[drauh]

FWIW, I have, in the past, applied for jobs at colleges and other research institutions which all have their own resume input system. All different from each other, of course, so it takes 30--45 minutes to completely fill one in. Yes, they have a semi-smart parser that will take a .DOC or a .PDF and pull out the relevant info, but they are more often wrong than right, so it's easier to just manually key in every field right off.

So, count me as a non-fan of these web-based systems.

With such a system, one may expect a quick response, but most of my applications went into a no-reply black hole, except for the submission confirmation provided by the form.

The most annoying one was a phone call from one institution, that I received the first day I started work at a different institution, 6 months after the application was submitted.

On the other side, most of the private sector jobs I have applied to have been very efficient at responding: either a quick rejection after a few days, or moving ahead in the process.

[peteboyd]

Good point. I think we were going to keep it super simple.

Name, Email, Question 1 - Cover Letter, Question 2 - Some question pertaining the job, and PDF attachment (only PDFs - we hate getting Word docs and other file attachments)

This way we could automate our subject line, track the emails, and the two questions would hopefully weed out some lower end applications.

We may need a CAPTCHA too, to keep out spam.

[Edited for commas as the list did not format correctly]

[mcguire]

"The most annoying one was a phone call from one institution, that I received [...] 6 months after the application was submitted."

Was that institution the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, by any chance? (Or possibly another federal entity?) I've heard that story and have reason to believe it several times.