Will someone PLEASE fix "careers" pages on company websites?
Four weeks ago, I began a job hunt. What I have found so far are some of the most poorly-thought-out web pages I have seen.
Now I'm not really a big web surfer, so maybe it is all this bad, but come on!
At least two companies I hit have a javascript call which is not supported by Firefox. One, a major defense contractor, had a page that was completely unrenderable. I sent a complaint--tech support recommended that I install IE! (I asked if I should install windows first).
There is the common problem of the multinationals. With offices in 150 countries, every last one is in the menu. (In alphabetical order.) Question: if advertizers know what city I am in, can these people not at least guess which country I am in? For the really brazen, if I say that I don't want to relocate, and I'm in the US, doesn't my zip code tell you what cities I want? No. You haven't asked if I want to relocate, nor my zipcode until AFTER I select a job.
Or how about this? Since these companies all use javascript (see above), perhaps they could automatically update the menu when I select a country? It is always fun to guess if the "search" button has an unmentioned function to allow me to refine my geographic selection. Fun, but this isn't kongregate.com.
And what is this flash? Not everyone has flash installed. (There are some difficulties especially with some 64-bit Linices.) Once company very thoughtfully had both a flash and a non-flash side to their site. Problem: the dropdown menu (required to get to their careers page) was flash on both sides.
Recruiters are just as bad. I especially like the 15-second flash on the homepage bit. It tells me exactly what you think of my time.
Bottom line: Good people know that they are good, and have a lowish tolerance for garbage. Your "careers" section may be my first real contact with your company. What impression do you want me to get?
And no, I am not applying to the people who like to bomb pages in Firefox, or who put flash in the non-flash side of their site. I'm too good for a company that I catch doing that.
Nathan Zook
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanzook
Well said. You're right that the career page is often the first one accessed, thanks to Google taking you past the riffraff pages. It ought to be treated as a front page.
On a somewhat similar topic, I had to use CVS Photo's website to upload photographs for printing (3 times in the past 2 days - don't ask). Besides being forced to deal with the gratuitous meta-stable long-loading Java application for dragging-and-dropping pictures, and the fact it couldn't figure out where I live without BOTH my ZIP code and my state entered, this crapsite required roughly 10 clicks of various buttons to actually order one picture for printing, beginning to end.
Usability experts should have a field day with this one.
I agree as well... there are too many company web sites out there that are just plain poorly written. I especially concur with most of your comments about Flash. I purposely don't have it installed in most of the browsers I use because it cuts down on annoying animated advertising and those lame intros like you mention from some recruiting agency web sites. There is no reason anymore for using Flash for things like navigation anyway, you can do most of the same things using cross platform compatible AJAX these days. And there is absolutely no excuse for making web sites that don't offer at least minimal functionality in at least Firefox and Safari. Probably should work in Opera as well.
Oh... I forgot to ask... How is your search going? Have you gotten very many call backs? Phone screens? Interviews? Its been really quiet lately for me except the usual emails from out of area recruiters offering low rate short term road gigs... No, thanks, I don't want to do a 6 month contract in Arkansas for $35 an hour all inclusive on 1099... Seems like I get contacted about the same crappy contract up there about twice a week by different agencies because I have "C" and "Informix" in my dice.com profile. Of course the don't read enough to see that I'm not willing to relocate or travel more than 25%, I'm only interested in perm, and that is below my minimum rate... Most of the others are for DFW, Houston and the occasional ones for bay area, Seattle, Chicago or NYC...
I'm not doing too bad. Two phone screens & one interview -> nothing. One interview -> scheduled test job, one phone screen -> promised interview. I've also had a couple of suggestions that I look into things that would be equivalent to being bumped a couple of pay grades. This was my fourth week & I finally have had a bit of "down" time.
I'm glad to hear your getting some action at least and I hope that things work out for you soon. With your recent experience with Ruby on Rails you'd think you'd have a lot more interest than that if its as hot as people say it is. Unfortunately for processor verification you've already worked at two of the major employers here in Austin... However, Freescale or Marvel might be looking for those skills.
Rails IS very hot. If I were asking $20k less, I would be fighting them off with a stick. If I had a couple of live apps & three years of web development, I would need an Uzi. Indeed, given my experience (11 yrs microprocessor validation, 1 Rails) the fact that I'm interviewing based on Rails at all should indicate just how hot Rails is.
Well, I don't think I would exactly say "hot"... but if you are swimming in the antarctic, then I suppose lukewarm feels pretty balmy. If the market was "hot" you'd already have been working for that $20k more for a few weeks now. I would guess the main reason why you are getting much play with only 1 years experience with Rails is that there are relatively few that have any experience with it at all. And a few people actually realize that but sadly, most don't, which is why you see ads demanding 5+ years when hardly anyone had heard of Ruby at all in 2003, let alone Rails. I suspect that some of the people willing to go with Rails instead of some of the "safer" (read that as "promoted by big name(s)") frameworks are perhaps a bit more clue-full than average too.
Anyway, as weak as the job market still is, at least it isn't frozen solid like it was a few years ago, and actually I'm pleasantly surprised so far that we haven't seen much further bloodbath after the big Dell and AMD layoffs this spring. I don't think we are out of the woods yet but I was frankly expecting most of the other big employers in the area to follow suit proportionately with cuts of their own by now.
I think you are missing my point. I'm asking for a non-trivial raise, and I'm quite confident that I will get it. It's shocking (to me) that rails employers are nevertheless in the game. Again, 2 years of ruby + 1 year of rails + 10 years of non-application sw experience really should not pay as well as 10 years of validation + 2 years of applications work.
I didn't get the part about you asking for a raise. Pretty much all of my major experience is in stuff that is subzero frozen, so what little interest I get is mostly coming in with numbers way under what I currently make. Anyway, I'm just saying that in a healthy job market things would be significantly better than what we are seeing now. I'm not talking feeding frenzy like 1998-2000, just a healthy market like 1994-1997.
Anyway, I wish you the best of luck in getting what you are looking for.
Let me toss in an "AMEN" as well to that. Somehow, it just doesn't give me that warm and fuzzy feeling when I am trying to apply to a high-tech company that can't even get its own web page to work right....
It's a toss-up whether the inhouse developments or the third-party products (Taleo, Hire, etc.) are better or worse. Both are increasingly requiring a complete profile before submitting any response. That's based on a never-proven guess by recruiting software companies that "just looking" candidates need to experience an online relationship, part of the job courting for the best employees. I say, Pshaw! I'm there to respond to a particular job, and if I want a relationship we'll go out to a movie first. Electronic applications should be saved for further in the process, especially since the average recruiter is going to ask you the very same questions that you answered online.
And on a slightly related rant, why can't companies decrease their own propaganda up front in an email? Increasingly, I feel like I'm reading a glowing stock solicitation before I can get to the meat of why they have emailed me. Sure, everybody's company is "a leader" in some way, and do I really need to know RIGHT NOW what year you were founded?
I'm not sure which is worse, those glowing self-promotions or the terse-to-the-point-of-rude demands, all with "ASAP" in their subject lines, that demand my resume and rate, based on a job title (not a description) and a location, nothing else.
Its an employer's market... I've ranted numerous times about how I hate it when recruiters and employers demand a resume and rate up front when they won't give much of anything in return. Generally demands for rates up-front means they are trying to low-ball you. Give them a reasonable figure and usually it means conversation is over. But that is the way it is and I don't imagine it will get much better any time soon.
Here's an exemplary listing (as in, an example of what NOT to do). This is for a job whose title attracted me. The "Job Responsibilities" header is in bold on their site.
"Job Responsibilities: MAXIMUS (NYSE: MMS), is one of America's leading government services companies devoted to providing consulting, health and human services program management, and information technology services. Since its founding in 1975, MAXIMUS has grown to more than 5,200 employees located in more than 280 offices in the United States, Canada, and Australia. On a number of occasions, MAXIMUS has been selected by Forbes Magazine as one of the Best 200 Small Companies in America, and by Business Week Magazine as one of the 100 Best Hot Growth Small Companies. Additionally, MAXIMUS is included in the Russell 2000 Index and the S&P SmallCap 600 Index."
Needless to say, they won't get my resume.
Wow, that's a lot of responsiblities.... ;)
Yeah, you hope that it is just someone who cut and pasted things into the wrong spot, but it probably isn't.
I don't know if they don't realize how important writing a good job description is to finding quality candidates. Maybe its ignorance, maybe its apathy.
Anyway, there is a place for company blurbs like that, but generally I don't like to see them on job descriptions, especially not ones placed by agencies, and especially not when the ad is for contract placement.
I'm sure somebody just screwed up with the copy-and-pasting.
if i have to read one more employer's career page that says "we are looking for passionate and talented people!" when i know from meeting their employees that they are really looking for "people who will work like a dog for below market rate and no interest in career growth", well... i might just take my passionate and talented self off the market. clearly, they don't need me.
(theory: HR's job isn't to recruit people any more. their job is to provide a fake employment process (that doesn't actually hire anyone), so when someone says "hey, i'm interested in working for your company" there's a place to shunt them off to. that Jobs page is just a front and those applications/emails are autoforwarded to the Trash folder, which is why they don't care if they work or not. all recruiting is actually done through recruiters or through direct application/networking, and you're in big trouble if you're in a field that doesn't have a good recruiter or your network isn't in good shape.)
Yeah, some of the verbiage that is on those pages is a humorous read. Or a maddening read, depending on ones current frame of mind.
I think I'm living in the same hell you are career wise. I certainly understand the feelings of sending off resumes into a black hole and I definitely agree with your theory about companies not caring if their recruiting pages don't work when they either aren't really hiring or they already have more than adequate sources for candidates. It seems like most of the few job postings I'm really interested in I never even get an acknowledgment back from. In a weak job market like we have right now I think you are right about most of the jobs either being hired through people's networks or through recruiters. My theory is that the stuff I'm interested in probably hundreds of others are too, and probably most of the time those opportunities are going to people with inside connections anyway.
i don't bother applying for jobs that are listed on websites, especially if they're listed on major job sites (Indeed, etc.). if they're not out of date to begin with, then by the time they are on even the corporate website, they've already got a list of candidates together.
i've kind of stopped bothering even with the networking. it's time-consuming, tedious, and tends to go nowhere slowly and painfully. instead, i go directly to the person i would want to work for and pitch straight to them who i am and what i do. to do the research on the company, though i'm still reading the whole website, and the Careers pages are all so badly done.
there's no point in complaining about not getting a job via a website. we all know better than to do that. i'm just hoping there's an HR person with the bad idea to put functionality & text like that on the Jobs page who read this thread and is now thinking twice.
Well, I suppose it is possible (regarding HR people seeing this and thinking twice), but I wouldn't hold my breath. I think a lot of them have "drank the cool-aid" and actually believe a lot of that boilerplate copy.
Tamer wrote:
> I'm just hoping there's an HR person with the bad idea to put functionality
> & text like that on the Jobs page who read this thread and is now thinking
> twice.
And THAT is why I started this thread!
Feel free to send your resume to me. A huge part of the job search now is networking with recruitng firms, it's free for you.
We work hard to build direct relationships with local companies. Let the recruiting firm do the work. When you send a resume to the HR department, you are basically sending it into a black hole. A recruiting firm will send your resume directly to the hiring manager.
Brooke Anderson
brooke.anderson@modis.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/banderson