Tuesday, 30 April 2013

Good Idea, Chap: ‘App’ is for ‘Apply’


Link to podcast to follow


When I was a student at university, finding a job proved to be quite the challenge.

The main reason for that, of course, was the fact that Canterbury was a city of sixty- thousand people, half of which were students looking for jobs.

Back in the day, I thought it was a brilliant idea to print our a hundred CVs, put them all in a backpack, walk around the city and apply to every single place in sight.

I had been doing that for about a week (without any luck) when I one day decided to take a break, lie under a tree and review my CV.

It was then when my heart started sinking, my eyes started watering and my hands started shaking.

For the next ten or twenty minutes, to those walking past me, I must have looked as stressed as a turkey did before a Thanksgiving dinner.

Regardless of how long and hard I stared at the CV, however, I couldn’t go back in time and amend all those CVs that I handed out so that they could reflect my CORRECT mobile number.

Thankfully, I decided to let bygones be bygones and move forward to a brighter tomorrow; hopefully, one where I’d pay more attention to detail when it came to drafting my CV.

Believe it or not, there is a rhyme and reason to my sharing the above anecdote with you and, surprisingly enough, it has little to do with anything that you might possibly be thinking of right now.

In the light of the above, do have a think about the following:

If I had made such a stupendously horrific mistake on my CV, can you honestly imagine the sheer amount of mistakes that I would have made, had I submitted a job application form via an app on my mobile?

Well, it would seem that we might have to get used to it pretty fast, pretty soon; that’s right, employers have started using mobile job application forms which you can access and fill in through a downloadable app.

Here, see for yourself:



In my view, the above presents a couple of hundred thousand issues that need to be addressed; thankfully, as this is a blog entry and not a research paper, I shall only address several of those.

Typos

We all secretly despise AutoCorrect as we are all fully aware of what it’s capable of.

It can easily turn an application form for a ‘LITIGATION EXECUTIVE’ in one for ‘LETTERMAN EXECUTOR’.

Touchscreen

Regardless of whether you’re using a QUERTY keyboard or an IPhone, typing up a two- hundred word answer to a question on an application form can be quite the challenge.

Go ahead, try it; I dare you.

Training

Graduates are currently taught how to access, fill in and submit online application forms successfully and in a way in which they would at least get a rejection back.

Will universities be able to react promptly to the apparently fast- changing trends?


In the end of the day, the idea doesn’t seem half bad; in fact, the whole process can save both employers and jobseekers quite a lot of time.

Moreover, it’d surely mean a significant increase of the ever- so- hilarious AutoCorrect mishaps; am certainly looking forward to that!

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