There are fewer things in this world that irritate me more than when someone can’t follow simple directions. For example, fill out the application (at the time after we’ve scheduled an interview of course – I wouldn’t want to enrage any of the candidate experience gods by asking for legal paperwork too early on when I should be offering a Frappa Mocha Someshit so that I can make them feel right at home.  (I kid, candidate experience is important. Just bear with me here.)

And yeah, maybe it’s a bit of my OCD, but when I ask for an employment application to be filled out, it’s not because I want to see a redundant version of your resume again. But recently, I had a candidate fill out basically his name address and signature, and absolutely nothing else.   Trust me, I get enough of those. But, there are several reasons that we ask for an application to be done at a certain point:

It’s legal

Yeah I know, more big government hassling you into giving them info to spy on you with. NO. It’s to make sure you fill it out and sign that you’ve put down information that is true to the best of your ability, and that if we find out you didn’t, we can terminate you. Before your lies get so big it cleans out our corporate account.

It shows me your attention to detail and ability to follow simple instructions.

You’re going to need to be able to handle multiple priorities and extract information during projects. I need to know that you can digest the basics of what is asked of you. If I ask you to complete a simple task, I don’t think that’s a lot to ask.

I need to make sure what you told me before jives with whats on the application

If you tell me you spent 5 years at your last company, and your resume says 3 and your application says 4.  And yes, I’m going to ask you about it. I’ve got a role in protecting my company from dishonest people.

It’s where we get reference information

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna check them yet. But when we get to the point of wanting to make you an offer, this just helps accelerate the process. This way, we don’t lose two days of you collecting and informing your references. You’re applying for a job. I hope that you have already lined up your references to tell them they may be contacted. But I get it – people don’t want to put other people’s names out there. But frankly Scarlet, I give a damn about wasting time hunting references when we’re trying to fill a position.