I’m sitting here chuckling over a phone call I just received.  A friend of mine is applying for a rather high-level position at a sizable Midwestern company. As he went about the task of completing their online application form, he grew so frustrated with it that he just gave up.

The problem? This company just missed getting a stellar applicant because its online application process is not user-friendly.  At all.

To have me see what he was talking about, he took me to their site and had me get part-way into submitting an application. He was right! The site asked for simple information, but the ‘required entries’ to proceed to the next page seemed to be all screwed up.

Example: It wanted seven years of history for private residence. Even though I entered in nine years of history, it kept kicking me back, saying I had only entered six years worth of data.

I checked, double-checked, and triple-checked the dates.  Yep. Sure enough, nine years of residency had been entered.  But a flag appeared saying I’d only entered six.

I would have gotten frustrated and given up, too!

Employers – if you’re looking to attract applicants, your online employment application needs to reflect that you are a user-friendly company. My impression was that if this company can’t get its online application to function properly, will internal communications be just as screwed up after one gets hired on?

There are additional things to be aware of when trying to find (and keep) good quality applicants.  You might look at my e-book, A Strategic View of Hiring and Retaining Good Employees.  It’s an easy to follow system that takes much of the guesswork out of the hiring process, and also gives great tips for how to keep quality employees engaged once you have them.

(Heck, I’ll even guarantee it. If you don’t find the information valuable, just ask for a refund!)

In the mean time, if you have an online application, it might not be a bad idea to test drive it once in a while to make sure you’re not frustrating (and turning away) highly-qualified applicants.

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