Job Hunting Bullshit

[George_Kaplin]

Here’s some job hunting bullshit…

My company has recently relocated to fucking Arse-end-On-Tweed and I’ve resigned because, unfortunately, I don’t drive and Arse-end-On-Tweed is not accessible by public transport.

Since then I’ve been checking out loads of jobs in London and have learnt a very valuable lesson, which I now impart to you:

At some time in working life you may feel it necessary to apply, via recruitment agencies, for jobs in your nearest metropolis which, for me, happens to be London. If your application is picked up by one of these agencies, make damn sure, when they phone you to arrange the preliminary interview, that they tell you explicitly there is absolutely nothing in your CV/resume which could potentially fuck you over.

Twice now, fucking twice, I’ve applied online for what looked like perfect positions and twice some gormless fucking spastic from a recruitment agency has phoned me up to arrange the preliminary interview. Twice I’ve gone all the way to London with high hopes, filled out all their little forms, aced all their little tests, and given interviews from the top drawer. And TWICE, these waterheaded, slack-jawed, mongoloid fuckwits have turned around and said “Well, Mr Kaplin, you’re obviously a very strong candidate, but we don’t think you have quite enough experience to fill this role”

Oh really, you cunt? How did you figure that out? Could it be FROM MY FUCKING RESUME?!? My fucking resume which you’ve had in your gimpy little hand since I first applied? The CV you were probably looking at when you called me for the appointment? You fucking timewasting motherfucker. If you didn’t think I was qualified, why did you ask me come for the interview? You made me spend twenty fucking quid on a train ticket, waste an entire day, and get my hopes up for no good reason at all.

Arsewit.

[Voyager]

@George_Kaplin

Oh really, you cunt? How did you figure that out? Could it be FROM MY FUCKING RESUME?!? My fucking resume which you’ve had in your gimpy little hand since I first applied? The CV you were probably looking at when you called me for the appointment? You fucking timewasting motherfucker. If you didn’t think I was qualified, why did you ask me come for the interview? You made me spend twenty fucking quid on a train ticket, waste an entire day, and get my hopes up for no good reason at all.

Arsewit.

You probably don’t want to work for a company who employs dolts who would waste your time and theirs interviewing you when they never would hire you, unless you were hiding some great experience in your resume. It is possible that they are lying about the real reason not to hire you.

I thought that you were going to complain about services that take your resume and mangle it. I used to get some from a service that put all the resumes they got into their own format. Unfortunately this was done by brain dead monkeys who had no idea of the terms used in the field. Never let anyone send something out for you without reviewing it first.

[vivalostwages]

Broomstick, please check your PMs.

[MOIDALIZE]

I’d like to bitch about transcripts for a moment.

I’m applying for jobs and some require a copy of my undergraduate transcript. My school charges me $10 per transcript, unless I order multiples, in which case each additional transcript is $7.75. $10 for a few sheets of paper that some fat administrator can access on her computer in a few seconds. I called the school today to see if I could access an unofficial copy in PDF format to save on my computer. I figure in many cases an unofficial copy will work fine. They said “no, you have to pay for an official copy.” They’ve taken a necessary part of the job search of almost every student, automated it (for the most part), and turned it into a source of profit for the school.

Thanks for nothing.

[Ichbin_Dubist]

@Tuckerfan

You might have a point, if they were using things like dropdown boxes for positions, but when its a fill in the blank box, where you can key in anything you want, nope.

A friend showed me a job application website for a large corporation, with numerous drop-down menus for personal information. She came up up short when the menu for “university” didn’t have her alma mater, the University of Bridgeport. Admittedly, the school has had some troubles, but that’s no reason to delete it from your list. There was no option to enter your school manually, or skip the question, or select “other.”

So she picked the University of Connecticut. Pretty close.

[Martini_Enfield]

@MOIDALIZE

I’d like to bitch about transcripts for a moment.

I’m applying for jobs and some require a copy of my undergraduate transcript. My school charges me $10 per transcript, unless I order multiples, in which case each additional transcript is $7.75. $10 for a few sheets of paper that some fat administrator can access on her computer in a few seconds. I called the school today to see if I could access an unofficial copy in PDF format to save on my computer. I figure in many cases an unofficial copy will work fine. They said “no, you have to pay for an official copy.” They’ve taken a necessary part of the job search of almost every student, automated it (for the most part), and turned it into a source of profit for the school.

Thanks for nothing.

Why not scan an official copy into your computer and save it as a .pdf? You can get a perfectly functional HP printer/scanner here for $60 that can save scanned images as .pdf, something I’ve found very useful for archiving my published articles.

[MOIDALIZE]

@Martini_Enfield

Why not scan an official copy into your computer and save it as a .pdf? You can get a perfectly functional HP printer/scanner here for $60 that can save scanned images as .pdf, something I’ve found very useful for archiving my published articles.

That’s what I decided to do after calling them today. However, if an employer specifically asks for an official sealed transcript, I’ll be forced to pony up another $10.

[Beware_of_Doug]

@gonzomax

There are more people after jobs than there are jobs. The employers can demand whatever they want and they have a good chance to get it. The standards may be too high for the position but they will likely get someone to fill it. When there was close to full employment they were not so demanding and were a hell of a lot more polite.

I remember going around for a few interviews during the recession of 1991. HR people occasionally talked to you in such gravely dismissive terms that it seemed they wanted to counsel people to drop out of the workforce entirely. Perhaps their sympathies lay with their fellow HR people, crushed under endless applicants for a handful of slots with ludicrously inflated qualifications, forced to repeat dozens of times daily, “Yes, the elevator brass polisher position does require ten years’ experience, five written references and fluency in spoken Hungarian,” to total strangers over the telephone.

[Hostile_Dialect]

Maybe it’s just me, but “Arse-end-on-Tweed” is just so much better than “East Bumfuck”. Sometimes I really do wish I were English.

@Beware of Doug

Perhaps their sympathies lay with their fellow HR people, crushed under endless applicants for a handful of slots with ludicrously inflated qualifications, forced to repeat dozens of times daily, “Yes, the elevator brass polisher position does require ten years’ experience, five written references and fluency in spoken Hungarian,” to total strangers over the telephone.

I LOLed. I LOLed hard.

[Nava]

@Randy_Seltzer

If I saw something like this in the United States, I’d assume that the employer was going for labor certification.

I’ve been in the situation of receiving an “order to apply” from INEM, for a job which fitted me to a T. INEM is Spain’s unemployment service: if they give you an order to apply, you have to contact the company listed and, at the very least, go in to have the letter from INEM stamped to show that you aren’t just sitting on your arse collecting benefits. Many companies don’t use INEM (which is free for both parts) because they think it won’t work, but it’s a vicious circle thing. In this case, like I said, the ad could have been written for me.

The lady on the other end of the phone was very surprised that INEM had found someone. She was even more surprised that I did, indeed, fit the requirements. She explained, in a very embarrased voice, that they actually had an internal candidate and had sent the ad to INEM because “the Americans require it” (Spanish subsidiary of US company). OK, I said, can I fax you the letter from INEM and you fax it back stamped? Would you like a copy of my resume along with it in case you get a vacancy?
In the example I posted, the reason for the physically impossible “under 25” (which discards 99.9999999% of “superior engineers” and “architects”) was that employers pay less SS tax for an employee under age 25. The rest required an age of at least 30, assuming one parent French and the other one German… or maybe someone from Andorra.

[catsix]

Randy Seltzer said:
If I saw something like this in the United States, I’d assume that the employer was going for labor certification.

You’ve seen a job ad in the United States that had an age ceiling on it?

I was under the impression that other than requiring that an employee be over the age where it is permissible to operate the required machinery for the job, it was not legal to make age a requirement for any job here.

So you can require that your employee be at least 18 years of age, or at least 21 years of age depending upon the specific laws relating to the equipment they must operate, but you would be in extremely hot water if you ever listed ‘below age X’ as a job requirement.

Nava said:
In the example I posted, the reason for the physically impossible “under 25” (which discards 99.9999999% of “superior engineers” and “architects”) was that employers pay less SS tax for an employee under age 25. The rest required an age of at least 30, assuming one parent French and the other one German… or maybe someone from Andorra.

I suppose it’s a good thing that in the United States, age is one of those things protected by anti-discrimination laws.

[dropzone]

I’m putting in 2.5 days at my old job this week. Tuesday is my day to call into Unemployment and certify weeks I didn’t work. I got home too late to call in because their COMPUTERIZED system is only in operation between 7AM and 7PM. I caught myself muttering, “They sure don’t make it easy for working peop…” :rolleyes:

[Tuckerfan]

@dropzone

I’m putting in 2.5 days at my old job this week. Tuesday is my day to call into Unemployment and certify weeks I didn’t work. I got home too late to call in because their COMPUTERIZED system is only in operation between 7AM and 7PM. I caught myself muttering, “They sure don’t make it easy for working peop…” :rolleyes:

What is it with that shit? When I was first laid off, I could log onto the state’s website first thing Sunday morning, file for my unemployment, then get my check on Tuesday (no direct deposit). Then so many people in the state were laid off, that it overloaded the system, and they limited the days you could do your weekly certification. Now, I can only register on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If I register too late in the day on Monday, I won’t get my check until Thursday (and let me tell you, that the bounty of that $197/wk check just knows no limits :rolleyes: ). So now, instead of hitting the jobsites first thing Monday morning, I have to futz around with the state’s unemployment site (and forget about calling to register, I wouldn’t be able to get through until Friday if I did that). Its computerized, so I should be able to log in anytime on Sunday, but I can’t, and I can’t log in anytime on Monday, just between the hours of 8AM and 5PM. :rolleyes:

[dropzone]

We can register online, and it works fine if nothing goes wrong. But if something does, tech support’s answer to every question is, “You’ll have to go into the office.”

Bi-weekly certification can ONLY be done over the phone.

[Tuckerfan]

@dropzone

We can register online, and it works fine if nothing goes wrong. But if something does, tech support’s answer to every question is, “You’ll have to go into the office.”

Bi-weekly certification can ONLY be done over the phone.

We have the reverse problem: If something goes wrong, you have to call them on the phone, there is nothing they can do for you in the office.

[dropzone]

Didn’t say I could get any help from the (very nearly useless) office people. Just said what the (completely useless) tech support people said. Fortunately, it worked itself out.

[sailor]

Monty Python’s job interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP0sqRMzkwo

[Moirai]

Spud’s job interview from Trainspotting.

[msmith537]

@Siam_Sam

Comment on networking: I’ve known at least a couple of people who lived to network. They were always “out there” searching for a better job, even as soon as they’d gotten a new one, and networking was their god. They’d schmooze with you and keep in touch and seem to be your friend, but eventually if it became clear that you could probably never help them get a job, they’d cut you loose. If you’re intent on networking, then fine, but don’t pretend to be someone’s bosom buddy just because you think they can benefit you in the future. That’s kind of icky.

Meh. I do the same thing and can usually spot the difference. Pretty much everyone is full of shit anyway. It’s like “funny, now you want to have lunch with me now that I’m working at a big company you think you will hire your firm.”

Right now, any interview I have with any sort of consulting firm is interested in me only because a) they think I have a bunch of clients I can bring over with me or b) I work at a Fortune 500 company and they think it will be an “in” for them.

[kaylasdad99]

@MOIDALIZE

That’s what I decided to do after calling them today. However, if an employer specifically asks for an official sealed transcript, I’ll be forced to pony up another $10.

I can see why a school one wishes to attend as a student would want an official sealed transcript*, but what kind of an employer would need one?

And, AIUI, it’s the official sealing that makes it cost $10. Sealing wax is not cheap, and it isn’t getting any cheaper*

**That’s a joke, btw.