MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

At the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Job Center, patrons can seek help in writing and formatting resumes and applying for jobs online. I volunteer with the Job Center at the library’s central branch in Baltimore, MD. Fundamental computer skills such as how to copy-and-paste are often absent among Job Center users, many of whom lack home computers. However, prior to the advent of online applications, most patrons were gainfully employed for years or decades, suggesting that online applications are excluding qualified applicants. Popular media often discuss unemployment in terms of a “skills gap”; if there is such a gap, then inaccessible job applications play a role in creating it, especially for jobs that do not require a college degree.

My paper investigates the many barriers that applicants face in applying for jobs online. I am particularly concerned with the ways in which job application websites are designed to be inaccessible. These websites tend to feature confusing verbiage, lengthy and repetitive questionnaires, and arbitrary time limits that can result in applicants’ data being lost. Such design choices work to exclude a variety of applicants, including people with mental and physical disabilities. This sort of discrimination also intersects with issues of race and class, as I have observed firsthand in Baltimore.

My aim, then, is to examine the process of applying for jobs as experienced by these marginalized groups. To begin, I consider in-depth the usability issues endemic in online job applications, drawing on research into universal usability as well as Job Center anecdotes. Then, I situate this investigation among media portrayals of (un)employment. Specifically, I hope to complicate popular notions of a “skills gap” in unemployed Americans by showing that the skill set required to apply for a job online often differs radically from the skills entailed by the job itself.