Value Paper Application: Fill & Download for Free

Taking the question at face value: One scours the ads in Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education and submits the requested application materials.Paper applications are reviewed by a search committee, often with the help of professional search consultants. Typically, about 8 semi-finalists are invited to an airport hotel for confidential 90min interviews. Perhaps half will be invited to campus for two-day interviews. At a public institution this last stage is public, while at a private institution it may be confidential. One person receives an offer.Prior experience as a faculty member and as a department chair or associate dean at a comparable institution is important. At institutions that offer tenure, a dean needs the qualifications required of a tenured full professor (since they will have a simultaneous faculty appointment).

You haven’t specified which position you’re looking for, but I can provide some general insights. I interviewed at a Trader Joe’s in 2007, and was brought on as a Crew Member who occasionally ran the cooking demonstration booth.The application and hiring process was very straightforward. After completing a paper application, I was invited to sit down with a store manager for an in-person interview. I received an offer on the spot and began work the following week.Your education, skills, and language abilities need not be exceptional; as long as you meet the requirements for a retail position (fluency in the language most commonly used in the store, and the ability to lift ~20 pounds to stock shelves), you will not be dismissed on those grounds. Trader Joe’s wants to make sure that you fit in with their culture.On their application, they ask “Do you possess a sense of adventure? Do you like to make people smile? Do you like to eat?” These are the characteristics of the ideal employee. Trader Joe’s wants to make sure that every customer feels valued, and they want your excitement about their products to inspire the customers you meet to make adventurous choices in the store.

I do a lot of HR consulting and here is the dirty secret no one talks about:Help Wanted signs are not meant for recruiting new workers but to terrorize the existing workers.Those signs exist in most places to tell workers they are not valued and can easily be replaced. It is even worse now that most places quit taking paper applications, because you never know how many applications are coming in.Secondly when you see those signs in a franchise/corporate business with multiple location what is not said is they are often not hiring for that location. Last summer I was cash light, out of work in Carson City, Nevada and needed a job fast. I just needed enough to keep a roof over my head until I started a new job. I submitted 107 applications to companies advertising in for jobs in Carson City for everything from fast food to retail to hotel management to my degree & certificate qualified jobs. I followed up with every single one of them and on that follow up I managed to talk to 77 people and of those people 68 were not for local jobs and of those 9 which I was more than qualified for none of them wanted to guarantee a minimum number of hours or salary even though they were all listed as full time jobs. Furthermore, none of them wanted to give me a consistent schedule, but instead said that they might be able to do that in 12 to 16 weeks at their discretion.That is the reality of Help Wanted signs.