The sitter/neighbor called while I was out shopping for the Christmas Project Family this afternoon; she was concerned because her husband was having difficulty with completing some on-line application forms.

I ran over there in a flash, thinking this would be a quick fix; hubby would handle dinner while I was out.

Two and a half hours later, I returned home.

Sheesh.  This guy has a steep learning curve.  He’s never been unemployed in his adult life and he’s not exactly computer literate.  Working for more than 25 years in retail management doesn’t exactly get one to a point in their life where they are highly comfortable with computing -- unless they work in computer retail. 

Think about it the next time you purchase anything in a store; look at the technology they use.  Most major chain stores have a POS (not piece of sh*t, silly; point of sale) terminal which feeds its sales information to the home office.  Management might get printed reports or emailed reports on sales activity, but they don’t often have to get to a PC and write queries or even pull canned reports. 

He didn’t even have a resume, has never had one.  I’d cautioned him yesterday that he’d need one before applying on line at most job search or company websites; based on our interaction today, I’d say he really didn’t understand why.  He’d started to apply on line for a local position and had some difficulty because the site kept hanging and losing his data.  Yeah, bingo; the very reason one needs a resume from which one can cut-and-paste into a form repeatedly…

So I whipped up both a baseline resume and cover letter, extremely vanilla content, along with text-only-formatting-free versions of the same for scanning and for cut-and-paste applications.  I showed him how to do a cut-and-paste into the first application and submitted it, then showed him how to do the same with a much more detailed on-line application (sweet Jeebus, Home Depot’s management job application form is ungodly long!!!). 

There were a couple of times I had to warn him to look the other way while I typed up his resume and cover letter or he’d get confused; he agreed that he couldn’t keep up with the formatting I was doing. (Learned the hard way, under the gun, on the job, under pressure; one can learn an awful lot with an antsy lawyer breathing down your neck demanding a contract right now.)

As I left he was still trying to finish navigating through the Home Depot site.  Poor guy.  Two and a half hours and only one completed and one partial job application to show for it.

When I feel sorry for myself I’ll have to think of this guy; it could be a lot worse, I could have been an unemployed computer illiterate.  It’s damned tough to be one in this age of Monster.com and HotJobs.com.

12:49:57 AM    comment []