Employers Treating Applicants Increasingly Badly?

lincroft1710

debtslave2024 said:

Firstly, I would only like responses from people who are actively seeking employment in 2024, not someone who just wants to express an opinion with no recent experience of the same predicament.

I have made over 100 applications in 6 months, and reckon that with all the online assessments, video interviews etc, for minimum wage manual jobs, have wasted countless hours in doing so (equivalent to full weeks of paid employment hours.)

I basically get no response to the vast majority of online applications, but what is more worrying many of them are apparently not even read. I was just checking up on an online application that required a lengthy online assessment for a physical job, paying barely 15 pence over the adult minimum wage. I will not name the retailer, but they are an established retailer, that are considered more expensive, and offer greater quality than most of their competitors. Just checked up on their jobs portal on my application from the 15th of May, 2024. Still marked “under consideration.” I am seeing this pattern again, and again from multiple employers! What are they playing at!?

Showing my age here, but when I was in my 20s when you made a job application, you often got a typed letter confirming a positive or negative response within a matter of weeks of applying - now apparently, many do not even read the application, never mind respond.

The worst incident was when I turned up for a retail job, for a major supermarket, and the manager who was meant to interview me, did not turn up. Others have not even sent an email, to say that my interviews I spent time and money on attending, were not successful.

I have spoken to other job seekers in person, and hearing the same stories repeatedly. 

Is this a common experience “job seekers,” in 2024?

I think you've answered your own question

Pinklepurr

What you describe is sadly extremely common and leaves many people feeling completely demoralised, especially when time and considerable effort goes into each application. It seems to be the same across all levels of employment, not just minimum wage jobs. My husband has never ever found the job market as difficult as it is now. He is management level, and he has had several redundancies over the course of his career.  Over a period of six months he applied for over 100 roles, some would have been a stretch in terms of experience, some he could do standing on his head, and some were very similar in terms of what he had been doing before. Over 80% of applications were ignored without any response, 15% got a rejection and the other 5% he was interviewed for, mostly at least twice, before being rejected in favour of someone else.

He tried all sorts, ringing recruitment agencies (many of whom didn’t bother to return calls), people he knew in the industry that he had worked with before etc The worst day was when he applied for a role and in the time it took him to come downstairs and tell me (less than 5 mins) he had a rejection. They can’t have even read it!!!

What he did find helpful was having professional advice from a firm specialising in assisting people who had been made redundant. They helped him really improve his Linked In profile to make it really strong, and that was what contributed to him getting his new job.  It was a job title which was a little unusual for his area of IT so hadn’t come up on his job searches. The “talent acquisition” team from the company viewed his profile and asked him to interview, which he was successful at.  He later learned that they had had over 100 applicants, interviewed several candidates, before deciding they were unsuitable, so they went searching for his specific skill set and industry experience.

Good luck with your search, it’s tough out there.

elsien

Pinklepurr said:

What you describe is sadly extremely common and leaves many people feeling completely demoralised, especially when time and considerable effort goes into each application. It seems to be the same across all levels of employment, not just minimum wage jobs. My husband has never ever found the job market as difficult as it is now. He is management level, and he has had several redundancies over the course of his career.  Over a period of six months he applied for over 100 roles, some would have been a stretch in terms of experience, some he could do standing on his head, and some were very similar in terms of what he had been doing before. Over 80% of applications were ignored without any response, 15% got a rejection and the other 5% he was interviewed for, mostly at least twice, before being rejected in favour of someone else.

He tried all sorts, ringing recruitment agencies (many of whom didn’t bother to return calls), people he knew in the industry that he had worked with before etc The worst day was when he applied for a role and in the time it took him to come downstairs and tell me (less than 5 mins) he had a rejection. They can’t have even read it!!!

What he did find helpful was having professional advice from a firm specialising in assisting people who had been made redundant. They helped him really improve his Linked In profile to make it really strong, and that was what contributed to him getting his new job.  It was a job title which was a little unusual for his area of IT so hadn’t come up on his job searches. The “talent acquisition” team from the company viewed his profile and asked him to interview, which he was successful at.  He later learned that they had had over 100 applicants, interviewed several candidates, before deciding they were unsuitable, so they went searching for his specific skill set and industry experience.

Good luck with your search, it’s tough out there.

This. This is similar to the help I had with my CV when I was made redundant -  although not in 2024 so the OP is probably not interested. 
My CV was outdated in terms of layout and information to include as I'd not done one for years and I was only on Linked in by name and had never properly used it.  I had help from a company paid for by my redundancy insurance and it was a lot more useful that the job centre stuff I got sent on while claiming JSA. 

DullGreyGuy

elsien said:

My CV was outdated in terms of layout and information to include as I'd not done one for years

This is very much a marmite topic. 

I've two versions of my CV, one is 4 sides and very traditional in terms of it predominately being dates, employer/client, role, what I did, rinse and repeat. The other is much shorter at 2 sides, skills, "key achievements", list of employers/clients without dates/titles.

The former very occasionally gets comments that it's old fashioned, not appropriate for someone of my grade etc. The other one however very often gets comments that people dont like it, they want to know how many years ago the key achievements were, to link achievements to employers/clients etc. That said the first time I used it the CFO that did my 2nd round interview used it identically to how the person that recommended the format said it would be used, effectively used the achievements as a shopping list saying they were all things they'd like to achieve and how I'd gone about it.