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Monday 16 May 2011

Frustration is... when you apply for a position and you received no feedback.

I have now been unemployed for ten months and it is not from lack of trying to find a job.  I have a ritual when I wake up every morning:

  1. Brush teeth
  2. Make coffee
  3. Hit all the online job sites
I cannot tell you how many times I have sent my CV out via this channel, but I can tell you how many responses I have received... 1.  It would be nice to know - even via automated reply - that your CV was not successful.

The one response I did receive was via e-mail from a woman who communicated that my CV had been received and that she would be phoning that very day to qualify it.  Now to me, qualify means that the references would be checked to ensure that the information given was correct in terms of position held, duties performed, length of employment and remuneration.  That was two weeks ago and I am still waiting to hear from her.

I spent yesterday with a friend and we had a chat about this.  Her theory is that South Africans cannot handle "confrontation".  Now when I say confrontation, it is not used in an aggresive manner but rather a conversational manner.  She maintained that by sending an e-mail or sms to a person who's CV has not been successful, the unsuccessful candidate will be given the right to question why and this is where the problem lies.

I personally feel that this is extremely rude as there are programs out there that, firstly, can automate a response and secondly, how many people have the kahuna's to follow up as to why they were not successful?  For me, it would be constructive if I knew exactly where I was falling short as this would give me an indication as to which jobs to stay away from in the future, thereby allowing me not to waste time or effort going forward.  I feel that it is pertinent to mention here that I adhere strictly to qualification requirements and also respect the fact that there are probably hundreds of others applying for the same position so, am I being unreasonable is expecting some kind of response?  I don't think so.

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