Completing job application forms is often a task that takes far longer than we would like.
After you have populated your name and address, application form questions become more complex.
While many questions will simply be asking about your experience or why you are suitable for a role, their subjectivity can leave you second-guessing yourself and uncertain about how to pitch your answers.
Yet pitching them well helps you land a chance at the next stage of the hiring process.
Therefore, as an employer, it is essential to know how to create a good job application form to make the process as easy as possible for people.
Doing so means you can be sure you attract some of the top talent, who will be quickly put off applying for a role by a poorly designed application form.
Great candidates have the luxury of not needing to apply for every vacant position within their industry, so it's crucial that your job application form is one that they want to complete.
Therefore, you should ensure the type of job application form you choose is the right one for your and your applicants’ needs.
Using a free job application form can be just one type of form that could suit your purposes, though there are others.
Here, we explore the wonderful world of job application forms so that you have the best information possible to choose the right one for you.
What Is an Application Form for a Job?
Let’s start with the basics, so we all begin from the same place.
An application form for a job is an information-gathering document that applicants complete with the details you request.
Those details can vary from primary personal data, like name, age (if your country’s law allows), and address, and go on to ask about a person’s job experience before developing into qualitative questions regarding why applicants believe they are suitable for a role and why they want to work for a company.
Crucially, job application forms are a method for companies to gather details from all their applicants in a format that works for them.
Whereas a resume and cover letter will likely include a great deal of the information the form asks for, outlining questions in a structured form makes it easier for the recruiting company to draw out the exact information they want from all applicants.
As a result, they can make the recruitment process smoother and quicker.
Also, since the resume screening is the most time-consuming part of recruiting and the question 'does a resume have to be one page' is a common inquiry among job seekers, providing clear guidelines on resume writing can significantly streamline the evaluation process.
Lastly, considering the increasing importance of application tracking systems (ATS) in the recruitment process, it's crucial for applicants to ensure their resume is ATS-friendly.
This not only streamlines the reviewing process for employers but also increases the visibility of a candidate's resume.
If you're uncertain about how to format your resume for an ATS, use the ATS friendly resume templates that are designed to improve your chances in this digital screening phase.
How Many Types of Job Application Forms Are There?
Mainly, there are two types of job application forms.
There will be one that a company designs specifically for a vacant role that they have.
When individuals complete this and submit it to the hiring firm, they use a ‘solicited’ or requested job application form.
It means that companies are asking for individuals to approach them regarding a vacant job.
While a solicited job application form can mean applicants are applying for a vacant role, it also means that those applicants will likely be competing against many other people.
As a result, companies must know how to create applications that extract all the information they need to know about a person from the outset.
In doing so, they improve their chances of hiring someone suitable for the role.
The other type of job application form, on the flip side, is an unsolicited one.
These can still be a good idea for companies to include on their website or careers pages.
The reason is that, while you will likely receive fewer of them, they can still ensure you get all the information you need from potential employees.
Therefore, the quality of the data you collect is better and means that you do not have to field emails asking about any job prospects at your firm.
In the long run, having such a form can reap many advantages.
Not only do you have a better pool of individuals who would like to work for your firm in the future, but you are also ensuring again that your data quality is high.
Plus, you do not have to waste as much time reading through emails that essentially all say the same thing in many different ways.
A structured form means you can extract data far more quickly.
Job Application Form Types
The types of job application forms that a company uses can improve their hiring process, particularly if those application forms are optimized to gather more reliable and high-quality data.
It means that you extract the most helpful information out of candidates and ensure that you only ever take the most suitable applicants to the next stage of your hiring process.
Incorporating methods of pre-screening candidates into the application process can significantly enhance the efficiency of identifying the most suitable applicants, ensuring a smoother transition to the next stages of hiring.
Additionally, it improves the experience those applicants have with you too, which is an essential element that's becoming more important in a time where workers want more from their employer than just a paycheck.
They want an employer that fulfills other needs so that they can feel motivated and proud to work for a firm.
Ensuring that the job application process is as smooth and efficient as possible is just one way to do that and can mean that applicants have a positive experience interacting with a company right from the start.
