This is your three minute warning (depending how fast you read). There’s going to be a rant to follow.
I’m not a recruiter, I haven’t directly worked in HR/People/Talent teams, but I have been involved in a serious amount of recruitment, helping to craft recruitment strategies and standardise processes, and I’ve also applied for a lot of roles over the years. So I’ve seen all sides.
I’ll do the happy stuff first, the stuff that doesn’t make me want to hide under a table and scream. The adverts by recruiters who seem to understand how the real world works, and acknowledge what the experience can be like for those hunting down a ‘dream’ (or even an ‘it’ll do for now’) assignment. The fabulous people (and there are a lot), who know it’s a two way process.
Big shout out to the recruiters who do things like the following:
Suggest you apply even if you don’t fit 100% of the skills they are looking for
Put a pay range on the advert
Specify the level - junior/mid/senior etc
Be upfront about the remote/hybrid/on site expectations
One I saw yesterday - ‘this is the current remit, but it may change as we are scaling quickly’ and I love this honesty
Create a job contract in plain language, not legalese
Give a timescale or even tell you who you will speak to if you apply
I know this can be time consuming, but it is possible….give unique feedback
If you do that, please keep doing it, and if your company does the opposite of these things, please have a word!
Alright. So maybe that’s not quite three minutes, but buckle up, here we go…..
Some things really grind my gears; recruiters who ghost applicants completely, applications where you’re required to fill out a form when you have spent time on a perfectly designed CV document, those that list benefits such as ‘Friday drinks’, and definitely, the ones who create a tone that shows they think they are the best company in the world and you should be on bended knees, begging them to hire you.
But this…….this application process I saw recently takes the HobNob. Ready? OK, you clicked on this, so now you have to read it…
Click ‘apply’ and follow the prompts from this LinkedIn post
Then send me an email to (email address)
In the email, include 3 bullets only, on how you would be the best fit for the role
Attach your CV to the email
In the email, give your salary expectations and your location and preferred working place (if hybrid, tell me how many days you are willing to come to the office)
Attach a five minute loom video to the email. In the video, take me through a slide deck which illustrates a detailed plan of how you would address the role in your first 90 days
In the email subject, add a pineapple emoji. This is here to test your attention to detail
I shit you not. A pineapple emoji.
If anyone reading this is a recruiter, or works for an organisation that would advertise a role in this way, I hope this is a helpful rant:
Why do I need to apply via LinkedIn and also send you an email? Are you testing whether I use LinkedIn, and/or whether I read instructions properly? Does this mean you will only hire people who use LinkedIn? Why? Or is this possibly because you want to show in your data how people apply? Can’t you find a better way? Whatever, I can do this bit….
3 bullets. OK, that’s restrictive and quite hard. The role is pretty senior, has a huge list of related tasks on your description, and my history can’t be summed up in 3 bullets that cover all of them. Expect each bullet to be a paragraph….
What are your expectations on where I work from? If I say I prefer 2 days in the office will you reject me on the basis you want me in 4 days? Surely this could be better negotiated if you gave me a baseline to start from?
Why don’t you tell me what the expected salary range is? Then I know if it’s financially a fit for me before I waste my time on…….a loom video???
Really? I spent hours of my life curating a beautiful CV. I am writing a unique cover email for you (including your 3 bullets), now you want me to spend time planning, rehearsing and producing a video…with a WHAT?!
You want a slide deck of my initial 90 day plan? And I haven’t even got as far as interview stage yet? That’s hours of work and consideration and I haven’t even had chance to ask you any questions about the specifics of the role yet…
A. Pineapple. Emoji.

Diligent applicants put in time, creativity, and sometimes money, to create and refine wonderful, all encompassing CVs or portfolios to get noticed by recruiters.
They spend time contemplating how to produce a unique cover letter for each role they see, carefully addressing each part of the role.
They network, search and seek out the opportunities that suit them and find vacancies where their hard earned skills and their professional attitude will be an asset to a company who needs this vacancy filled and needs someone who will be a great fit for their team and potentially, do career defining work that benefits the company in a multitude of ways.
And you ask them for all this. And an emoji.
They put in all that time and effort, only to be rejected (or worse, ghosted), perhaps because they said they’d prefer to do 2 days in the office rather than 4. Or because they exceeded your expected salary offer.
Also, surely, what a waste of this recruiter’s time as well. Watching all the looms, as well as evaluating the CVs and emails (and checking for the pineapple). My advice, purely based on efficiency, is to sift the CVs carefully and then invest the time talking about the first 90 days with your shortlisted candidates to get a much more in depth, thought out discussion going.
I find it incredibly unfair to list a metric shit tonne of tasks on LinkedIn, with no mention of expected working routines or recompense. Some people might be hoping to work 2 days in the office but more than happy to push it to 4 for the right role.
Whilst I’ve got you, I would love to see recruiters putting their time into thinking up innovative ways to entice more neurodivergent applicants (standard interviews can be so overwhelming for various people), even better, offer a differing range of ways for people to apply that fits with their knowledge on how they come across best (‘send a CV and cover letter, or a link to your website, or a video if you prefer to talk us through it’, etc).
Almost there, but you should know, this was not the end of my woes on reading this list of demands. I read it three times. All I could think about was how the company needs to reflect on how much they need a great team member and, all of a sudden that bloody Ed Sheeran song ‘You need me man, I don’t need you’ intruded into my thoughts and now I can’t get rid of it.
Above all, I can never forgive them for this earworm. It’s worse than thinking about that bloody pineapple.
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