Thank heavens I’m retired and don’t have to deal with this. I don’t know if this is possible or productive for that matter, but have you ever thought about calling the HR department or arriving unannounced requesting an interview?I’ve applied to a few jobs at Fender this year, but I don’t think my resume is getting past the bots. I have a background in Accounting, and there’s a position posted that would be my dream job. 25 years Accounting experience, and 35 years playing Fender guitars, basses, and amps. (My resume doesn’t express my interest in the industry or the company.)
If anyone could bump my resume past the bots to the recruiter, it would be massively appreciated! I’d love to discuss with the recruiter how not only am I a great fit for the position, but also my background with Fender instruments, and how much a job at the company would mean to me.
Yeah, it can look like your applications are going into a black hole because they kind of are. The internet opens up the possibility of an application from anyone in the world who has an interest, so you throw your hat into a ring of a few hundred hats and chances are someone else in there is better qualified. From the outside it’s very easy to say “the software screened me out” but I think that’s a pretty fast way to get into some kind of discriminatory legal issue or, in my side, lose good candidates because software is stupid. This is why networking is always best, that’s a big card in your favor vs being one of a few hundred applications that a recruiter really only has a few seconds to look over before moving on to the best one, getting to a meeting, or putting in some time actually sourcing and recruiting candidates who have not applied yet.It's not that the software is mean. It's software. It's dumb. It just does what it's told by humans who are overloaded with more applications than they could ever possibly sort through.
Obviously if you're working in the field you know way more about it than i do. But i can't discount what the other people i know in the industry have told me, and the absolute futility of searching for jobs that i've experienced in the past 15 years. It's really one of the most infuriating things. Recently had surgery on my sinuses. Recovering from that surgery was more enjoyable than job hunting. There's a long list of miserable things that, given the option, would choose over applying to jobs if they meant i could skip that part of the process.
Clearly i have a chip on my shoulder about this, and i'll shut up now because i genuinely don't want to sit here complaining about job hunting, especially since i have a job i really like, in music technology, that i got through a slightly arcane string of people in my personal network. Complaining online any more than i have isn't a good look and i'm in too good a mood for it.
People usually discourage this but I actually hired a guy this way a long time ago. It can work if the company is hard up for candidates.
As I mentioned, at least in my line of work, the HR/recruiting software wall seems to block. I've heard nothing for weeks, often went perpetually on hold (until I just killed the application), while the ball started rolling rapidly when talking to anybody with an actual interest (tech leads, hiring manager). Actual offers once you make it past the HR/recruiting team hurdle.
It can certainly feel that way from the outside because you don’t see the process and don’t know what you don’t know. Part of the recruiter’s job is to work tightly with the hiring manager/team to know what they are looking for, and the good ones understand their space very well.
Yes I think this is true
I work in a fairly specific subfield with a lot of relevant and varied experience. Hiring managers usually want to at least talk, but the HR filter seems to not work too well. I very strongly prefer the networking route because of that.
I mean, it might be working perfectly depending on various requirements and the managers in question.
Not really. If you have a variety of essentially the same roles that I fit extremely well in open in your organization, recruiters can't even be approached and internal people are scratching their heads why nothing moves and I get offers for the same roles in other organizations, but you haven't even had the decency to have the system send a "no thanks" email after a week or two of inaction, we might be looking at an organizational problem.
