interview as I got no answer, and I've heard nothing since. I basically turned up at a ghost town, I'm sure the interview was there but there's only so many staff only signs you really want to pass in your exploration.

Secondly I went to another interview, found it okay but failed a colour blindness test, I mentioned this might be a bit flawed as it had been printed on a black and white printer (pick the green tomato) - I was just told to give it my best shot. Needless to say i failed this and as expected no response since either.

Thankfully, I don't strictly need to find employment as my self employment goes a long way to covering my expenses, I just want a bit more security.

But being an over-thinker it has left me musing the world as I see it - I contrast my own dealings with customers and I give them hours of my time, every single email gets answered, even out of hours we have response times less than 15 minutes most of the time, all the time - I know I give too much time to customers and sometimes can be on my laptop even at family events, but I also recognize its a part and parcel of my job, and if I really do get overloaded I back off for a while, but I always come back to it. What I'm saying is its my job, just like people who deal with recruitment have a job of keeping in touch with their clients/applicants. The communication is the job?

Anyway thats just my observations, feeling a bit exhausted now - and also wondering if I'm a bit out of touch with reality, it seems we live in some kind of human processing machine where work is concerned and once someone is declared not useful or whatever all communication just gets cut.

Don't get me wrong, I know there will always be some people who just CBA getting back to you or acknowledging it, but I thought it'd be like 1 in 5, not 99/100

trailingspouse

I've seen recruitment from both sides of the desk - I conduct the preliminary telephone interviews for my company, but I'm also looking for a 'proper' job myself (for reasons that are far too complicated to go into). In fact I have a telephone interview lined up this morning.


As to feedback - be careful what you wish for. For some of the people I've interviewed and rejected, honest feedback would go something like this
Person A - OMG, lost the will to live, how can anyone go on for so long and be so boring
Person B - Creepy!!
Person C - I know I'm female, but I am going to potentially be your boss. Please don't try to flirt, it's severely career limiting.
Person D - that joke at the end? Not funny. Quite racist in fact.


I do give feedback, but I sometimes have to sugar coat it so thickly that I doubt if they ever really work out what the actual problem was.


Best go and prepare for my own interview now!!

Dakta

TBH only ever requested feedback once, and that was when I was so close to my dream job I had been selected from a pool of jundreds of candidates and I failed the final test (there were several test days/interviews and medicals etc spread out over a period of a few months). Very slow gruelling process but was with a major firm so the feedback was worth it (and I got it). Not bitter about that one bit as it gave me a right confidence boost and they kept in touch.

It's not so much feedback though, its just some kind of, well, am I being considered or not, because if not I'll keep looking. That would be a huge start.

Not that you can have that as it's clearly not how it works today, but we have become a very dismissive society