I know, I know; when I complete a job application in an Application Tracking System (ATS), I click a checkbox that says “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me, God” or the slightly less enforceable equivalent that indicates the company will discard my application if its employees discover a falsehood. Ha! I am ahead of the curve, as they discard my applications far before anyone actually looks at them.
But I must confess to you, gentle reader, I sometimes (often) select values that are not truthful, often very early in the process.
Workday, one ATS, makes you create an account with a password (do I save the password? Hell, no; otherwise, I would have several hundred saved Workday passwords in my password manager for accounts into which I will never log in again–and if I do find myself applying, a year or two later, to the same company, I will use the Forgot Password feature and set another strong password I will not seek to remember naturally or artificially). On the second step, your “Profile,” it asks for phone number, address, and whatnot.
And: It often asks “How did you hear about this job?” followed by a drop-down list or nested selector control that has social media sites, job boards, in-person events, and so on. And often not an “Other” to select.
I conduct Google searches on several job boards every day, so I often find jobs hosted in the Workday ATS this way. But it doesn’t let me explain this. So I have to select another value for this required field. I often select Indeed, LinkedIn, or the Corporate Website (which, I guess, is the closest to it). The field is required, and it does not let me select or enter the true answer.
It’s the same with Greenhouse, which has a type-ahead selector for Location (city).
Ah, gentle reader, I live in unincorporated Greene County. I do not live in a city or a town. The zip code resolves to Brookline (or Brookline Station). But the city of Battlefield ends at my farm road, so I am right across the street from Battlefield, Missouri, so I select that one. And if I type my full address, I use Brookline as the city/town (although the zip code covers Battlefield, so one could get mail addressed to Battlefield, MO 65619). So immediately, they can see that difference and think, “Is this guy for real or is he a North Korean who doesn’t know United States geography?”
Not to mention that the Locate me link will probably resolve to Kansas City, Jackson County, or wherever Starlink says I am today.
But too often the ATSes and other parts of the over-the-transom job application/hiring process these days, again, winnow on arbitrary measures and don’t allow for perspective and context. And, boy, mister, after almost thirty years in computers (more if you count programming Commodores and Apples), do I have context and perspective.
