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McDonald's Is Now Accepting Snapchats As Job Applications (thenextweb.com) 155

Posted by BeauHD from the here-today-gone-tomorrow dept.
McDonald's Australian subsidiary is now accepting job applications via Snapchat. Specifically, McDonald's wants potential candidates to send the company a 10-second video using a filter that shows them wearing a McDonald's uniform. Matthew Hughes reports via The Next Web: The job applications, which McDonalds calls "Snaplications" (I vomited a little), will be the first step in the recruitment process. The company will then review the submissions, pick out the favorites, and send digital applications to those selected. Speaking to Australian news website news.com.au, McDonald's Australia COO Shaun Ruming said the company is looking for applicants with a "bubbly personality." He also added that he'd "learned a lot about Snapchat recently from my 14-year-old daughter."
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McDonald's Is Now Accepting Snapchats As Job Applications More

McDonald's Is Now Accepting Snapchats As Job Applications

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  • What a coincidence! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    His 14 year old daughter learned a lot from SnapChat. >:)

  • That's what you do (Score:3)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Monday April 10, 2017 @09:00PM (#54211125)
    I suppose that's what you have to do to hire people that don't even know how to fill out an application.

    • Years ago a McDonalds manager conducted an interview a couple tables away as I ate a late lunch. Have you ever worked before? No. Do you have the two items for the I-9 form? No. Do you know your social security number? No. Okay, well get those things and come back.

      Then an assistant manager came over. The manager says to her, "If he comes back, we'll probably hire him because he can speak English."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        Then an assistant manager came over. The manager says to her, "If he comes back, we'll probably hire him because he can speak English."

        And why not? Have you watched them work behind the counter at McDonald's? It's unskilled labor. It's basically about making the assembly line move as fast as possible. So if workers don't need skills beyond speaking a little English and being able to learn how to work a couple machines, why not hire anyone who's willing and legal? People love to complain about unemployed immigrants and minorities, but how are they supposed to stop being chronically unemployed if they can't even get in on the ground floor (o

    • Will be using an okaycupid clone. Swipe left for candidates you dislike, swipe right to hire. The new motto? "U dserv a brak 2day".

  • Just Asking For It (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Couldn't this turn into a trivial discrimination lawsuit against McDonalds if they were doing it in USA?

    • Couldn't this turn into a trivial discrimination lawsuit against McDonalds if they were doing it in USA?

      In what way is this illegal discrimination? He said they are looking for "bubbly personalities". In America, calm boring non-bubbly people are not a protected class, so it is legal to discriminate against them.

      • There is a difference between a bubbly personality vs just a friendly welcoming one.
        I know we are supposed to hate McDonald's. It is the first job many of us get when we are teenagers where we find out that being a unique snowflake doesn't seem to matter and you need to follow the script of your job. Where you need to dress in unflattering uniform and find that the fast food that you loved isn't cooked with the love and care that your parents did at home. It is the entry level of entry level jobs.
        But you h

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gsslay ( 807818 )
        Cambridge English Dictionary ;
        bubbly: - (especially of a woman or girl) attractively full of energy and enthusiasm

        It could be argued that "bubbly personalities" is code for "young, pretty and female". So that's age, sex and attractiveness discrimination. Particularly when they are vetting applications based on a tiny video where very little can be determined apart from age, gender and appearance.

        Of course, whether such discrimination is legal or not depends on where you are.

    • Usually, HR will prioritize job applications so that anyone qualified that falls within an under-represented protected class will be placed at the top of the list, or be automatically given an interview.

      Also, if the applicant is not from a protected class and is good looking, HR can just filter out that particular application/video (and legally practice reverse discrimination) before it even gets to the manager, or to the franchise owner (because it's usually those folks doing the discrimination, not the tr

  • How is this legal? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Vetting candidates based on a short video is essentially picking based on appearance, since that is the only information the medium can convey.

    I thought there were strong anti-discrimination laws preventing companies from hiring based on factors related to and including appearance: age, skin color, attractiveness, height, race, etc...

    • I'm not sure how well the laws re: attractiveness are enforced, if at all. How else can businesses like Hooters maintain the expected buxom quality of their staff?

      Complaints about customer service-oriented businesses hiring physically attractive people, especially young females, are kinda unique to the West, while McD's is a global company. Here in Asia, having cute and polite female staff is just assumed pretty much everywhere. There's a night-and-day difference in the customer experience at a Japanese M

      • Re:How is this legal? (Score:5, Funny)

        by lucm ( 889690 ) on Monday April 10, 2017 @09:39PM (#54211267)

        There's a night-and-day difference in the customer experience at a Japanese McDonald's and a US one.

        Maybe but your porn sucks with all the blurry pixels over the genitals. You priorities are all wrong.

        • I'm not Japanese, I just live here. But yes, censored Japanese porn is terrible. Fortunately, they produce *uncensored* videos, theoretically just for the export market. However, shops are regularly busted for selling the stuff domestically under the counter, and of course all the major free porn sites are awash with "uncensored JAV" vids.

        • Maybe but your porn sucks with all the blurry pixels over the genitals. You priorities are all wrong.

          Given some of what goes on in Japanese videos, just blurring out the genitals is simply not going far enough.

      • I'm not sure how well the laws re: attractiveness are enforced, if at all.

        There is no law against hiring only attractive people. Ugly people are NOT a protected class under the law. As an ugly person, I think that sucks, since attractive people already have a lot of other advantages in life, but that's the way it is.

        However, if you only hire attractive white people, you will be in big trouble.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        There are no laws preventing discrimination based on attractiveness. There aren't that many complaints about it that I've seen. And it's legal to explicitly hire people based on appearance. Movies do it all the time.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by serviscope_minor ( 664417 )

        That PC crap about keeping women past their expiration date doesn't apply here

        I'll take rampant misogyny for 500 please, Alex!

        Women don't have an expiration date. Fortunately, it seems that around here, attitudes such as yours do.

        • Women don't have an expiration date.

          So what do you call this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          And before that hits, there is the obvious decline in their physical attractiveness that tends to begin around age 30. Some call it "when women hit the wall". It can be delayed somewhat via a healthy diet, physical fitness, and stable mental health...or terrible decisions (IMO) like plastic surgery. But it doesn't change that men are visual creatures, we are primarily driven by a woman's looks, and so our interest (and the sexual market value of

    • Vetting candidates based on a short video is essentially picking based on appearance

      While it could be, there are a ton of things you can pick up quickly from a short video that go beyond appearance.

      Just from a few minutes of speech you can easily tell if someone is reasonably intelligent, you could tell if they had the kind of personality that would let them work a register, you could tel generally how seriously they took work by what they chose to wear for the video.

      I have to think you could also treat it

      • Just from a few minutes of speech ...

        They only get 10 seconds and are looking for expression of "bubbly personality," not a discussion of the state of political discourse in Australia (which, I grant, could be summed up in a dire 10 seconds). I would expect more dancing fool than verbal analysis... but then I am way outside the target demographic. The whole thing is like an uncontrolled version of Virgin Australia looking for "whacky zany" when interviewing prospective cabin crew.

        • Even in ten seconds you can tell how generally intelligent someone is.

          I would expect more dancing fool than verbal analysis

          Even THAT would be an indicator of intelligence.

  • Millennial prejudice projections. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hylandr ( 813770 ) on Monday April 10, 2017 @09:06PM (#54211153)

    When it's very clear we are being told how we should view news articles with a pre-judgement inserted into the article heading.

    (I vomited a little)

    It may be cheesy, but not puke worthy. We are talking about the employee application process not their food.

    to the OP: Why not let the public discuss and decide what they will without injecting your own immature opinions before they have had a chance to RTFA?

  • WTF is Snapchat? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nunya666 ( 4446709 ) on Monday April 10, 2017 @09:12PM (#54211175)
    Never mind, since I'm not the target audience, anyway.
    • Don't be obtuse. It's an image sharing application with 160M daily users that just IPO'd for $30 billion. If you pay any attention to tech or financial news, you've heard of it.

  • Ulterior motives (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like a sneaky way to filter based on race and appearance.

  • Those applicants with "bubbly personality" are boys.

  • They want hot chicks (Score:3, Informative)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Monday April 10, 2017 @09:20PM (#54211193)
    If you're over 20, not hot, not female, don't bother applying.
  • Wow. What an honor it must be in Australia to win the ability to apply to MickyD for a job.

  • apk (Score:3)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Monday April 10, 2017 @09:33PM (#54211243) Homepage Journal
    Maybe APK can get a real job now.

  • This is not that different to the usual hiring process where you screen resumes and then do personal screening, ie interviews.

    In this case it is the other way around. Of course a 10 second video isn't the same as a personal interview, but I wouldn't be surprised if 10 seconds is all a Manager needs to decide whether they want to hire you or not.

    I rarely ever buy McDonalds but I applaud them for trying something new that appeals generally to younger people, who they seem to hire most.

    If it works, great, if i

  • Wouldn't this greatly bias the process (age, gender, ethnicity)? If this were happening in tech, we'd scream bloody murder. I'm sure Australia has different laws than the US.

    • You can make exactly the same broad generalizations on a face-to-face interview as you can on a video. So, no.

      • You can make exactly the same broad generalizations on a face-to-face interview as you can on a video. So, no.

        yes but in person you can counter-balance those biases. Once you're there for the interview you're there for the interview. This is like a casting couch and someone comes out and picks who gets to come in to the interview based on how [insert physical attribute here] they are. You may look hideous in person but with an in-person interview you have a chance to provide something more than that you can make conversation, you can show knowledge, you can answer questions. With a snapchat application you have 10

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Black guy "I have a college degree in maths, I won the Mental Math Speed Competition of 2014 and again in 2016, I also worked a roulette table at a casino and my employer will tell you that I can sort thousands of dollars of loose change in minutes. You want someone to work a register, I'm the best choice in the state."

        >Later that day

        Trash "Y'all welcome to Mickys hyuck hyuck hyuck don't give me any o' them big orders I can't count over fifty hyuck!"

        Black guy "..."

      • Age discrimination = "What's Snapchat?"

  • Discrimination City (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Monday April 10, 2017 @10:13PM (#54211351) Homepage Journal

    I have to staff exhibit booths a few times a year. I absolutely hate that applicants treat it as a modeling job and send me their photos. My wife hates it too :-) .

    I ask that they be capable of standing for 8 hours per day for three days straight, and that they be well dressed, well groomed, and personable. I will always hire the smart ones (you'd be surprised how many folks with a Masters or Ph.D. are looking for weekend work), and they rarely are the model folks.

    I started putting "NO PHOTOS" in my ads a while back. I am thinking of asking folks to use a first initial and not indicate their gender, just to see what happens.

  • Humiliation (Score:3)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Monday April 10, 2017 @10:21PM (#54211373)
    I see this as going down the path of subjecting applicants to public humiliation to apply for menial jobs.

    This is what post-labor world looks like.

    • I see this as going down the path of subjecting applicants to public humiliation to apply for menial jobs. This is what post-labor world looks like.

      The radio industry been subjecting interns to public humiliation as part of the permanent hiring process for decades now.

      The MTV "Jackass" crew built an entire empire doing this kind of shit to each other, as their main job.

      This gimmick ain't new by any means.

  • The actual filtering process (Score:3)

    by Imrik ( 148191 ) on Monday April 10, 2017 @11:32PM (#54211585) Homepage

    So basically this filters for people that already own a McD uniform and thus are probably on file and don't need the company to pay for one, or people that someone who owns a uniform knows and thinks should work at McD.

    • send the company a 10-second video using a filter that shows them wearing a McDonald's uniform.

      Snapchat has filters that overlay images on your videos. McDonalds is asking applicants to use one of those - not to buy a uniform.

    • So basically this filters for people that already own a McD uniform

      I think what it filters is slashdot commentators who don't know how snapchat works.

  • don't write books by text, don't share screen shots by post, don't use your stapler to hammer nails. You can do all of those things but why would you? Technology exists for a reason. A scythe was designed to cut down grass in large amounts using it to cut down a single or tens of blades at once is moronic. Using Snapchat as a chatting protocol is already bad. It's a terrible chat program unless you're talking to a mistress, using it for job applications is even worse. Nothing about Snapchat makes it easier

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      All true but it's a situation where the bar is set very low and does not need to be set any higher.
      Years back in high school my application for work in a fast food chicken place was nowhere near as formal as even snapchat. It was less than a minute on the phone, most of which was taken with when and where to turn up for the interview.
  • If the snaplicant hasn't been hired yet, how would they have a McDonald's uniform in which to perform the snaplication?

  • They get a physical look at prospective applicants before they look at their resume. Well played, McDonalds. No ugly front-end people.

  • And maybe we'll toss you a minimum wage menial job for your humiliation.

  • Just another metric in dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator.

  • Everybody knows most job applications just get thrown in the trash anyway. McD's has automated this by using a service that automatically throws away applications after somebody views them once.
  • I just wonder how long it is until people start submitting "Ding fries are done" videos.
  • I guess that's one way to get around a system that no longer is able to teach kids effective grammar. They can just send a video and talk about themselves.

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