The point is, it's been a while since I've been on the market, and I'm exhausted by these HR-driven applications. I'm tired of filling out online forms with everything that's already in my C.V. and my job letter. I'm sick of typing the name of my fucking high school, and the salary for my first teaching job, and asserting that I'm 18, and that I can work in America, and that I have a driver's license, and consenting to background checks, financial checks, and vowing that I can lift 25-40 lbs. (All just by clicking and dragging around endless HR pages.)
I hate that every time I apply for a job (now 45 of them through this kind of process) that my poor referees get automated emails asking for reference letters - which they already did and sent to Interfolio in September. One wrote me back a month ago ("Was my first letter no good? I have to keep sending them till I get it right or you get a job?")
Today I cracked.
I'm filling out an online form like the others, asserting all sort of inane things about this being my actual name and that I'd be able to stand up to perform "tasks" if I got hired, and in the high school section, I had to enter what I studied. No way to bypass it. Couldn't click next. So I typed in "high school shit."
And before I could stop myself - because it was like this notion made me high, I added these sentences to the penultimate paragraph of my letter:
As your ad requests, I’m sending this letter, my vita, a teaching / administration statement, and a brief sample. I was unable to give a full answer to your request for what I studied in high school in the 1970s, as I mostly just listened to Aerosmith and KISS 8-tracks in my very boss Pontiac Bonneville. I do think I graduated though; at least there is a photo of me and Roxanne Malmouth (my prom date!) in crazy caps.
I won't get that job, right? Well, fuck them. It felt so good to say it, as a partial "fuck you" to all this unnecessary HR bullshit I have to do as one of HUNDREDS of applicants who'll get nothing more (maybe!) a form email rejection.
If I saw that all-caps reminiscence of high school after slogging through 3 hours of identical-looking candidates, I just might put you in the "callbacks" file.
ReplyDeleteMe, too, although I'm just on the market, too.
ReplyDeleteI actually put some books on a scale in my bathroom last month to see if I COULD carry 25 lbs of something in my job as a Sociology Asst. Professor. (I'm tiny.)
I could, and I'm sure it's put me ahead of the competition.
That ROCKS! I'd give you an interview.
ReplyDelete"I hate that every time I apply for a job (now 45 of them through this kind of process) that my poor referees get automated emails asking for reference letters - which they already did and sent to Interfolio in September. One wrote me back a month ago ("Was my first letter no good? I have to keep sending them till I get it right or you get a job?")"
ReplyDeleteMike, you're doing your letter writers a disservice by not learning how to use Interfolio. Interfolio has a service which allows you to plug in specialized email addresses--not your letter writers' actual addresses--which completely obviates this problem. The job system sends separate messages for each letter writer to Interfolio via these addresses, and Interfolio then does the uploading to the system for you. I haven't bothered my letter writers in months and in some cases years:
http://help.interfolio.com/entries/166320-applying-to-an-online-application
The problem is that many HR departments have taken over the job search. It's crazy,for as with the example here, the HR departments create one process for EVERY "JOB" on campus. A teaching job's the same as a campus painter, right? It's misery for those of us trying to hire.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine lost her bar when the economy tanked. She'd owned a bar for ~7 years. Sold it at a huge loss. And applied for a bunch of bar tending jobs. She applied to tend bar at Outback. She was turned down for the job and the interviewer told her "You didn't..."
ReplyDeletewait for it
wait for it - it's worth it
are you ready????
"research the company well enough."
Swear to fucking god - they told a woman with 20 years bar tending experience, 7 of which she owned the bar she was tending, that she was unqualified to mix drinks because she didn't "research" fucking Outback Steakhouse.
I'd hire you, Mike (unfortunately, I'm not in any position to do so).
ReplyDelete@ns As a tech-savvy youngster, I can promise you that even now, there are applications which thwart your ability to use Interfolio, because of various and sundry technicalities. One that I completed this semester insisted on sending out emails, even if you use interfolio, and, get this, even if they have already received the recommendation. Another required that either all letters go in via Interfolio, or all go in directly. One of my recommenders refuses to use Interfolio, so guess who had to ask the others to send them directly.
ReplyDeleteMike, you are not alone. Today, when filling out my "employment" history for yet another generic HR form, under "reason for leaving" a job I had over 10 years ago, I wrote: "generally unpleasant environment". Wish I had your guts, you're my hero.
Everyone talks about "professionalization" with graduate school. No one bothers to consider how unprofessional we are on the end of hiring practices. I'm in a particularly small field, where there are a grand total of five jobs this year for which I am remotely eligible, so I've also applied to every postdoc I could (roughly 20). My current costs so far in applying? USD 500. And that's sending materials out early, rather than overnighting. I'm on a fellowship this year of 18,000.
Mike from Modesto comments:
ReplyDeleteNS:
Hi. I don't use Interfolio. I didn't want to fess up as yet another endlessly ruined English profs. I'm with AWP and have been for years. It's $4 for 15 pages of a dossier, and that is substantially cheaper than Interfolio.
But, I do very much appreciate your tip, and will consider it in the future.
Mike from Modesto...you fucking rawk, and I'd totally put you and your very boss Pontiac Bonneville on the callback list. Hell, if it were up to me, I'd hire you tenured for a response like that.
ReplyDeletens, I've had students of mine write me chagrined notes saying that even though the job ad said 3 letters only they were forced to put in a 4th reference and it's me but please ignore the link. Others have been thwarted in their attempts to use that interfolio link. Still others have had berserk HR bots send links over and over to their recommenders.
ReplyDeleteIn short, HR applications SUCK, for the applicant and the faculty recommender.
Could the faculty by-pass this? They post the job ad alone, without going through HR. Then, when the hire is made, the hiree goes back and fills in all the crap. I suppose there are legal and bureaucratic issues with why this wouldn't work.
ReplyDeleteWe just found out that we (the hiring committee) don't get paper copies of the applications anymore. Nope, only HR gets the original and the rest of us (the ones who actually make the decision) can only look at the online version, and only on a special server we can see while we are meeting with the search committee in a secured room. No looking at HR stuff at home or at stray bars like before! Or even in our offices---too much risk we'd show students or something, I guess. This makes the whole process very hard. No one wants to serve on search committees anymore.
ReplyDeleteI am trying to think what I would make of your funny sentences, Mike. I want to say, with the others here, that I would put you in the call back pile. I want to be honest though, and say that while I can see the humor now, at home, reading CM.....when I am sitting there with that committee, pissed off that we cannot meet when we want or review the applications on our own before the meeting to make our time together more useful and productive, and probably about at least a half a dozen snowflake related problems....I don't know. I HOPE I would because I think Inner City Community College could use a guy like Mike from Modesto! I hope I would insist your app got into the call back pile! Although we can't have "piles" anymore---or even make notes by ourselves. We have to wait until we are together as a group and then the chair has to collect our notes in a secured file HR can review and none of the rest of us can have access to outside of our approved meetings. The whole thing has become strange. I am serving on a committee in the Spring and I am very nervous as to how horrible it is going to be, for me and for the applicants.
Pardon a second comment from me, but someone mentioned to me that universities are running scared after numerous law suits involving job searches, etc. So to maintain control, HR department Can this be true? Is where you teach?
ReplyDelete@TubaPlayer...Yeah, I suppose that is why. But they never offered any explanation. They probably would not trust us with anything like that---too far above our pay grade. They just up and imposed all these restrictions. It is a total pain.
ReplyDelete@Bella: That's fucking insane. We still do searches the old fashioned way (last time I checked) but for a few years now we've been paperless for graduate applications. But I can still access the secure server from home, from my office, from the strip club down the street with an internet connection. Why would they want to prevent any of that? The only amusing glitch is that it won't work with the browser I habitually use, so for grad admissions only I have to use a browser I hate (starts with an S ends with an I).
ReplyDeleteIt's a mad, mad, world, I guess. But I'm frankly shocked that they've put in place a system that essentially prevents you from doing their work on your free time. Once they've figured that out, I'm sure they'll come to their senses.
Dr. Jekyll: Our uni is hiring a new HR leader. One candidate was able to identify half a dozen serious problems with our hiring process after six hours on campus.
ReplyDeleteProf. Hyde: Die, HR, Die!
@ns -- My discipline doesn't use Interfolio. Seriously. They don't. It's like they are still stuck in the 1940s where you got a job based on whose wife you hadn't fucked yet, er...I mean, who you knew.
ReplyDeleteI'd definitely fuck the bosses wife.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but it's good knowing that impatient applicants will never be able to finish the paperwork and will give up, right? Do we really want a bunch of pussies teaching students?
ReplyDelete