Websites don’t return phone calls, either

A followup to Steve Hulett’s post from yesterday.

I once got a call from a member -- let's call her Alice Smith -- who said she was having trouble getting a response from a studio to which she had applied several times. I called the studio, and the dialogue was as follows:

Receptionist: “Human resources, may I help you?”

Me: “I’m Jeff Massie from the Animation Guild, could I speak to [name of person in charge]?”

Receptionist: “And what is this in reference to?”

Me: “I’m calling about Alice Smith.”

Whereupon the receptionist burst into tears.

Alice, it seems, was considered a border-line harasser by studio recruiters.

This happened long enough ago that the studio in question no longer exists. And at many studios, neither does the hiring system that allowed Alice to actually speak to someone on the phone. Nowadays, to apply for a job at many if not most larger studios, you go to a website and/or send an e-mail to a generic address. If employers are to be believed, a large reason for the necessity of this is the sort of applicant abuse that may have occurred in this situation. Websites don’t cry.

The thing is, I don’t really believe this. There aren’t that many applicants behaving that badly. I think most people are smart enough to know that making the receptionist burst into tears at the sound of your name is not a good job application strategy.

A depersonalized application process isn’t necessary to protect management from the raging mobs with torches and portfolios. The now-common ways of doing things in the world of artist recruitment have resulted from what Steve wrote about yesterday -- the triumph of lowered demand over high supply in the labor marketplace. Too many applicants, not enough jobs ... it’s easier (and cheaper) to set up a website and a process to prioritize insulating the employer from the unemployed, rather than pay someone to communicate to potential employees.

I’ve had h.r. reps try to convince me it’s “fairer” to require everyone to apply through the same system, rather than allow veterans to talk to decision-makers they may have worked with in the past. That’s also been the justification for requiring every applicant to take a test, whether he’s Bill Tytla or someone who can’t spell the word annymation. (I’ve been told that at least one employer rep tried to claim that it was the union that required everyone to take a test. Nuh-uh.)

It is worth noting that Article 19 of the contract (pages 45-46) gives employers wide latitude as to whom they hire and how they hire them. We have never been a “roster union”, and I have never believed that a roster would solve more problems for the membership than it would create. The Guild has insisted on an ongoing dialogue with employers regarding abuses of application and testing processes. We haven’t given up on this issue; as always we need support from the membership to give us the leverage in pursuing solutions that stick.

I have been generalizing here about employer abuses; a number of our employers, large and small, actually have artist recruitment people on the inside who are willing to talk to job applicants on the outside. And much of the anger and bitterness Steve and I hear from members comes from the general frustration of finding work in hard times, even at studios that treat all job applicants fairly.

Of course, the point of having an employment application process is to insure that the best applicants are discovered ... as opposed to, let’s say, the ones who are merely willing to work for less.

Isn’t it?