A CHRONIC labour shortage hasn’t stopped the audacity of prospective employers. Here’s what they now demand:
Cover letter
Not new, but regardless a hated first step in any application process. It’s self-explanatory that you want the job or you wouldn’t be applying, but you’re required to politely spell it out for them even though the only reasonable cover letter reads: ‘Dear Sir, ignore this and read my CV’.
Application form
You will be required to submit a fully complete, flawless CV. And then you will be required to transcribe the entire thing into stupid little boxes for an application form. It’ll only take two-three hours, or twice that if the janky online employment portal crashes. Then in the interview they’ll say ‘tell us about your background’ because they have not read it.
A preliminary interview
Why not suit up, head to our office, do your research on the company, memorise several answers about your previous experience, take a day’s leave from your current job and sit through an entire interview that doesn’t actually count?
A psychometric test
Employers now attempt to root out psychos with detailed personality tests. What they get are people who are willing to randomly click through psychometric tests while watching Love Island.
An 8,000 word essay
There’s no better way of testing applicants’ committment than asking them to write a university dissertation about a minor aspect of the business. And there’s nothing more useless than a dissertation written by someone who doesn’t even work in your business, so it goes straight in the bin.
The proper interview
The hiring managers couldn’t possibly waste their precious time attending every interview. So they waste yours instead, making you come back and say the same shit with a different set of hoops to leap through. Now shut up and tell us what your superpower would be.
Your first-born child
Down as ‘optional’ on the application, but you need to know it will reflect badly on you if you don’t sign the release.
Never contacting you again
After all of the bullshit above, the final, most fiendish test of the recruitment process comes in the form of disappearing like a piss off a skyscraper. Three months later you get a generic rejection email three months later that doesn’t even address you by name. They hired an internal candidate.
