Bob

Yes, definitely depends on the company. I know from experience that if someone knew someone and recommended them for a position, HR sets a filter to bin anyone that didn't have that name and bingo, they past the initial filter.

Not for top positions, but not junior ones either.

PeterFrank

Good tip on the addresses.

username.exe

Let's be honest, 99% of HR companies wouldn't know what to do with your foreign certifications anyway.

I was offered a job, accepted, completed reams of paperwork and started the position.
After about a week, my boss called me and told me we'd missed a step with HR. I needed to send them my degree immediately, which of course I did.

By the end of the day we had the all-clear to continue. Bearing in mind half the certificate was in Welsh, and the UK is 8 hours ahead... what kind of checks do you think they actually performed? Probably just filed it away, ticked a box everyone got on with their day.

Bob

Reminds me of where the missed worked, where HR offered someone a job, he started, then 3 months in they did the background check and wanted to fire him because they couldn't verify one of the positions on the resume.

That position being a self employed consultant and they couldn't speak to him because the number was his mobile and he isn't allowed his mobile at work and they never left a message

AdobePinon

Where I work, you can't get past HR either. But, if someone there told you, or you found the small print buried several pages down on the web site, you'd find out that the résumé gets filed and the cover letter gets read. I.e., at my place you put everything in the letter, which can be any format you like.

kins

I didn't find the web forms side of things too difficult - I just put the nearest equivalent to whatever my grades actually were. All they really wanted to see generally was a degree plus relevant experience.

I did find that everyone wanted a degree. And for a lot of internet jobs they now want to see an IT degree.

When they were checking my references they were more interested in old US references rather than more recent UK references. To be fair I was applying for a financial services company and they had to check references very carefully.

I've since been headhunted via LinkedIn for a new job, so I would say it's definitely worth being on there and making your profile look as relevant and useful as possible.

Also worth getting onto boards, doing volunteer work, etc.

off_again

Shouldnt be a problem and from my limited experience, HR departments will cover this off and handle it for you. I have been involved in a few recruitment processes and HR will handle references, qualifications and background checks etc.... but this might be specific to large CA companies!

And in my market, you could be a green alien from the planet Zarg, if you have experience, you will get the job. The only thing that would prevent this would be an inability to verify your I-9!

Pulaski

It sound like you have never had to deal with a highly restrictive web interface, which is very common these days. You can only input "recognized" qualifications, US addresses, etc. Never mind the illegal questions about your citizenship/residence/ visa status, which you must answer before you can proceed to the next section of the application.

The problem becomes one of getting through the gateway, past HR and through to someone who is actually interested in hiring you.

sir_eccles

Sometimes it takes several rounds of recruiter/HR interviews before you actually get to talk to the person who knows what your job is about.

I'm currently in process with a company, nervously waiting to see if I have made it to the FOURTH round!

Pulaski

Agreed, but the person I replied to seemed to fail to grasp the problem of getting your foot in the door.

HR most certainly does not "... cover this off and handle it for you. ..." In many companies, HR's job is apparently to reduce the pool of applicants to a managable number by whatever crude and arbitrary, though not "discriminatory", methods are necessary. If some good candidates are accidentally excluded then they're just unfortunate collateral damage

sir_eccles

Oh indeed! I've lost count what my current ratio of applications to actual interview is. Probably hundreds to one.

kodokan

Yes, hubby had the same last year. I think he had an application/ interview hit rate of about 75/1. (Some were unemployment filing filler apps, but they were mostly plausible ones as it's otherwise too painful to spend 2-3 hours filling in the stupid forms, and he was looking nationally so there were a reasonable number of jobs available.) There were a couple that were essentially copies of his resume, they were SUCH a close match for him - we assume they were ghost postings for a role that'd already been mentally filled internally, which is a soul-destroying time suck.

Yet the few times he DID make it through to a person, he was clearly what they wanted as every time he would get resoundingly positive feedback, and rapidly progress through HR screening to hiring manager to fly-in interview. So whatever algorithm the companies were running, it must've been designed to filter down to an acceptable number of Identikit candidates rather than find the best fit. Kind of a 'no one ever got fired for buying IBM' mentality.

It's that sort of experience that makes me concerned about anyone advising young people that degrees are becoming meaningless and not to bother, and that they can just hustle their way into a job through their networking skills and go-getting attitude. I bet large sums of money that NONE of those people have actually tried applying for jobs in recent years, else they'd have concluded like I have that 'undergraduate degree' is the first, quickest, easiest 'oh god, let's get these hundreds down to a manageable number' filter being applied for almost any decent job nowadays. And it seems to be getting worse; hubby is darn lucky that by a sheer fluke - staying a student to avoid a recession - he did a MEng degree 20 years ago when it was uncommon to do so, else he'd have been ruled out of even applying for many of the jobs he was considering.

markcst

I've already got companies asking to talk to me about jobs from my LinkedIn. All genuine first person recruiters, not agencies. I have to educate them about visas and why I can't take the job unfortunately.