The Job Search continues

As it has for almost 2 years now…

When I was notified that my Job was being outsourced, I started looking. Anyone with half a brain would have at that point. I was hoping to secure a position before the actual layoff, even though it meant that I’d be leaving money on the table.

We’re going to lay you off, but if you leave before we lay you off you don’t get this bundle of money we’re going to pay you if you stay with us so we can enjoy making sure your’e really fucked.

Corporate logic! How about you offer to pay a pro-rated amount up until the time you lay us off?

Ultimately it hasn’t mattered a bit. I’ve been looking and sending endless resumes and filling out online job applications until I’m honestly sick of it. I’m sick of being approached by strangers saying they’ve got the perfect job for me only to jump through all their hoops and then hear NOTHING!

I’m sick of calling to follow-up on positions I’ve applied for and not being able to reach the person, leaving a message, then never getting the simple courtesy of a return phone call or an email telling me what the status of the position is.

I’m sick of reaching out to recruiters that someone I know has dealt with, only to be ghosted.

There are those like my Mother who’d say, “Well it’s the COVID dear… “

No Mom, it’s not the COVID, this has been going on since well before the COVID gave everyone an excuse to be jerks.

Then there’s these websites like Glassdoor. “We’ve found a Job that we think lines up with you perfectly. Customer Service Representative for a Beauty Supply and Accessories company in Cupertino, Pay range 20,000 per year. Not Remote”

SAY WHAT?!!

You can’t live in Cupertino for 20K a year. Maybe if you lived in your car, and it was paid for and you had no bills, and didn’t need to eat.

If it was just a one off mistake fine, but this has become a constant. No where in my resume does it say that I have any idea about anything related to beauty supplies!

I’m a Software Quality Assurance / Software Test engineer. How do you get to Customer Service Representative from a 30 year resume that’s uploaded to your site, and then was redundantly filled in on your customized series of forms?

Glassdoor, you’re so out of here!

So I closed the account on that particular aggregator of jobs which hadn’t done me a lick of good anyway.

Then when I close the account which didn’t ask any questions about why I was closing the account, I get an email saying that a review of some job, [I hadn’t made any reviews in at least a year] suddenly violates their community standards.

The email rolled in within seconds of my closing the account, so it’s fairly obvious that they sent it by mistake instead of an email stating I’d closed the account. Hmmm. Perhaps Glassdoor could use my services? Just saying…

I’ve lost count of how many hours I’ve spent looking for a job. I no longer know how many different applications and forms I’ve filled out online. All for nothing!

I know, there are those who’d say, “Just keep trying, it’ll work out for you, you may fill out 1000 applications but you only need one to be successful.

I used to be able to have two or three offers, in recent years that’s dwindled to offering to suck cock for just an interview.

I’m not into the Pollyanna shit anymore.

The thing that gets me is that while I’m working with all these online job applications, I’m finding bugs in them.

In some cases it’s typos throughout the forms, in other cases it’s forms that don’t work properly on Mac or Windows. I seriously think I should be paid to do nothing but test the forms companies put out on their public facing web sites. At least then their company HR pages wouldn’t be an embarrassment.

I’d consider just going back to printed resume and good old fashioned US mail in response to Job postings. The only problem with that is hiring companies rarely post an actual address or phone number so that you could even go “Old School”.

There’s another site that’s really funny. They’ll post positions that say, located in Ontario, CA. What they really mean is Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The problem is that even on the description of the job they’ll still say Ontario, CA and it isn’t until you get to entering your information and the application won’t accept a US zip code that you realize the mistake.

Give me a good old fashioned newspaper want ad section any day. I know, you’d think, “Hey there’s an idea,” You’d be wrong. a large number of newspaper want ads simply direct you to their online resources like careerbuilder.com. Which puts you right back into a nationwide database that probably hasn’t been purged of erroneous records for a decade.

There are the other aggregator sites that post positions as “NEW” but when you follow the link back to it’s source you find that the position is already 3 months old and has been filled. The position may be “NEW” to the aggregator, but it’s really so stale you could grow penicillin on it.

There must be a better way. This online bullshit ain’t cutting it.

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