Unemployment

[thealtruist]

No wonder everyone's unemployed. Aldi have refused me a job interview for not meeting the criteria despite scoring 98% on the assessment and have years experience working in retail and management. All the job was sitting behind a till scanning things through. Fuck me! What is the criteria? A degree in neurosurgery?!

[Peter]

The probably see you as over qualified, someone who will take the job out of desperation, then move on in a few weeks/or months to something better, leaving them to go through the whole recruitment process again.

They'll see it as better for them to fill the position with someone who is likely to stay around for a while, mainly because they don't have many options for alternate careers.

[Gentleman]

Or of course they had a load of applicants and are able to choose exactly what they want.

[thealtruist]

But what do they want? I'm hardworking, reliable, conscientious, committed, experienced. If that doesn't go some way to giving them what they want them I'm stumped.

[David Johnson]

I can understand that this is deeply frustrating.

I suspect Peter was correct when he said that they may have regarded you as over qualified. You mentioned that you had experience in management. This could well have been a no-no for them if you had it on your CV.

Maybe they want someone very young (the minimum wage is less for 18-20 year olds) and has some experience of being on the till.

Given the case of Costa Coffee that had 1700 applications for 8, close to minimum wage, jobs in Nottingham, I think it was, it is fair to assume that Aldi were inundated with applications.

In that situation in order to quickly reduce the pile of applicants, firms have standard yes/no type stuff.

Not worked on a till before No
Over 21 No
Had management exp. No etc etc.

[jbomz3]

Any business looking at recruiting now have a vast "pool" to choose from . The headline figures DJ mentions at the Nottingham coffee shop show just how many applicants there are per vacancy , out of the 8 jobs only 3 were full time and 6 were minimum wage , the "assistant/trainee managers" position was applied for by 485 people iirc ? .
Having been unemployed myself for the last 3 months (i've only ever done the one job for the last 25 years) the jobs I apply for I bet I get 1 or maybe 2 replies out of every 10 applications .
Cheers J .

[spider]

The cynic in me thinks perhaps they want to keep a few vacancies that they can fill with IDS Work-fare candidates - you know where they get benefit claimants to work for them for free under the banner of "providing work experience" for some poor sap.

Taxpayers money subsidising multi-nationals again.

[Dave Wells]

I had exactly the same 3 times (which equals 18 months as they ban you from applying again) from ASDA for a delivery job ! I gave up trying.

[max_tranmere]

To quote Michael Douglas's character in 'Falling Down', when his life was disintegrating with him (among other things going wrong in his life) having lost his job: "I was over-educated and under-qualified, or was it the other way around..." Sadly life goes like this sometimes.