By Jason Buss.

After writing on the candidate experience, I recently caught up with a few tweeps, including @CarolineBoegel, @robpitingolo, @arwilliams, and several other job seekers to get additional insights on what their experience has been from a candidates viewpoint.

5 trends that quickly emerged included:

• Applying for a job on-line is cumbersome, time consuming and candidates leave irritated.  Yes, still after years of talking about it, the number one issue raised was still “the black hole of HR”.

• A majority polled start on google or indeed (this should come as no surprise), and spend most of their time on a companies career site.  Other tools referenced for job searching and networking were LinkedIn and facebook.

• Job descriptions and postings online can be vague, not represent the role completely, and some are poorly written.

• Resume submission tools on corporate career sites can be very frustrating.

• With all of the evolving tools and technology corporate career sites still lack in creating an engaging, and meaningful experience.  It’s still one-way.

This example is so appalling, I had to include it word-for-word:  I actually applied for one job online that literally took me through a two hour application on their website. They asked me to upload my resume and a cover letter, and then took me through a complex application in which they asked me the same questions that my resume already covered, such as my education and intership experiences. It was one of those situations that I was expecting to spend 20 minutes filling the form out, but once I was already one hour in to the application, there was no way I was going to quit and start over some other time, but I had no idea how long it was going to take me to finally finish it. And that company has yet to follow up with me at all.

It appears little has changed as all 5 of these trends have been talked about for years in the recruiting industry.   While there is no silver bullet, here are some additional links and resources for Recruiters to combat these issues:

• Top 5 List for Deploying an Effective Online Career Center
• Seriously? This a Candidate’s On-line Experience in a Web 2.0 World?
• Effective Corporate Career Sites & Measuring Results

We clearly have opportunities with creating an experience that is both engaging and mutually beneficial.  What other issues are you seeing with the overall candidate experience?