I’m not job-hunting. I’m happy in my current role - the pay is possibly not as good as it could be and i feel a bit unappreciated sometimes but there are good points - such as being able to spend a large chunk of my work day hanging around on the SDMB.
Anyway…
Just now i got an email from a job agency i used to do some free-lancing for. Basically it was a standard job advertisement/vacancy notice, and i was about to delete it when i noticed that at the end od the requirements (management experience, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator etc.) was one line that stood out from the rest:
“Must have at least Four Years experience with Flash MX”
Which absolutely cracked me up as…
Flash MX has only been out for - what - eight months??? :rolleyes:
So that got me thinking - has anyone else come across this kind of thing before - where a job vacancy has required skills that are literally impossible?
(oh yeah - and i’m SURE i saw something similar in the userfriendly comic strip a few months ago - can anyone confirm this as i don’t have to time to trek through the archives to check.)
Oh yeah, I used to see lots of jobs with requirements like “5 years experience with Windows 98” when Win 98 had been around for less than a year. Them HR people aren’t real bright now, are they?
It just impressed me that they’d avoided it with all of the others by not specifying a version (ie. just saying "Dreamweaver, Photoshop etc. etc.) only to screw it all up with the Flash MX.
There may be a reason for this. Companies have been known to put up ads like this, then claim they couldn't get domestic help and use it to get a work visa for a foreigner they could get cheap, in return for immigration aid. There is a different classification for special-needs employees, thought I don't recall the class. (it's how we get those Russian hockey players:) )
One of my colleagues was filling out a fellowship application that required him to explain the theoretical and historical background of, previously-published results of, current progress on, planned future work on, and implications of his research, at a technical level that that the multidisciplinary search committee would understand, in one page or less. (No, he wasn’t allowed to change the font size.)
Funny coincidence! Just last week I got an E-mail from a place looking to fill a 3-D modeler position. The requirements included that “Applicants must be thoroughly knowlagable in Tinderbox 3.0”
The catch?
Tinderbox is their own proprietary software. The only people who know how to use it are those already working there, and any former employees wouldn’t know how to use the newer 3.0.
Internal job posting at the company I was working for:
“…4 Years Java Minimum…”
So what, you were looking for one of the three guys who invented it?
Not a fake ad, just stupid HR.
In most cases, these things are written by the clueless. Most resumes overstate actual experience, so my feeling is it tends to work out. Especially when the hiring manager needs a body in place and there is frankly NO ONE IN EXISTENCE ON THE PLANET who a) meets the requirements and b) would actually work for the salary in question.
The field I am in - IT - your actual experience tends to more or less match an appropriate salary. The HR Drones that wrote the req don’t tend to make the actual hiring decisions, so this nonesense tends to not be relevant: They have no idea what the requirements are, they have no idea how to read a technical resume, they pass along resumes that “seem” to fit, and the whole thing ends up with the person who actually knows what is needed.
Podkayne - That actually reminds me of the form i had to fill in for my current job - it had lots of “mini essay” sections asking things like “give an example of a situation where you have demonstrated good leadership skills”.
The Problem…
Each section had to be 100 words or less
You had to give the name and address of someone who could verify the situation as well as their reason for being there
when i rang up and asked they verified that the name address etc. were INCLUDED in the word count :rolleyes:
