I was just reading a job posting for an entry level web designer job near Boston (it caught my eye as it had a rather novel job title.) I was actually checking to see if they had posted some of the job openings at our company yet. Apparently not.
Anyway…
It was a very long read, longer than the usual job posting on this site, but somewhere in the middle of the job requirements list was this:
• Willingness to read this entire job description and follow the instructions at the end.
The instructions at the end told the applicant to do a certain thing to the text in their cover letter and if it wasn’t there, the application would be binned.
It made me literally laugh out loud!
That’s an awfully clever way of weeding out applicants who are less than serious, have a short attention span or tend to skip over details. I wonder what percentage will fail that little test.
This reminds me of how Van Halen had a clause in their concert rider that required promoters to provide them with M&M’s backstage where all the brown ones had been picked out.
That was due to the fact that, at the time, Van Halen was doing basically the biggest productions in the world and needed the venues to be up to snuff to accommodate them.
If they rolled up to a venue and found brown M&M’s in their backstage area, it would mean the venue owners hadn’t properly read the contract. This would then be a reason for them to check all the safety requirements, etc.
Allegedly, this little mechanism caused them to cancel a few shows where the venue would not have been able to deal with the weight of the stage, which could have had serious consequences. Pretty smart move overall.
