Is It Better to Apply Online or in Person?

January 2, 2019

I am one of those oldies who use Facebook to stay in touch with my relatives, whilst moaning about how often they send me those ridiculous chain messages. What is it with people in their 60’s who think its cool to send ‘pass it forward’ messages? Arggghhh!

Anyway, this isn’t a moan about my relatives (or their or my age for that matter), this is about a comment I saw in a Facebook group post about looking for work. The original poster was looking for a job and people were commenting that he should head out to a local industrial area and hand his resume into the businesses there. Then someone said that this was futile because businesses don’t want you to hand in your resume, they want you to apply online.

Then there was a comment that raised my eyebrows. It went something like this:

“I refuse to apply online because they always want your full address and email address and I don’t think they need this stuff and I worry about who will have access to it..”

Why do employers/recruiters need your full address?

There are two reasons:

Who has access to my information?

Privacy is a BIG issue and we are very careful to ensure that your personal information, including your resume, is never shared with anyone unless we have your express permission. All our recruitment consulting staff work under strict guidelines and our systems have two-factor authentication to ensure that even if, let’s say, someone left a laptop lying around in an airport, nobody who found that computer would ever have access to our systems and records.

But remember, you always have the right to request an agency delete your resume and any information they hold about you. Although, there are some details that we are required to keep by law for 7 years (like payroll data) for the ATO.

So is it best to apply online or in person?

It depends. The bigger the organisation, the more likely they are to want you to apply online. This is because they will have an established recruitment process and a direct application can be a disruption that is difficult to accommodate. However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t CALL them to talk about your application; I always encourage job seekers to do that!

Smaller organisations are less likely to have a Human Resources department or an online applicant tracking system to manage their online applications. Therefore, a direct approach is a brilliant way to get in direct contact with the people who make the hiring decisions. And you can get really lucky – my teenage daughter did this a couple of years ago with a retail computer company, she dropped in her resume and the timing was just right, as they had someone resign earlier that day and she was employed a week later.

Good luck in your job search, but please – don’t be afraid about applying for a job online!

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In business since 2005 in Australia, NZ, and the United Kingdom, people2people is an award-winning recruitment agency with people at our heart. With over 12 offices, we specialise in accounting and finance, business support, education, executive, government, HR, legal, marketing and digital, property, sales, supply chain, and technology sectors. As the proud recipients of the 2025 RCSA and SEEK Outstanding Large Agency Awards, we are dedicated to helping businesses achieve success through a people-first approach.

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