subject: Please Treat Us Like Human Beings [print this page] Please Treat Us Like Human Beings Please Treat Us Like Human Beings
You see the perfect job advertised online. The job you could have created for yourself if you had the opportunity to solicit yourself for the position. Its perfect!
First of all let's get this all in perspective! XYZ Company cannot find anyone internally to fill a position so they solicit from the great unwashed out there to save their bacon and solve their management challenge. If they were such a hotshot company why can't they solve their problems from inside? That is probably why grad schools keep pumping out MBA students who know little or nothing about how companies actually operate...
One takes the time to complete an online only application form that gives you no opportunity to explain why your skills are perfect for the job. As you fill in the endless invasive form that asks you such pertinent questions as, your major in high school thirty years ago, or questions on your first job, you try to outwit their ability to figure out your age, marital status, race, religion, sexual preferences and how little you are actually willing to work for in today's climate.
As you are completing the form you wonder exactly who is going to screen your application? Is it going to be scanned by a program looking for all the key words you forgot, or, more likely, didn't know to use? Will the lowest paid employee in the targeted company look it over not understanding why you listed such and such as examples of your expertise?
Will it be a print out on some HR person's desk that knows the least of all about line responsibilities? Who is going to read the bloody thing? You/we should be able to find this out like we did in the old days-before online applications made us feel even less of a human being.
