Each year in February the folks in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania gather at Gobbler’s Knob to see if the groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, will predict the coming of spring or an extended winter. The Bill Murray movie portraying this semi-holiday is a classic, and we all comically commiserate with Bill’s character (also Phil), when he finds himself in a time warp, living the same day over and over again until he can get it just right.
I have to imagine that job seekers feel a bit like Phil (the man, not the groundhog), when they are filling out job application forms. The monotonous routine of landing on a yet another blank form and filling out the same fields over and over again has to be a bit like waking up to Sonny and Cher on your alarm every morning. Only in this case, it’s really not so comical.
Job candidates shouldn’t be forced to go through an application time warp until someone can “get it right” – the Talent Acquisition community should be getting it right for them, ending this monotonous routine and delivering more quality candidates to employers.
Job candidates spend time on career sites not just as active job seekers, but as individuals looking to advance their careers through training and useful knowledge about their industry and/or profession. Many of these candidates are quite passive, but may be more active if the job search and application process was not such a time warp.
If you’ve seen the movie, you know that Phil (again, the man, not the groundhog!) has some pretty dark moments where he just doesn’t want to live through the charade another day. As a community of talent acquisition professionals and software vendors, we depend on job candidates for our livelihood; we just can’t continue to let them experience dark moments where they question if they can keep up their job search. There is a better way, and we have the technology and resources to make it happen.
Fortunately for job seekers, the candidate experience is a topic that has been raised to the forefront of industry conversation over the last 12-18 months, and the conversation is really starting to surge. While I have nothing against Sonny and Cher, it’s time to play a new tune for candidates and help them escape the job application time warp. Let’s work together and get it right for them.
