Is it me, or is the HR department nothing more than a waste of resources department since the demise of 'personell' ? I'll start by saying that I am biased on this argument, as I generally despise these jumped up collegiate gloryfied secretaries with a venemous passion. I despise these 'Portals' which you should upload not only your CV but also answer inane stupid questions so you can be screened and filtered to make the lazy jumped up twat's life easier. My other half is going through this at the moment, having applied for a job which word for word was the job description of her last job role ( to the point I said, "you may as well copy that job description into your CV!") which she was doing for their Arch Rival! Naturally the oh so wonderful portal promised that she was to get a reply within two days blah blah. Eventually they were nudged behind the scenes so to speak and I can imagine it now, they just pressed that 'reject' button. And all the while, I can imagine some huffing little shit - tart or tosser, who's whinging that it's far too much trouble to do their own fucking job which is reading CV's. Its a sign of the times. Now counter argument might dictate that yes they receive fahhsands and millions of CV's every day and there's so many people out of work and times are hard... sorry but my answer to that is the same as with marketing people that preach that tune... "Now's the time when you justify your money". Can I rant with authority? probably not, but I remember when I was doing IT recruitment back in the late 90's. CV's came piling in and we breifly scanned them and picked out key words which we plonked in our database. Which of course now is done by the oh so wonderful portal, and also has the added benefit of allowing the waste of resources department to not have to speak to the stinky peasants outside the walls, as there's no means to contact them if your 'screening has been unsuccessful... but I digress... I rang a guy up, it was for an oracle DBA role wich required knowledge of an obtuse system which I can't recall. I gave him my spiel and then he drew breath and tore me a fresh arsehole. Had I actually read his CV, rather than just skimmed over it looking for key words, I would have realised that the obtuse system was being used in a building he was working in, but his CV made it clear he had no exposure of, or contact with! The reason he was so pissed off was that he'd had about ten calls an hour over the course of the day from twatty recruiters like me all trying to mug him off to take this job, which had we actually read his CV as opposed to asking database to filter and give us names, we would have known. You could have fried an egg on that phone by the end of the day apparently and I felt a total twat! But this was the days of a CV having a description of what you did, rather than bullet points of key attributes because back them the average attention span was longer than some of the fat arsed self important fuckwits you now have in these positions, most of which are about 12 years old. Like automated telephone systems and call centre ques, these nameless interfaces, just serve to alienate in my mind and make the job of someone who will eventually do nothing more than walk over to the relevant manager with a bundle of cv's and say "are these ok?" nothing if not numbingly easy. The irony being that said manager might have three or four cv's handed to him from other persons, and who he might wonder how or why they never got through 'screening'. The things that fucks me off utterly is that waste of resources on the most part don't know the difference between a cleaner or a lump of coal, all they know is that its a body that a department needs. So in reality, what's the point of these self important swollen bloated departments which seem to always be needing to recruit another miserable cow who can't do fuck all other than preen strut and bang on about how they're in 'Haich Arr' ? What an utter waste of resources. rant over. thanks for your patience!
I feel sorry for people who have to reapply for their own job they have done for say ten years . Then they give the job to some excuse my language fu*k wit who does not know a rats arse about the job ..who needs training up leaving the other poor person out of a job. Then get the other person came across better on paper .. This is the way of County Councils and NHS... And if you question HR about anything this bible comes out with some PMT riddled mare who can quote subsection 103 part A revised in 1868 at you rubbish!
It's all part of the game. You just have to play it like you want to win. Keep your CV brief, include as many key words as you see fit, and lie like your life depended on it...
In a standard format you should be able to apply for any job as they are pretty much all going to be asking to evidence the same areas......team work, integrity, working under pressure, diversity, difficult situation blah blah blah......and i agree with fig, there only has to be an element of truth in your examples.............which should revolve around I did this and I was the one responsible for....... But the fact is with a somewhat technical job the chances are the HR numpty interviewing you, holding your career in their hand, wont have the foggiest idea what you are talking about, or how important or clever your response is.........
You need a bit of both, a load of happy words to catch HR's eye, and some tech spiel for when somebody important actually reads your CV. But it still needs to be brief. I've had to read a few CVs, and it's the most mind-numbing job imaginable. We just needed a lad to do some maintenance work for us. Got about a hundred CVs through the post, but some lad came to the office and knocked on the door, he'd driven 50 miles on the off chance of getting an interview, had no CV, but was obviously keen as mustard. The direct approach worked for me and he got the job, and proved to be a bloody good worker. He's in prison now, mind...
