Who does the bare minimum in job applications?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So is the cover letter required?

Sorry, I'm not going to write 50 cover letters if not required, especially if I'm going to be ghosted by 90% of the companies.

+1

I stopped submitting cover letters 10 years ago. I also have been a hiring manager and the cover letters are a total joke in my opinion. I have hired people who did not submit a cover letter and was also hired by my current company without a cover letter.

[Anonymous]

Many jobs these days especially those posted on LinkedIn have standardized applications that are pre-filled from your resume. They completely ignore summaries that people often put at the top of resume about them being visionary strategic leaders and such. And they don’t ask for cover letters either.

[Anonymous]

OP: Please take a moment to think about your ideal job candidate and consider how that person might deal with your job application process.

The ideal candidate is likely highly competent, experienced, currently employeed, and capable enough to work anywhere. Unless your company's name is Amazon or Google, he doesn't need your job and isn't going to put forth significant effort to apply. He doesn't want to work for a company that uses AI resume screening, and isn't going to spend the time to do "homework" assignments for a job. Contrast this with a desperate candidate who needs a job badly, and is likely to go to any amount of effort to apply.

Given this, you should absolutely throw away resumes with AI-bait or AI-generated content. I do this (we have actual humans who read resumes). But don't turn your candidate search into an exercise in following dirctions. A confident, well-qualified candidate won't spend hours on a cover letter because candidates like that don't need to do it. You can and should throw away applications with other companies' names in the cover letter (that is just sloppy), but a low-effort application is fine. Unless you are hiring typesetters or proofreaders, one or two small errors should not invalidate the applicant.

Lots of people apply to jobs where they meet some, but not all, of the stated qualifications. This is normal and expected, since the perfect candidate rarely exists. If your qualifications really are firm, then you need to state this in the job listing.

If you really want to turn this into an exercise in following directions, then expect that your process will result in selecting the least desirable candidates.

None of this really has to do with the sex of the applicants, although your job listing may attract more men because of the type of position.

[Anonymous]

Immigration and the Department of Labor have done nasty things to the job recruitment process.

They post jobs that don't exist to try to prove that we don't have skills so they can get green cards or LCAs. They make employees do all kinds of tests and take home assignments, just to discourage people from applying. Numerous hostile interviews. "Have you or have you not used Java Beans?"

They are required to treat all of their company listings with the same process.

So yeah, nine times out of ten I am filling out the paperwork just to prove I have sufficient skills. Bare minimum or less if possible.

That's the world HR created.