Comment on Why do companies require you to submit a resume but also put the same data into their forms?
snek_boi@lemmy.ml 21 hours agoIt may sound baffling that people ask for information that may be duplicated. But for us to understand what was really going on, it’s worth explaining what was in the forms.
The forms asked for information that often were missing in CVs. Here’s a list of things that CVs usually didn’t have:
Bureaucracy-friendly considerations:
- A clear-cut distinction between first, middle, and last names. CV’s rarely spell it out.
- Government-issued ID. Never seen this in a CV.
Medical considerations:
- Blood type in case there’s an emergency. Never seen this in a CV.
- Emergency contact information. Never seen this in a CV.
- Allergies that the college should be aware of. Never seen this in a CV.
- Medical conditions that the college can provide accomodations for. Never seen it in a CV, although it probably exists.
Specific information:
- The specific role or roles that someone is applying to. Sometimes CVs are re-written to better fit the job they’re applying to, but I’ve rarely seen the specific role being written on the CV.
- Whether the applicant personally knows people in the institution, both to check for references and also to mitigate blatant conflicts of interest. I’ve never seen this in a CV.
There’s also the following practical consideration: reducing the time it takes to hire.
Here’s a way to think about it: Colleges have seasonal hiring sprees. In a matter of weeks there can be dozens of CVs coming HR’s way. HR needs to handle this. From HR’s point of view, receiving a CV with incomplete information means HR needs to send your application to the back of the line and ask you to give HR the information it needs to hire you. These errors increase your time-to-hire, HR’s workload, and everyone behind you’s time-to-hire.
Am I saying the system is perfect? Am I saying the system is not annoying? Am I saying we cannot improve it? No.
I’m laying out the problems, the constraints of the problems, and the existing solutions. As it stands CVs solve for different problems than forms. I don’t doubt we could arrive at better solutions over time, but I think that would require a different set of constraints than the ones we currently have.
Lehmuusa@nord.pub 21 hours ago
What could be cool would be a simple “included in my CV” button that you could click to bypass the field if it would be duplicating information already given. When you apply for 100 positions and each one requires you to painstakingly re-write all the content of your CV, it’s a big-time chore.
(Also, I don’t think it’s okay to ask half the stuff you are asking… Is that really legal someplace on Earth?! Blood type as reason to hire an applicant??)
snek_boi@lemmy.ml 19 hours ago
I suppose your proposal can work: having standard questions with standard answers.
To make sure there’s consistency, maybe having a non-profit handling the whole thing could work. That way, there’s a standard application that people can fill in and standard responses that jobs can expect. Something like America’s Common App.
As to legality and the hiring criteria, I’m sorry if I misled you. I can assure you candidates were not being selected based on their blood. As I said earlier, the CV was given to the hiring decision-makers and the forms to HR.