Category: Job Search

I killed the LinkedIn, Dice, Monster, Indeed, Glassdoor, and I don’t remember how many more, accounts because they were bringing no value and no job leads. They were however wasting a lot of my time.

These sites opened my email box to a seemingly never-ending stream of “Job Leads” that can at best be described as useless. I think of them as SPAM.

I relented recently. The company I work for kept telling us to join LinkedIn “Greatest thing since sliced bread” according to them… In reality it’s nothing more than a pain in the ass. I have no interest in reading the company propaganda on my own time.

Recent events and the realization that I will not be able to advance in any way with the  company forced me to reconsider my position about using these employment oriented websites. 

So I also started a job search using the only method left to me, the job sites. 

Einstein said something like; Continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

So I’m crazy. Not by choice, but by necessity.

Knowing what I was in for has helped make this insanity a bit more tolerable. 

I was looking at my email this morning and had 24 emails from headhunters that pretty much all start;

“Hi I’m a recruiter from (blah blah technical sounding name) and I found your resume. I think that you’re exactly what my client is looking for…”

The stroking goes on from there. Most often there is a considerable amount of boilerplate crap about what a wonderful, well respected, profitable, and important “mover and shaker” the recruiting company is. (Do a Google street view address search of many of these places and you’ll find a hole in the wall between a whorehouse and a bar.)

By the time the “recruiter” gets to the point and describes the actual position two things become obvious.

1) This “Professional” recruiter hasn’t read your resume.

2) They have no concept of geography.

I’ve written about this in the past.

I never bothered to keep any statistics on the emails, until now.

How many are actually valid?

How many are from real placement firms?

I got a sample set of 24 in the past week. I’m thinking about how to work up a way to represent the statistics in a nice chart form. If I’m successful I’ll post it here.

For now though, here’s a quick take away from the current sample of 24.

Of those, only 6 were for positions in my actual area of expertise.

Only 2 of the 6 were actually in the state in which I reside

Only 1 of the 6 was within 200 miles.

Yipeee! I’m going to have a new job any day now.

All but 3 of these “Leads” were from Indians (Dot, not Feather)

The 2 leads in my state were from people with European names, and were in fact, local recruiting firms.

1 of the original 24 leads started out with a bald faced lie. “I’ve tried repeatedly to reach you”

Uh, no you haven’t, there’s no record of anyone calling my only phone, from the area code, prefix, or number you listed in your email, much less a voice mail.

The remaining 18 “Leads” were for positions that were ludicrous. A one month contracting position in NJ. A 3 month position in NY (for the kings ransom of $15 an hour, No benefits) and all of these were nothing like what my resume says I do. I’m not a software engineer, or developer. I’m also not a clerical person.

At the bottom of each of these “Great & exciting opportunities” is a message, “Please forward this email to anyone you know that might be qualified.”

Nope! Won’t do it. I’m not going to do your job for you Mr. recruiter. If you want candidates to fill these positions, you probably better start beating the bushes.  I’d suggest getting on your knees and blowing me, if you want my help. But I value my dick too much, and wouldn’t want to contract some screaming gow gow that rotted my member off at the root.

Needless to say, I fully recall why I gave up on the job search boards.  Of the applications that I have submitted for jobs that I’m capable of…

Zilch! Nada! 

Those applications have disappeared into a black hole.

So tell me again how the job market in California is improving???

Not that I’m surprised by any of this. If have a couple of friends trying to get the hell out of the place that we work. They’re encountering the same BS and we’re wondering collectively what the next move is.

For the time being we all just keep holding onto the jobs that we have and keep working to get something better.

All of us are fighting the depressing reality that we may be royally screwed.

Well, Chin up. Think of England!

In my long and mostly fruitless job search one thing became abundantly clear. The internet is not the job-seekers friend.

Dice, Monster, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and the myriad other sites serve only to give false hope, waste the job seeker’s time, mask real opportunities, and further isolate people seeking positions from companies with actual positions available.
“Now Hiring” signs don’t mean “We’re Hiring here at this location.”
“Now Hiring” means, “Go to our website, fill out an application and maybe we’ll get back to you… Probably not though.”
But there’s something else I’ve recently been considering;
The Frustration!

In times past, you could fill out an application at a particular location, and then check back with the same location via telephone to find out if you were likely to be called in for an interview.
Now you check back on a website, but what you get is something like “Under Review”, then you check with the website a few days later and the status is “Closed”.
Okay, fine, but couldn’t you have just sent an email rather than forcing us to log back into your system, and navigate through surveys about our satisfaction with the application process?

For God’s sake, most company’s SPAM us with truly useless shit all the time. Surely, a form email telling an applicant that the position has been filled, isn’t too much to ask.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
After 4 or 5 hours of that fruitless grind, plus filling out endless applications and personality surveys, (85 pages of questions in one case.) It becomes soul crushing.
As the unpaid bills mount up, you’re wondering when you’re going to lose your home, and while yet another “Placement Agent” blows smoke up your skirt… Well, you might tend toward getting well and truly;
PISSED OFF!

As I’ve expressed before, the internet is a way to isolate us rather than unite us.
The internet allows corporations to ignore their customers while maintaining the illusion of being helpful.
“Your call is important to us, Please hold for the next available incomprehensible offshore representative. Most of your questions can be answered online by visiting www.wedontgiveadamn.com”
The Walled Gardens of corporate hiring processes allow CEOs speaking before congress to make the case, “There aren’t enough qualified workers.”

The suits speaking in front of Congress have stats to back up that claim. They in fact, aren’t lying when they say they need more H1B1 visas. The data holds up, because the information they have, is generated by their HR department, and their HR department has such narrow focus, that no out of work American workers are even considered.
After all, very few American workers seeking positions are recent graduates of Bangalore Technical University! But there are plenty of H1B1 Visa applicants who are.

It’s safer and easier for an employee to pass something up the chain of command than to make a “wrong” decision about anything.

Hiring decisions are no longer at a manager level where the Manager of a department can say, “This person is qualified enough. What they don’t know, they’ll pick up in a week or so, and the PERSON, the human being, would fit nicely in our corporate culture, and my department.”
Instead a manager must sit, or more often a designee sits in a committee and the group decides who gets hired, much like the decision about who gets to be prom queen.

The frustration and anger simmering in America today is not, as South Park says, “They Took R jobs!”
It’s “We never got the opportunity to even be considered by anything other than a computer system or some Orwellian group think.”
We’ve taken the humanity out of employment, and business, which simply feeds the cycle of frustration and anger.
We need to start dealing with each other as people again.
Facebook friends are not actual friends, if you’ve never met them in person. Twitter friends are nothing more than names.
If you’ve never met the people behind the screen do their opinions really matter?

Well I’ve been up since 5am today. Grabbed a shower tossed stuff in the car, and high-tailed it to Escondido.

Where I accepted delivery of my furniture.

I really do like the “Shake & Bake” moving method!  If you’ve got the money or a need (Such as you’re leaving a household intact) This is the best way to go.

I’ve still got a lot of washing up to do, new plates, new pans, glasses etc.

No dishwasher. Ugh! But then again it’s just me most, if not all of the time.

Not a bad little place. actually and it’s a lot more homey now that There’s furniture in the place. I need to get some plants, and / or little table arrangements to bring some visual interest to the place. But for two days work its not coming together too badly.

Not having assigned parking is gong to be a serious annoyance but perhaps not so much of one once I’m not carrying arm-fulls of stuff up the stairs and into the place.

So I’ve got a few things left on my list of stuff to buy. But once that’s finished I’m going to be pretty much good to be here for at least 14 months.

Can’t take any pictures of the bedroom right now because there’s no light and the furniture just arrived a little while ago.

Internet should be here next Sunday so for the week I’m on my phone’s hotspot.

Which means that my connectivity is likely to be in burst mode for the next week, however I’m going to be having so much new to deal with I’m figuring that I’m going to be intermittent anyway.

Fingers Crossed that this job thing works,  otherwise I’m so screwed I can’t even begin to describe the depths to which things go South.

Wish me luck I could use all the good JuJu you want to send my way.