As I have written, The Great Resignation is creating a boom of job seekers. I have also written recently about things employers need can do to make the interview process more effective, but today I want to back up and talk about the applications greeting these folks who are out to not only improve their positions, but the libraries they are coming to work.
First off, please have a different application for various levels of personnel! If the job requires a college degree, modify the EDUCATION section. Leave off HIGH SCHOOL. It's annoying and repetitive. As an applicant, no one wants to look up the address of their high school and let you know if they completed the 12th grade, THEN let you know they earned a Bachelors and Masters degree. Let the kid applying for a lifeguard position at the community pool or groundskeeper worry about that. If we have professional degrees, we've graduated high school, I can just about guarantee it. And are you going to really call our 9th grade shop teacher for a reference? Does graduating from a small high school in Pig Knuckle, Arkansas really disqualify someone with a Ph.D from Stanford? If it does, you got problems we can't fix.
Since I mentioned addresses, can we stop asking for them? No one knows physical addresses off the top of their heads anymore, and it only really adds more searching for the applicant. Are you sending reference forms certified mail? If you are, why? Email that as a Google form and move on. It's 2021. If the actual address of the school or business is that important, Human resources can look it up! Phone numbers are okay, but we all know email is the office communication of choices anymore. We have better things to do as applicants then looking up the current address of the high school we went to that has probably changed since we went there.
Maybe the most common complaint is the required resume THEN asking for the same information in the body of the application. This...is...REALLY...REALLY..REALLY..annoying. I understand some companies cannot afford software that autofills resume information into the application BUT good lord stop asking for both. If the application is important, don't require a resume. If the resume is more important, don't require a lengthy application. Applicants have worked hard on their resumes, or they haven't. That's your factor! Not whether they can repeat themselves, and repeat themselves, and repeat themselves. Qualified people are going to rise to the top no matter what you ask them to do, quit making extra work that by your own system negates them.
At the same time, don't expect applicants to change their resume to fit the job description. First, if you are asking for crazy amounts of experience or advance degrees (as library jobs typically do) you have to expect people are going to have what it takes to do the job OR the ability to learn it. You're asking for cake, ice cream, and extra toppings if you are want a modified cover letter and resume with the experience and/or degrees to back them up. For example, I have been a branch manager. That means I can budget, change light bulbs, clean toilets, and build collections. I taught school (middle school even and damn effectively I will add) I can speak in public and communicate effectively. Also, at the end of the day, if you aren't going to modify your application (see above paragraphs) then do I really need to modify my cover letter and resume?
Finally, lets get off this requiring experience AND degrees kick. No one has both. While education programs are shifting to meet this need, as quickly as education can change, it's not possible for very many people. The people caught up in the Great Resignation are going to have either education or experience. Likely, they are going to have education as they are leaving their first or second "real" job for greener pastures. So unless you want that job requiring 5 to 10 years of experience AND a Master's degree to sit empty, you might reconsider your expectations. The people with both are not going anywhere because they are set where they are, and are not leaving. Those of us out there looking for that "I have found my place" job are educated, but we will not have the experience you want. Our education should prove we are teachable after all.
I understand the hiring process is tricky. People look great on paper but suck in person. They bluff on skills, fib on why they left a job, and don't always have exactly what you would want in a position. The application and interview is there to weed those folks out. I understand. But lets work on those for the people who are out there busting their asses to get a job, only to bust their ass at the job. If they say they have degrees and experience, lets let them show it once and be done. We, those a part of the Great Resignation, don't have time, nor do we want, to be filling out applications that ask for the same information over and over, or information the employer is going to throw in the trash.
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