Recruiter blasts ‘entitled’ Aussie workers as ads ‘get 800 applicants’: ‘Not hard’

An Aussie recruitment expert has hit out at “entitled” jobseekers who are failing to read basic instructions when applying for jobs. She said this was a major reason many applications ended up getting lost and could ultimately cost people the job.

Tammie Christofis Ballis, a recruiter and career coach at Realistic Careers, said she was recently recruiting for a job and received 200 applications in 24 hours. She said the job description specifically asked for resumes to be submitted in a Word format but the vast majority of jobseekers did not do this.

“It’s really not that hard to read one instruction. That’s why I say have one resume, have a Word format style resume. Have two versions, one in PDF if you’re not sure,” Ballis told Yahoo Finance.

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Ballis said this made her job harder because she had to go back to applicants and ask them to change their resume format, plus it showed the applicant had poor attention to detail.

“People say that they are hard-working, they’ve got excellent communication, high attention to detail but then they are not reading the job ads so they are contradicting themselves on their own resume,” she said.

Ballis explained recruiters asked for Word-formatted resumes so they could easily remove the applicant’s personal information, aside from their name, and put their resume on their recruitment company’s letterhead with its contact details.

Ballis said she had received backlash from applicants when she asked them to resubmit their resumes.

“Even though I explain it, people have an ego problem, people are entitled,” she told Yahoo Finance.

“People get annoyed and they go and apply for other jobs and they wonder why they’re unsuccessful because they’re not listening to one simple instruction.

“It’s entitlement. If you want a job, you go out of your way to get that job especially in a tough job market.”

Do you have a story to share? Contact tamika.seeto@yahooinc.com

Unemployment rate ticks up

Australia’s unemployment rate increased to 4.2 per cent in July and is expected to continue to drift upwards to 4.5 per cent into 2025.

Competition for jobs is fierce at the moment, with SEEK finding there were about 175 applications per job posted on its website, up from 50 per job in July 2022.

Ballis said the amount of applicants she was seeing for jobs was “unheard of”, noting one job had received 800 applicants while another customer service role had gotten 350 applicants in two days.

With the job market so tight, Ballis suggested people who were “too entitled” to listen to recruiters should open their own business instead because they clearly “don’t like being told what to do”.

“Because if you’re not going to listen to the recruiter, you’re not going to listen to your boss and why should I put you forward if you’re not going to listen to your boss,” she said.

‘Waste of space’: Biggest resume mistakes

Ballis said there were some common mistakes she was seeing jobseekers make.

Firstly, she advised people not to include a soft skills section or an objective statement on their resume.

“Don’t include that. Your experience showcases your soft skills. It’s a waste of space, it’s not the 90s anymore,” she said.

“People don’t want to see your written communication skills. It’s assumed that people have basic computer literacy. The profile statement again, same thing.”

She also recommended people don't include their references on their resume, except if they are applying for a government role.

“People will have off-the-record conversations with references before you’ve even interviewed for a job. That’s very dangerous,” she said.

“A lot of the time, people don’t tell their referees that they put them down as a reference check and they don’t expect it. So it’s just bad.”

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