Counter productive? 1

Why do people shoot themselves in the foot? Or this could be the next installment of "Where is the sechel (common sense)?"

In college I hated to write tests in those little blue books. I wondered how in the world a professor had the eyes and the energy to read handwriting. My handwriting was not great. No matter how hard I try, I can not write long hand for very much time. I even got permission one time to bring a portable typewriter to a test. (It was before the days of personal computers.)

As a professor now, I would not accept anything that was not typed with the help of a word processing program and spell check.

So -- Tell me why a company has a job application on line that one can not fill in on the screen. That company has a PDF file with the application on their website that one must download, print, and fill in by hand. To set up a PDF file that one can fill in is just a change in a setting. There is no extra work in the set up. The company could save the applicant and the people reviewing the application lots of time. Also this could be a legal issue. What if someone has a disability and can not write this kind of application? The disability could be a sore thumb that has nothing to do with job performance.

Then there is application that is entirely on line. An applicant fills in a form on line that gets parsed and digested, but does not allow the applicant to show his/her essence.

Sehel seems to dictate that process should be designed to waste as little time as possible and achieve maximum results.