The JobCraftly Blog — practical writing about finding work

Finding jobs14 September 202617 min read

Should you disclose a disability on a job application? What it costs, and when it helps

In every experiment that measured it, a disability disclosed in an application drew fewer employer responses, from about a quarter fewer on the broadest measure in the United States to half the interview invitations in Norway and Flanders, so the question worth asking is not whether to disclose but which of the three things a form asks is worth answering, because the law restricts one, one buys nothing, and one can come with an interview.

AI and your job search13 September 202614 min read
What to expect from an AI job interview, and what a 70,000-applicant trial found
In the one large randomised test so far, an AI voice agent worked through the employer's own interview guide over the phone, a human recruiter read the transcript and decided, and the applicants assigned to the software were offered the job slightly more often than the ones assigned to a recruiter, which says less about AI than about how much of a first-round interview was already a checklist.
Finding jobs10 September 202614 min read
When is the best time of year to look for a job? The surge is mostly in the applicants
The months when more jobs appear are real, the spring and September peaks belong mostly to building sites, restaurants, shops and schools while office work keeps a calendar of its own, and the surge most job seekers actually feel is other job seekers — in January searches on Indeed rose by up to a third while postings did not move, and by the official count there are roughly a quarter to a third more unemployed people per opening in January and February than in April or October.
Interviews6 September 202611 min read
Do you have to tell an employer your current salary, and what answering costs you
The question about what you earn arrives before the offer because that is when the answer is worth most to the employer, and the experiments that took the number away, or measured what silence does, have put a price on both sides of your decision — without it employers screened more people and conceded better bargains, and with it a refusal cost about 7.5 per cent of the offer while a high number cost callbacks.
Job-search organisation1 September 202610 min read
How many jobs should you apply to, and what changes when you apply to more
The number of applications you send is the one part of a job search you fully control, which is probably why every piece of advice reaches for it, but the studies that have measured it keep finding that the weekly count does not identify whose search ends soonest, and in the one randomised trial that raised the number of job interviews people were invited to, the number of applications they sent did not move at all.
Finding jobs31 August 202610 min read
What "we'll keep your CV on file" actually means
In the United States an employer covered by Title VII has to preserve your rejected application for a year whether or not anyone ever intends to look at it again, while UK guidance points the other way and says keeping it for a future vacancy is only allowed if you have been told what that purpose is, with a storage period and your rights, before they start using your details for it — so the same sentence describes a filing obligation in one country and a conditional promise in another, and in neither case is it a plan to call you.
Remote and hybrid29 August 202610 min read
Do remote workers get promoted less, and what changes when everyone is remote
A randomised trial at a Chinese travel firm found that four days a week at home cut promotion rates by about half once performance was held constant, the same firm's later trial of two days a week found no evidence of a promotion difference over the following two years, and a US call-centre study found that when an entire workforce went remote the gap between remote and on-site hires closed the wrong way, with the office group's promotion rate falling to meet the other.
Interviews28 August 202610 min read
How to negotiate a job offer, and how to tell whether there is anything to negotiate
A representative survey of US workers found about a third had bargained over pay at all, and a randomised field experiment found that one sentence saying the wage was negotiable made applicants roughly two and a half times more likely to ask, which makes the preparation that pays not a script but working out which of the two processes you are in.
Finding jobs23 August 202613 min read
Why companies post jobs they don't intend to fill, and what you can check
European law has defined a vacancy since 2008 as two separate facts, an employer taking active steps and an employer intending to fill the post, and the advert in front of you is one enumerated active step, which is why its existence can prove neither that the employer is still recruiting nor that anybody means to fill the job.
Job descriptions21 August 202611 min read
Should you apply for a job when you don't meet all the requirements?
The degree and the years of experience an advert asks for rise and fall with the number of people looking for work, one small part of the list can be enforced by a yes or no question you have not seen yet, and the advert gives you no way to tell them apart.
Finding jobs18 August 202611 min read
Do employee referrals help you get a job, and by how much
At the one employer that let researchers count, referrals were six per cent of the applications and twenty-nine per cent of the hires, and when a network experiment added connections, the ones that produced the most job moves were not the closest.
Résumés17 August 20268 min read
How to explain a gap in your CV, and what it costs not to
The usual advice is to draw as little attention to a gap as possible, and the experiment that tested that choice directly found the silence was the expensive part.
AI and your job search16 August 20269 min read
The software screened you out. Here is what you can actually ask.
The explanation right you are being pointed at depends on rules that do not apply to hiring until December 2027. The one that already works is eight years older.
Remote and hybrid15 August 202611 min read
The advert says hybrid. That is not yet a term of your contract.
Where you work is a term of your employment, and in Great Britain the law does not guarantee you see it in writing until the day you start.
Career change14 August 202610 min read
The jobs closest to yours have already been worked out
The advice to lead with your transferable skills never names the jobs they lead to, and for a large part of the working world somebody has already published that list.
Interviews13 August 202610 min read
The interview that follows a script, and the one that does not
Two quite different exercises go by the name interview, the research separates them by a wide margin, and how much of the more useful one you are sitting in is visible from your side of the table.
AI and your job search12 August 20268 min read
Can an employer tell you used AI on your application?
In the study that tested this most carefully, the tools built to spot machine-written text mostly spotted people writing plainly in a second language — and the employers who have published a policy are asking a question no detector could answer anyway.
Job-search organisation11 August 20269 min read
How long a job search takes, and why the statistics cannot tell you
The figure everyone quotes, that a job search takes about six months, is a mean pulled upward by a long tail, and the agency that publishes it says plainly that it does not measure how long finding work takes.
Job descriptions11 August 20269 min read
When an employer has to tell you the pay, and when you have to ask
A European directive gave applicants the right to be told what a job pays before they negotiate. Two months past its deadline, whether that has reached you depends on which country's law governs the role, which leaves the old skill of asking well still worth having.
Finding jobs10 August 20267 min read
What actually happens to your CV after you press apply
The idea that a robot silently bins most applications is the most repeated claim in job hunting, and it is largely wrong. What the software does instead is narrower, stranger, and more useful to know about.