I really enjoyed this post from Travis about his job search. It sucks that he’s having a hard time finding work, but his story of applying for work at Best Buy got me thinking.
from Travis’ post – “You see, it’s become common for national chains like this one to submit applicants to a long personality survey before they even look at your application. I guess since it’s run by a faceless boardroom at an unknown location, a personal touch isn’t really necessary if you can weed out perspective employees by asking them ridiculous questions for an extended period of time, and grade them by unknown standards.”
Basically, whether you want to work at Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart or many other big-box stores, you can’t walk in and submit your application to a human anymore. No, off to the hiring kiosks you go. You’ll see them – they’re probably right next to a customer service station where returns and exchanges are processed. That way, everyone in the store can watch you apply – by machine.
After submitting your personality profile and answering a bunch of questions, the machine will sort all the applicants and I’m sure establish a threshold for hiring. Should you make the machine’s cut – then MAYBE you’ll get to talk to an actual human about a job. I also think that if you are hired then most of your ‘training’ will be via kiosk as well.
The point is, what does this system say about how these companies value their workforce? It says that they don’t even care enough to make hiring decisions based on demeanor, or a good face to face interaction – unless you pass the machine’s test. It says that the gig probably sucks, and that turnover is high so since you’re going to quit anyway, why invest human resources (expensive) in hiring entry level employees (btw, turnover has real costs as well – retraining, re-filing paperwork, rescheduling, etc).
You can read the full post about Travis’ hiring experience (or lack thereof) at his blog.
What stories do your hiring practices tell about your business? And what are people perceptions on how you value YOUR employees?
