Have you read the JD?

“SALE SALE everywhere but what I seek is RARE”

This echoes my thought while I was reading today's newspaper full of monsoon sale offer.60 % OFF in font size and color too loud for anybody to hardly miss. Until sometime back I too was an ardent follower but soon realized the catch that “Jo Dikhta Hai Who Bikta Nahin”. So this actually took me back to my mailbox where I had made job postings and received more irrelevant job responses only to unsubscribe the same.

 

Job posting is a great way to advertise about an opening so that it’s easier to connect with right talent in the minimum possible time. Doesn’t this sound like a great recipe for Talent Acquisition!! It almost was doing the job till such time the seekers started rushing to apply to any job without reading the specifications. Quite a fact is that all those telephonic interviews where I asked job seekers about going through the job profile before applying for it, responses were not close to convincing even. So a job portal has become a market place where job seekers come and just click on what they feel is relevant or could be relevant and sometimes leave it to recruiter to decide. Why take pain when it is free!! Similar to picking up a discounted item and later realizing that you never needed the same.

 

Now this is the point from where the challenge starts for all the three parties: Recruiter, job seeker and portal. Yes, most of them promise to have great algorithms controlling the relevancy factor but still controlling humans is way beyond any technology. Recruiter who for a change is not happy with the overwhelming not- so-relevant response and changing portal service has been not much of a value add too, considering sample remains the same. So best done was moving them to a folder where they don’t worry you much. However some serious job seekers kept wondering what must have gone wrong when they actually matched the requirement 100%.

 

But when ‘there is a will there is a way’. Mostly a follow up call to the HR department does the job. However the point still remains how an effective tool because of misuse or overuse has lost the entire purpose. Only if we read the job description and self evaluate before applying most of can avoid cursing a portal for being ineffective. Also please remember every time you click on a job which doesn’t fit your profile you are only making the talent hunt even harder for all three.

 

It takes five mins to read an job description but is that asking for too much when it’s about your next career move?