Interesting Pre-Screening Tool

As most of you who read my blog at Career Design Coach know, the company for which my husband worked has closed and we are in job search mode. I thought I'd share an interesting employment pre-screening tool that we recently saw.

The company where my husband applied did not accept resumes. I was a little surprised, but decided that as we completed the online application there would be the opportunity to list his experience and achievements somewhere in the process. We got to the last page and realized that we had not been given the opportunity to do this. The company, instead, listed the top five qualifications for the job and wanted you to write a short paragraph explaining how you uniquely met each of the five qualifications. The catch — you had a small box to list all the qualifications and how you met each of them in just a few thousand characters (not words). We finally navigated through this area and had to remove some information to keep to the character allowance.

Even though it was a challenging process, I thought how creative it was to conduct their pre-screening in this manner. They don't have to read through hundreds or thousands (probably thousands) of 1-3 page resumes to decide who they want to interview. Plus, keeping it short made us want to only highlight the relevant information that would make him stand apart from the competition to show how he is the best fit for the position (i.e. his unique promise of value). Therefore, they are not trying to read between the lines of a resume' to see how he's the best fit–we had to demonstrate it.

Have you encountered any unique pre-screening tools in your job search? Share them in the comments' section.

Cross-posted at Career Design Coach by Kristen Jacoway