Online Submissions - The Drawback Of Going Digital

I prefer sending my resume via carrier pigeon, but maybe that's just a me thing

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Job hunting is not a fun task. It's time consuming, it's frustrating, and it's the perfect example of "Hurry Up and Wait". Gone are the days where you could confidently strut into an office and speak to the manager, convincing them you're the perfect fit their team needs within the afternoon. In an increasingly connected world, we are now reliant on a mountain of online systems and resources to navigate even the most basic of applications. From career aggregate sites like Indeed or Workopolis, to job review sites like Glassdoor, to any of the numerous blogs or articles meant to assist with resume crafting and interview prep, it's simply incredible how much is truly out there. Oh yeah, and there's LinkedIn, a literal social media website dedicated to allowing industry professionals to connect with each other based on industry experiences and careers. Mastery of these resources is becoming an increasingly critical step to succeeding at job hunting, and it can add to the "Blah Factor" the job search brings.

That's not to say that it's much more of a party on the other side of the table. An entire branch of careers have been created to accommodate the high demand hiring that comes with the 21st century. Recruiters and hiring departments exist solely to seek out talent and bring that talent to the door of the company. Hiring managers rely on these departments to find people that they can shape to fit into their team, but they also have other things to do in their day than wade through the hiring process themselves. On top of it all, to be truly successful at finding the next fit for their company, they will need to have the same level of mastery over all the resources I've already mentioned if not more.

Don't get me wrong, some of these systems are extremely helpful in the job searching realm. Being able to fire off a resume from the comfort of my couch is probably the best thing ever, especially when things like "Winter" happen (it gets nasty cold here FYI). However, online submissions of resumes are often more of a headache than they're worth. We can sit here and cherry-pick any resource we want, but eventually all roads lead to the online submission of a resume. You want the job? You have to submit online. And that's our focus for today.

So what are the drawbacks that job searchers experience when doing online submissions? What are the drawbacks that companies and hiring departments experience? And what are some ways to remedy these drawbacks and relieve some of the headache?

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The Pre-Game

As I mentioned earlier, there are many ways to go about preparing to send in a resume for a job posting, but everyone eventually needs to hit the bottleneck that is the online submission portal. The journey to get there will be slightly different for everyone, but there are some common themes that need to be followed if you want to find success. These themes involve bashing your head (figuratively) against page after page of references, tips, tricks, style choices, and more. Drawback number one shows up even before we get to the submission itself:

Everyone is already put in a bad mood before anything even happens

If you're the person who throws their life story and some work experience onto a word document and immediately goes to submit after a brief spelling check, you probably won't relate to this, but you probably are not finding much success either.

Let's explore a little deeper into why people are made to be so upset. On paper, it would make sense that a person would be excited to have the opportunity to join a team doing a job they would enjoy. The problem is that competition exists. There are likely A LOT of people interested in that job too, so you need to stand out. That means putting together a wicked good resume, because this document is basically your first impression to whatever company you're submitting to. People will do whatever it takes to get noticed, so you need to play hard and hit below the belt wherever you can.

So let's say you've carved out the hours it will take to craft a competitive resume (especially if you're working from scratch). Already you've sacrificed at least a couple evenings worth of spare time, and that's in short supply as it is. If that alone doesn't turn you a little sour, I don't know what will. You push onward and boot up your computer. Online submissions call for online resources after all! After searching for and finding that job you want to apply on, you read through the requirements and get ready to plug away at the resume.

What do you need for information?

What do you need for formatting?

How much is too much?

How much is too little?

What order does anything go in?

You're immediately bombarded with problems you didn't even know you had. Concerned and a little disheartened, you turn to google to find help on what works best. Here's the problem... no two industries (nor two companies) are the same. They all want different ways of presenting the information, either at the person, filter, or corporate level. How can you tell? You can't. You're left jumping from page to page as the conflicting information begins to pile up. After taking your journey through several pages, you eventually are forced to act on whatever feels best for you. As you piece together your document that, again, is your first impression to a company, you're in a bad mood fueled by confusion and exhaustion.

And to think we haven't even started the online submission yet...

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The Dreaded Portal

Alright, enough delaying the inevitable, let's go for the submission. You load the webpage of the company you're applying to with your PDF version of your resume ready to go. You navigate to the "Career" section of the site, taking care to filter out all the other postings on there to find the one you want. A quick re-read confirms all the information you based your resume around is in order. You smash that "Apply Now" button ready to get this over with. You, the seasoned veteran of the job search, know what comes next.

You are taken to the login screen for the company. Oh joy, they want you to make a profile. Forget the drawback of the hiring process, that's a drawback to life in general. No, I don't want another account thank you very much. Begrudgingly you comply and are brought to the "Applicant Portal" for the company which proudly showcases all the applications you've sent, viewed, applied on, and seen closed (amongst other things). Often, this means that I now have to re-navigate to the same posting. Drawback number two (or three I guess at this point); I'm wasting my time inside your portal.

It is at this point I would like to pause and address directly the people in charge of making these portions of the website. Yes, you. I understand you're super proud of your portal. Please know that I want to spend as little time as possible in that portal. The more tabs you put between me and the application, the more grumpy I become. And as we addressed above, I'm probably already kind of grumpy from making the resume in the first place. Yes, it's cool that I can see all this information, but I'm not logging into your specific portal on a daily basis to admire it. Take that time you spent crafting all the extra stuff and do put it elsewhere. Do some light stretching or something, I don't know.

Ok, that's my rant for the day. Back to where we left off.

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As I was saying...

By this point, I've re-navigated back through the online submission screen on the posting and am now presented with the option to provide my information. Excellent, we're making progress. Mercifully, there is an option to upload my resume so I don't have to manually enter every box. I toss it into the file uploader and get smacked in the face by drawback three/four:

The uploader is not very smart.

I've covered before how machines are great at doing but not great at thinking, and it shows here more than ever. My nicely formatted resume is taken in by the uploader, chopped up, and displayed with half the information in the wrong location or without any formatting. Awesome, so I have to re-enter and fix everything again. Bonus points if your portal has several tabs that ask me for what seems like repeat information. Extra bonus points if those tabs feature a single drop down box just to be extra wasteful of my time. And super extra bonus points if at the end of it all you send my uploaded resume with the submission anyway regardless of all the extra boxes.

So we reach the end of the online submission process and check that all the info is correct. No more tabs, no more boxes. SEND.

I get a pop-up that says "Submission Successful" or something along those lines before being returned to the portal. That's it. Zero payoff. If I'm lucky, I'll receive an email confirming that it was sent. Will it get read? Who knows! That's dependent on if there's a robot set up to filter through all submissions for keywords. There's no guarantee that any of what I just did will be fruitful. Our last drawback:

I have no idea if my effort will even be recognized, let alone pay off.

Just for fun, let's rewind back to before I hit the company website and see what different approach we can take if I were to just print my completed resume. I hop in the car and drive to the company office. On arrival, I inquire at the reception desk that I was interested in the position. The hiring manager comes out to greet me, at which point I make as good a first impression as possible and hand off my resume. The manager states that he'll give the resume a read and pass it through to HR, so at least I know it'll get human eyes on it. I leave and go home.

Quick recap for those keeping score...

I didn't have to make an account

I didn't waste time in a portal

I didn't have to fight an uploader and do things twice

I got the payoff of having met with the manager

I know where my resume is going

We mitigated pretty much every drawback that came with the online submission.

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Hello from the other side

So what about those on the other side of the program? Hiring departments and managers are expected to use these online submission systems as part of the hiring process too, and it comes with it's fair share of headaches. Managing the systems and ensuring applications end up in the right place can be a chore in and of itself, especially considering the alternative situation where an in-person meeting sees resumes going directly to those who need to see it. There's maintenance, updates, system crashes, and other unusual problems that come with any web based systems. They result in drawbacks that a simple phone call or in-person visit can directly solve.

There's also the drawbacks that result from the effect the system has on the applicants. Resumes may come in robotic, likely due to none of the applicants knowing what format can get past the filters. Applications may be missing information as a result of formatting issues during imports. Notifications may be pushed and ignored on the applicant side as a result of the portal setup. All of these issues arise because the digital method of submitting a resume creates the issues. It makes the job of recruiting top talent that much harder. That next up-and-coming leader in the industry may be passed over because they couldn't be bothered to reconfigure all 150 boxes on the form. It's a lose-lose scenario.

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How can we make this system slightly more bearable?

At the end of the day, we have two sides of the hiring equation... The Applicant and The Recruiting Team. Both have a vested interest in seeing an application be successful. Does the system work as it stands right now? Yeah, it works enough. However, for all the drawbacks that come from an online submission model, there's room to improve. Looking back on our drawbacks, how can we focus on bettering these systems? I would argue there are many, but here's a few of my top picks...

Streamline Your Portal

In case that part of my article where I went into a small tirade didn't clue you in on my opinion of "The Portal", I don't think very highly of most of them. They have tons of unnecessary functionality and ask you to repeat steps all throughout the process. Many applicants have already spent a mountain of time just to get to this point in the online application process, and I'd be willing to bet that they don't want to spend more. Streamline the application process where possible. If you're taking in a resume, don't have boxes that need to be populated along the way. If you insist on doing it that way, at least consider keeping it to one tab. Less is more in this case.

Provide Feedback

I don't need a personal ten page document explaining why I did or did not get selected for an interview, but an email confirmation should be the absolute minimum for a submission. The drawback of having no feedback on the status of an application compounds as I send more and more applications. If I'm not going to hear back for a half year, why should I invest in the application? Speaking from real world experience, I received an email notifying me a position had been closed and awarded to someone else for something I had applied on more than a year prior. I don't feel as if my efforts were worth the investment in that situation, and although that was an extreme case, it's not uncommon to go weeks to months without a word (if one ever comes). If you're still interviewing, accepting applications, or closing an application, please let us know.

Be A Copycat

You can personalize your portal all you want, but being fancy often represents a headache for the applicants. It's another "New" system to navigate. As the person maintaining the website, you may see it every day, but to the applicant that's sending a new application every second day, it may be something completely different than they're used to. Research what other companies have done for their online submission portal, rip out what works, and slap your branding on it. It's not original or unique, but it helps to standardize the process across the industry and helps the applicants.

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Dominating the digital space

It's pretty clear at this point that online submissions, regardless of the drawbacks they come with, are here to stay. More and more things in our daily lives are run off computers, and hiring processes are no different. The unfortunate part is that creating the perfect submission portal won't be the silver bullet to getting top tier candidates on its own. However, applicants are expected to play in the online sandbox to get an application through, so there is some merit in making your sandbox extra appealing. A lot of it comes down to respecting time. Ask yourself this... If you have only an hour to get an application complete, would you be more willing to go through a two step process or a ten step process? Speed and convenience are the biggest advantage going digital offers, so capitalize on it!

The online component of the submission only makes up a small portion of getting the job. There's interviews, meetings, phone calls, and other odds and ends that sit between application and offer. It's all in where the online portion sits, and that's right at the beginning of the process. It's the barrier to entry, and the part of the application process that's open to everyone. If the drawbacks of this stage can be minimized, it will result in a better hiring space for everyone.

~IR

What has been your experience with online submissions? Do you find crafting a resume to be more work than it's worth? Or maybe you just have a comment to add? Check out the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn page and let everyone know. Don't forget to follow or like the page for updates! And share this article if you feel others should give it a read!

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