Yahoo’s Job Site == Fail
So I’m looking at jobs and stuff, and I’m also applying for something at Yahoo.
Most employers’ job sites are pretty bad. I’m not sure why, but it seems that companies think that if the company is good enough, people will try to apply for jobs no matter how bad the actual process is. I’ve seen good implementations in the past as well as horrible ones. Google’s is actually not too bad (upload your resume and transcript, pdf is okay) while Yahoo’s is probably the worst.
First off, when I talked to a recruiter from Yahoo at Michigan, I was told that as a “green” measure, Yahoo wasn’t taking paper resumes. Okay, that’s pretty cool, I guess. Power to the Purple. But then I attempted to actually apply online.
The Yahoo careers site doesn’t take pdfs. It doesn’t take .pages either (which makes sense because those are actually directories!). So I convert the .pages to .doc and upload it. For some reason, the random filler stuff from the template (latin words, etc) makes it into the parser and pre-fills my resume with junk. Also, I found it very funny that the Yahoo resume parser thinks “Ann Arbor” is my name, and not my city!
Another thing I noticed is that there’s a list of universities, but for some reason, it’s only the big ones. University of New Mexico is not on there. Luckily for me, I’m going to a big-name school now! There’s also a field for “Other University.” Way to make community college kids feel good, Yahoo.
Finally, in order to get my resume in there, I have to copy and paste. That’s right, COPY AND PASTE. All the formatting I did to make my resume easy to read and cool-looking has gone down the drain. Getting resumes that are easy to read is apparently not important to Yahoo.
You might think that I would hold my tongue since I’m applying at Yahoo. But seriously, the Yahoo Careers Site is horrible. It needs work. I’m sure Yahoo is a fine place for a career; I’m also sure that Yahoo would be happy that its (prospective) employees would call a spade a spade, and recognize when there’s a problem with the site.
Who knows, I might even end up fixing the Careers site as my first gig at Yahoo. That is, if they’re willing to hire someone who can see problems and is not afraid to point them out.