Finding new positions and the perils of feeding the HR black hole database or we have reached the event horizon and only paid for a one way ticket
Recently I was in the process of looking for a new contract or staff position and have found some interesting acceptable behavior standards while searching. Granted I have not been on the job market for over 10 years and have always had a backlog of companies wanting to use my service. It has been an interesting adventure into the dark realms of Human Resources (play foreboding music now)
One of the positions I applied for advertised their submittal process as “quick and easy” I should have known not to be tempted by such a trusting sounding gimmick, but hey, I took the shot. What I came across was the standard upload of your resume. Correct the auto-populate fields and move forward.
Then I got to this section….
“Please take a few moments and answer the following questions related to the Web – Sr. Internet Marketer for XXXXXXX.com position which you are applying for. Answers to text only questions should be no longer than 500 characters. Your responses will be considered part of your application. “
Note: At the end of this post is the listing of items required to be completed for submittal of the form.
I really did put some effort into their answers but after the first two I pulled out the calculator and did a little math.
22 unique items to be answered
500 character per item max
11,000 characters total
@ 6 characters per word that yields about 1,800 words
This got me thinking, is it worth the effort to spend that amount of time writing 1800 words to submit to the HR black hole database or is it better to move on?
Granted, I could pull some of this info from my already existing master question sheet; but is it worth it to do the work? It seems to me that this organization has the belief that if they get all this information then they never have to speak with a live person. I am not sure I want to work with an organization that hides behind their website. Besides, the odds of them never contacting me and claiming that they are too busy are nearly 9:1. Once again, is it worth the effort?
Now how does this relate to my profession and SEO and SEM implementation? Instead of completing their questionnaire and creating content that personally promotes me to only one company, I could take what I learned from their submittal process and write this blog to promote my social media presence to the community at large.
It was not a hard decision, I used the experience to write this blog and hence promote my web presence by creating unique content. Plus,… all the fun backlinks that will come from other ecommerce marketers sharing my blog post.
Is this a risk? You bet. Many HR people will see this as just bashing and trashing. While in truth it brings to light that time management is important to all of us and we must make the decision to place our resources where they will do the most good.
Form Submittal Requirements
1. E-COMMERCE MANAGEMENT
2. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
3. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
4. AFFILIATE MARKETING
5. VIRAL/GRASS ROOTS MARKETING
6. SOCIAL/WEB 2.0 MARKETING
7. EMAIL MARKETING
8. OFFLINE MARKETING
9. WRITING WEB CONTENT
10. WRITING AD COPY
11. WRITING LANDING PAGES
12. WEB ANALYTICS
13. MARKETING PROJECT MANAGEMENT
14. TEAM LEADING
15. OVERSEEING OUTSOURCED PROJECTS
16. BASIC HTML SKILLS
17. GRAPHIC DESIGN
18. VIDEO PREPRODUCTION
19. If you have not already done so, please expound on some of your work/projects and provide sample documents or URLS or your work if available.
20. What are your salary requirements?
21. Why do you want to work for XXXXXXXXX?
22. Feel free to use this space to ask any questions that you have about the position:
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John Wilkerson is a Marketing/Sales Professional specializing in online branding, ecommerce sites, blogging, email advertising, content creation, print media, and direct mail. Follow @johnwilkerson
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Phone 863-398-2199