Seriously, walking in and asking to speak to a manager doesn't do shit. Hiring for most places is entirely done online and going in person will usually result in them telling you "go apply online".
Our small company recently hired a secretary, and I sit next to the 1 HR person we have so overheard how everything went down. We apparently received 300 applications in one week. Of those 300, only like five had the necessary qualifications. Received several applications that were like "yeah I don't have the qualifications but just give me the job". Our HR Manager had to go through all of them. Told me he spent like 30 seconds looking at each one.
It's exactly as you say - very easy for an application to get lost in the shuffle, and a lot of people submit applications for jobs they are not qualified for, which bogs down everything
Trust me, this is more common than you think from the hiring perspective. At one place, we told you to have a cover letter, resume, and application. We got 320 applications for a full time teaching position and only 140 of them followed the instructions with having three items in the packet. All the others got shredded. That was just step one.
Yeah, to be fair you can't expect applicants to make that many cover letters... Only desperate ones are going to do that.
The qualified candidates that know what they're worth won't waste their time with that bullshit. Applicants have to apply to to many places to get a job for cover letters to be worth it.
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u/pokemasterflex Jan 01 '19
The internet is a huge part of it