Applying is a pain

2025-01-25

It has been almost a year since the last blog post here. Whoops.

Well, I have been busy during that time (occasionally), and am now here to complain about one of the things I have spent some time on: Applying for stuff.

A lot of things require that one applies to something. Most commonly, and what I spent my time with, jobs/internships and flats, but other things, such as scholarships come to mind as well. And every time, one gets to do such fun things as writing a super unique letter, attaching all the personal info of oneself, as well as the declaration of independence, a previously undiscovered prime number, next week's gambling numbers and so on. All after finding a suitable listing in the first place.

The wannabe solution

There are websites that promise to help with this. You can create a profile, upload all that information preemptively and specify what you are looking for. Nice. Or at least it would be, if these websites didn't have to interface with the real world at some point.

Once the profile is created, the website suggests a number of positions/offerings to apply to. This selection is almost always very limited and a worse fit than what three filters in the search functionality will get you. What sort of logic suggests a senior Java application development position to a student who specifically didn't select Java as a skill?

Okay, so the suggestions are worse than useless. Does the profile creation at least result in the process of actually submitting an application being more streamlined? On paper, yes. In practice, no. Even though the profile already contains a hand written text on what I am looking for and what motivates me, I am still prompted to write that again, specific to the generic listing. And I get to do this on a webpage, in an input form that covers the listing, so referencing it is a pain.

But the documents are already attached, right? Yes, probably. Though keeping them up to date on the website in question is a hassle, if not impossible altogether. It would be easier and faster to just have a local directory with the up to date documents and attach them to an email. Attachments are not that difficult.

It gets worse after submitting the initial application

So, what is the first thing in your inbox after submitting an application? "Thank you for applying, please complete your profile on our own portal." So you get to experience the joy of creating a profile all over again. All the information you already filled in, you can now fill in again! Exciting!

At any step throughout this whole process there is a solid chance of some input form not accepting your data. Oh, your phone number is from a different country? Can't apply here, mate! You and your future flatmate are not related by blood and also not a couple? No flats for you! One of your previous work experiences doesn't fit into one of our predefined fields? That's not getting listed then! Your credit score is using a modern verification number? Well, too bad, our website is not prepared for that!

What I want

Maybe, one day, in the future, some platform actually provides proper value by accepting realistically complex input for your profile, and by properly using that input to suggest listings. And not just that, it might also cut out some of the steps that are part of these processes nowadays. No filling in information twice, no useless letters of motivation.

We are not there yet, with all these competing platforms just adding extra steps with zero added value. As long as this is the case, can we please go back to just sending an email with some attached pdfs? I am sure, enterprises wary of security will find a way to deal with pdf files.