Here is how to lose a large pool of potential candidates

In an effort to network and reach out to others, I participate in a few Twitter chats. I do this not only to learn about what other people are saying and thinking, but to also share a few nuggets of knowledge that I have.

I was in one last night and notice some excellent answers being given by someone who works in HR at a US based automaker. Following the chat, I exchanged a few tweets back and forth with her, and she provided a link to the career website for that company.

After not having the best experience at the last conglomerate that I worked for, I was not expecting to find much of anything that I may have liked. However, I encountered a major problem before I could even see what kinds of jobs they had to offer.

When I pulled up the webpage, I noticed that nothing was formatted correctly, poorly laid out and just a major mess. Since I use the Safari web browser, I occasionally encounter this problem. So, I tried Firefox, since that will fix all problems I come across with Safari.

Except I then had the exact same problem.

Since I was not sure quite what the problem was, I sent a tweet to my contact at this company, and explained the problem. Her response: "Hi Rob, currently our ATS for job openings works best with Internet Explorer right now."

Seriously? This immediately brought back my failed attempts to apply for another major company that handles prescription drug plans when I had similar issues with viewing and applying for jobs within their company.

But with web browser usage somewhere around 53 percent being Internet Explorer...these two companies are missing out on up to 47 percent of their talent pool by letting their jobs sites be only accessed by IE. I'm not sure who is making these decisions within the companies, but if I were CEO, and I discovered this, someone would have some explaining to do!

So if nothing else, make sure your job website can be accessed by multiple web browsers. If this was 1997, I might understand. However, being 2012, access by multiple browsers over multiple platforms is a requirement!