Weeding out applicants

Been following the Virginia-Pilot thread on the jobs board.
Does anyone else think their application system might make it more difficult to get a job? I realize it makes life easier for HR to sort through applicants, but it seems like some very good clips might never see the light of day if this becomes widespread.
It's so easy to eliminate potential employees this way. Some might live too far away. Others might work at small papers. It all seems disingenuous.

 

Well, they're being very specific on what they want.

From the description of the position, it's not a gig where you sit in the office, take HS basketball gamers, and churn out a feature or two a week. You have to go out and dig stuff up.

Their filtering process may knock out a few diamonds in the rough, but this doesn't sound like a job they want to involve a lot of OTJT. You're going to have to hit the ground running.

Now the V-P is a pretty good-sized paper, with from all reports, a pretty good reputation. If they just threw open the doors and announced, "taking applications," they'd probably get thousands.

 

I agree. That's why I think they should be looking at clips.

 

What I'm thinking is the process might be knocking out too many "diamonds in the rough."
Sorry for the extra post.

 

Post-padding is dealt with very severely around here. : :

 

When I was an ME, I wish I had an HR department to do the sifting for me. No kidding, I went through more than 1,500 applications for about 20 positions (after the first job received 105 applications, I decided to keep score). That's a lot of envelope-opening, a lot of sorting, and a whole lot of "I'm sorry, but your experience does not meet the requirements of the position" e-mails and letters (yes, I responded to everyone; isn't that how it's supposed to work?). I understand that after I left, the publisher's secretary started doing that kind of work for the editor. Lucky.

And, as has already been said here, the Pilot won't be taking a diamond in the rough. They want a diamond. Period. If you're fully qualified for the job, HR will see that, and your stuff will be seen where it matters.

 

Perhaps that's how it's supposed to work, but when you're doing practically everything at a small shop including having to put out a paper, you don't have time to go through every single application and write those letters and e-mails.

You also don't have time to go through phone calls (especially when you're on deadline). AND it's really off-putting when someone calls to schedule an interview and you have no intentions of interviewing that person based on their qualifications.