Many of the bigger employers find it a labour saving way of screening out i.e. rejecting applicants without even looking at their CV or talking with graduate. Therefore it's vital to give yourself every chance of getting past this hurdle! Not all, but an increasingly large number of graduate employers use the online application process to automatically screen out candidates. It allows the employers to concentrate their time on the a smaller number of potentially suitable candidates.

Online application systems allow employers to include filters to reject applicants. Examples could be grade point average or how you rate your leadership skills compared to your peers. The filter could be set to reject applicants with a pass grade or less than above average leadership skills. So as you complete an online application, think about what the employer may be looking for. While you don't want to be misleading, you need to give yourself every chance of success.

Doing a trial run for an online application

There are stories of graduates who have completed an online application using a dummy email and details - to see if they would pass the online screening.

I have also been told of graduates who have answered positively throughout, worked with friends to complete testing and then in initial face to face interviews with the organisation's HR staff, simply gave made up examples to the behavioural based questions. By the time the graduate met with the Partner (Big 4 accounting firm in this case), the Partner was won over by the grdauate's interpersonal skills .... and got the job.

Online Testing

Online testing normally covers verbal and numerical reasoning although it can be more extensive. The providers of these tests use a random distribution of questions so that no two tests should be the same. That may be true for a particular question but the underlying structure will be similar. So practicing tests - either live through another employer's online application system or through samples based on the internet could be useful.

The point of this is that where employers use online systems to screen out candidates, graduates should ensure they are fully prepared to do their best.

A word of warning.

Some employers ask short-listed candidates to do another version of testing when they come in for face to face interviews. If you don't perform at the same level, you go no further in the recruitment process, no matter how good you were in the interview.