Employment Application with Upload Capabilities |
Employment Application with Upload Capabilities |
Mizel |
Dec 17 2014, 04:04 PM
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#1
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Group: Members Posts: 5 Joined: 17-December 14 Member No.: 21,947 |
Hi!
I recently started building an employment section on my company's website. I've just reached the submittable application part of it, and to be honest, how to go about it has me a little stumped. In a perfect world, they would like to have a fillable pdf application that applicants can attach a resume to. When submitted, both the completed pdf application, as well the attachment, are sent via email to the hiring managers. I've done quite a few HTML/CSS/PHP forms that are sent via email (server-side, not mailto) upon submission for my company already, so I went into this project thinking it would be a piece of cake! However, after a lot of research, I'm finding that sending an entire pdf is not recommended or easily done. I did find other options, such as submitting the information as fdf or xml (but this only touches upon the actual pdf application and not even the resume file attachment). The issue that I'm running into is that this process must be simple. Opening emails is about the extent of my hiring managers computer skills. They also need the information to be neat and orderly (versus the data going to a spreadsheet, etc.), which is why I was originally hoping to go the route of pdf. I think that my best option would be creating an HTML form that allows file upload that is then sent via HTML email (server-side), with uploaded attachment upon submission. (The reason for the HTML, instead of just plain php email, is because I need to format the application to look just like it does on the website.) I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice on this- and if that is the best way to go about it? |
pandy |
Dec 17 2014, 04:25 PM
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#2
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🌟Computer says no🌟 Group: WDG Moderators Posts: 20,730 Joined: 9-August 06 Member No.: 6 |
Not sure I follow, but the file must be uploaded to the server before it can be sent to you, so I think it sounds like you are on the right track.
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Mizel |
Dec 17 2014, 04:59 PM
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#3
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Group: Members Posts: 5 Joined: 17-December 14 Member No.: 21,947 |
Not sure I follow, but the file must be uploaded to the server before it can be sent to you, so I think it sounds like you are on the right track. Sorry, I think I made that question way more complicated than it needed to be haha To sum it up, I just need both the completed application form and the resume file attachment to get to my hiring managers in a single email. So upon submission the application form and file would be sent to the server, and then from the server to their email address (when they receive the email, the application form would be in the body and the resume would be an attachment). I've created forms that work this way before, but have never worked with file uploads, so I wasn't sure if there was a better way to go about all of this. There are other ways of going about it (such as using a MySQLi database), but the problem is that my hiring managers want this stuff coming directly to them. They don't want to have to access a database or go looking anywhere, which is unfortunately making things a lot more complicated. |
Brian Chandler |
Dec 17 2014, 11:11 PM
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#4
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Jocular coder Group: Members Posts: 2,460 Joined: 31-August 06 Member No.: 43 |
You could try to educate your "managers" out of this "sheets of paper" mindset. Point out to them that it was definitely the Latest Thing in the 19th century.
Yes, you need a form to collect the information, and possibly an attached "sheet of paper", if the candidates are also from the 19th century. But the rational thing is to store it in a database, then when your managers lose things you can send them again, and when they ask for something they hadn't thought of you (like a list of the people who can speak Spanish) you can supply it immediately. Once you have all the information in a database, generating emails is really easy. For file uploads, you just need to keep an entry in the DB, and save the file as res_XXXX.pdf, where XXXX is the unique key identifying the entry. (And you might need to handle various formats, so pdf is also a variable.) |
Mizel |
Dec 18 2014, 09:03 AM
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#5
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Group: Members Posts: 5 Joined: 17-December 14 Member No.: 21,947 |
You could try to educate your "managers" out of this "sheets of paper" mindset. Point out to them that it was definitely the Latest Thing in the 19th century. Yes, you need a form to collect the information, and possibly an attached "sheet of paper", if the candidates are also from the 19th century. But the rational thing is to store it in a database, then when your managers lose things you can send them again, and when they ask for something they hadn't thought of you (like a list of the people who can speak Spanish) you can supply it immediately. Once you have all the information in a database, generating emails is really easy. For file uploads, you just need to keep an entry in the DB, and save the file as res_XXXX.pdf, where XXXX is the unique key identifying the entry. (And you might need to handle various formats, so pdf is also a variable.) That's been my biggest struggle since starting here. I have been trying to get them up to speed with current technology for the past four years. They didn't even have a social media presence or website until just five years ago (and for a nationwide company that has over 35 branches, has a revenue of a hundred plus million dollars a year, and relies solely on customers buying their product- is pretty bad). Hell, they were still using paper and pencil ledgers less than 10 years ago. I had actually suggested the idea of a database when they originally came to me wanting an online application. The problem they saw is that because our company is so huge, we get hundreds of applications at a time. The last job that was posted brought in hundreds of applications in just a week, and we will have multiple listings at once, and no one to monitor the database and distribute all of these (the Marketing department for my entire company, all 35 branches, west to east coast, is literally myself and one other person). The other issue is that we have three regions, and each hiring manager only wants to see the applications relevant to their region. |
Christian J |
Dec 18 2014, 11:47 AM
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#6
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. Group: WDG Moderators Posts: 9,650 Joined: 10-August 06 Member No.: 7 |
No personal experience, but it seems sending email attachments is tricky in PHP: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1230135...s-with-php-mail
Another idea might be to create an HTML email that contains the form data and a link to the PDF file (which is hosted by a web server) instead of including it as an email attachment. |
Christian J |
Dec 18 2014, 12:02 PM
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#7
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. Group: WDG Moderators Posts: 9,650 Joined: 10-August 06 Member No.: 7 |
because our company is so huge, we get hundreds of applications at a time. The last job that was posted brought in hundreds of applications in just a week, and we will have multiple listings at once, and no one to monitor the database and distribute all of these An online DB should normally work by itself. You could let the hiring managers query it manually with an online form (and associated server side script), or you could let a server side script send emails to managers automatically at certain intervals. QUOTE The other issue is that we have three regions, and each hiring manager only wants to see the applications relevant to their region. Let applicants indicate which region(s) they belong to in the form and store that in its own DB column. Then whenever the DB is queried it can return only those applications relevant for each manager's region. |
Mizel |
Dec 18 2014, 12:35 PM
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#8
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Group: Members Posts: 5 Joined: 17-December 14 Member No.: 21,947 |
because our company is so huge, we get hundreds of applications at a time. The last job that was posted brought in hundreds of applications in just a week, and we will have multiple listings at once, and no one to monitor the database and distribute all of these An online DB should normally work by itself. You could let the hiring managers query it manually with an online form (and associated server side script), or you could let a server side script send emails to managers automatically at certain intervals. QUOTE The other issue is that we have three regions, and each hiring manager only wants to see the applications relevant to their region. Let applicants indicate which region(s) they belong to in the form and store that in its own DB column. Then whenever the DB is queried it can return only those applications relevant for each manager's region. That would actually work really well. Would it be possible to set the script up so that every single time someone submits an application, it automatically sends it to the correct region manager? (Thank you all very much for your replies, btw. I really appreciate it.) |
Brian Chandler |
Dec 18 2014, 12:57 PM
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#9
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Jocular coder Group: Members Posts: 2,460 Joined: 31-August 06 Member No.: 43 |
QUOTE I had actually suggested the idea of a database when they originally came to me wanting an online application. The problem they saw is that because our company is so huge, we get hundreds of applications at a time. The last job that was posted brought in hundreds of applications in just a week, and we will have multiple listings at once, and no one to monitor the database and distribute all of these (the Marketing department for my entire company, all 35 branches, west to east coast, is literally myself and one other person). The other issue is that we have three regions, and each hiring manager only wants to see the applications relevant to their region. This is totally bizarre. If they said: "We only get 2 or 3 applications a month ..." then it might make sense just to simply send emails. Look, assuming they just want to be sent emails, the best thing to do is to put all the submissions in a database. Adding an entry to the database triggers a program which constructs the appropriate email -- you can use plain text and include a link to the attachment file on your local server. This is just going to be *easier*, but when (not if) something goes wrong you can immediately generate another copy of the email etc etc etc. If they want things sent to three separate regions, well, the form has to have a "Which region are you applying to?" button, and [rest is obvious]. Do you have experience of building a DB system? It's really not very hard, and it is just possible that they are intelligent enough to work out that the time you spend on the learning curve makes you more desirable to a better-organised company... (hmmm) I dunno, but really, to rely on one person shuffling emails around to manage the selection strikes me as really unreliable. It is so much easier to mark off the possibles, hopeless, probables etc in a table. You can incredibly easily send appropriate emails automatically to the failed candidates (they want to do this manually?) And so on. HTH good luck |
Mizel |
Dec 18 2014, 04:27 PM
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#10
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Group: Members Posts: 5 Joined: 17-December 14 Member No.: 21,947 |
This is totally bizarre. If they said: "We only get 2 or 3 applications a month ..." then it might make sense just to simply send emails. Look, assuming they just want to be sent emails, the best thing to do is to put all the submissions in a database. Adding an entry to the database triggers a program which constructs the appropriate email -- you can use plain text and include a link to the attachment file on your local server. This is just going to be *easier*, but when (not if) something goes wrong you can immediately generate another copy of the email etc etc etc. If they want things sent to three separate regions, well, the form has to have a "Which region are you applying to?" button, and [rest is obvious]. Do you have experience of building a DB system? It's really not very hard, and it is just possible that they are intelligent enough to work out that the time you spend on the learning curve makes you more desirable to a better-organised company... (hmmm) I dunno, but really, to rely on one person shuffling emails around to manage the selection strikes me as really unreliable. It is so much easier to mark off the possibles, hopeless, probables etc in a table. You can incredibly easily send appropriate emails automatically to the failed candidates (they want to do this manually?) And so on. HTH good luck I totally agree! If I were the one receiving loads of applications at once, I would love a way to sort them all down and weed out the best candidates. Ironically, "look at all of these great sorting options we can utilize!" seems to translate to, "extra work/too complicated," to them. They currently use monster.com at the moment for job postings and applications, which sends them everything they need via email, which is why anything else just seems like extra work in their eyes. Oy vey :/ I have very, very little experience working with a database at all. We have a WordPress forum and I've worked with the database a couple of times (and that was simply to find/restore some missing data, nothing beyond that). However, I'm confident that if I dedicated the time to it, I could at least learn enough of the basics to get me started. I will start looking into building and working with a database. I think that if my guys at least saw what it could do for them, they would realize that it could be way more beneficial to them than anything else. Thanks again |
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