Job hunting rants

[ol]
[li]Recruiters who avoid responding to me when I attempt to follow up on a job/interview.[/li][li]Recruiters who get testy with me because I follow up on a job/interview (once a week for a month) until they actually respond to me.[/li][li]Recruiters who won’t even consider me for openings, even extremely short-term contracts, that don’t fall precisely within the tiny niche market I most recently worked in. I can design for other things, people! Really! I do know how![/li][li]Jobs openings that I interview for, and interview well for, which then are “canceled.” Twice, so far.[/li][li]Interviewers who tell the recruiter “she didn’t seem like she wanted it” when I spent an hour long interview detailing my experience (which perfectly fits the job description), and how much I enjoy what I do, how strongly I’d prefer to stay in my field (which again, perfectly fits the job description), and the last thing I say before leaving is “I’m really interested in this job.” Were we in the same interview??[/li][li]Job boards which might have one new opening that’s somewhat sorta semi-related to my experience every two weeks or so.[/li][li]Agencies which post openings on job boards by listing “Chicago” in the location field, but then mention that the actual job is in St. Louis in the description field. Dude, I don’t care where the agency is located.[/li][li]Agencies that just avoid talking to me, period. I call to re-activate, and I get “Oh, just submit your resume through our website. Someone will get back to you!” :dubious: You have me on file already, don’t you think arranging an in-person meet might be beneficial?[/li][li]Feeling like I’m submitting resumes into black holes, never to be seen or heard from again.[/li][/ol]

Sigh.

That’s exactly what it feels like to me.

Blah. Every time I sign on EDD they have a nice banner giving the state unemployment rate. Every time I see that (8.4% this morning!) I feel like I’m just chucking my resume into a well.

I picked the worst time to graduate, I swear. I shoulda gone super-senior.

[quote=“Kaio, post:1, topic:480952”]

[LIST=1][li]Interviewers who tell the recruiter “she didn’t seem like she wanted it” when I spent an hour long interview detailing my experience (which perfectly fits the job description), and how much I enjoy what I do, how strongly I’d prefer to stay in my field (which again, perfectly fits the job description), and the last thing I say before leaving is “I’m really interested in this job.” Were we in the same interview??[/li][/QUOTE]

Isn’t that a codephrase for, “She didn’t offer me a blowjob?” :wink:

More seriously, I have to say that most HR recruiters really don’t give a shit. They’re lazy, unprofessional slobs filling positions just because. They aren’t actually rewarded or punished for getting good hires or bad ones, so…

It’s so bad here that the unemployment office has extended the hours available for calling in to the phone lines to certify for your benefits. And I still have trouble getting through… which has never happened before.

I just want a contract position, doing accounts payable/accounting assistant work for six to 12 months. All the stinking contract positions in Calgary are downtown. I don’t want to go downtown - there’s the choice between parking for free and walking two miles into downtown, paying exorbitant rates to drive all the way downtown, or taking the bus with 300 of my closest friends every day. To make me even more frustrated, way back when there actually WAS an AP contract near where I live - except the shitheads at the temp agency called my cell phone after I asked them not to, and I missed the job (which, apparently, was the only contract job there will ever be in the north end of Calgary).

Actually, there are some jobs in the south end of town, too - which would involve three hours a day in my car on the most dangerous road in Calgary (possibly Alberta). I really don’t want to live here anymore. I feel completely squeezed out by the 400,000 people who have moved here after I did.

Ha. Well, she didn’t have the proper equipment for a blowjob, but then again I didn’t offer to munch the carpet, either. :stuck_out_tongue:

Worse yet? Getting a job, having the world promised and getting a dark, dank rat infested office next to what amounts to a homeless shelter wherein totally unprofessional people struggle in the quagmire of their own stupidity. That’s essentially what happened to Mrs. Jockey last week. She’s been a mess ever since. I’d like to kick her hiring manager right in the head.

Actually, if you are going through job boards and online postings, that’s pretty much what you are doing. In my last job I hired a lot of people for my group. When I asked how I could search through the resume’s submitted online through the company web site, I was told no one really knew where those resumes went anyway. It literally was a black hole.
I hate headhunters. I think they are all morons. It doesn’t matter if I am using them from the hiring managers side or the job hunters side. All they are doing is matching keywords from one database to keywords in another. They should do a search on “MONKEY OR BABOON OR CHIMPANZEE” and find their replacement. And I always love when they try to do their clumsy sales pitch to try to get you to consider a job you don’t want. “I think this is a great opportunity for you”. “Wow. You ARE really compelling. I think I will take your client’s dead end job in that shitty office tower with no air conditioning and no furniture in the lobby so I can look for another job in 6 months when they go out of business.”

Really what I hate more than anything though is when you find that job that you know you are going to take even though you know it isn’t a good fit because it’s probably the best thing you will find in the next 18 months.

Although that leads me to my next peave. It seems to take AT LEAST THREE FUCKING MONTHS to get hired by a company that I am a perfect fit for and actually likes me! So when some idiot headhunter asks “what have you been doing for the past 6 months when you were let go from wherever”, I feel like responding “fuck you! I was going through round after round of interviews for 6 months hoping they wouldn’t institute a hiring freeze in the middle of it!”

This is one of those things that I don’t want to believe, and yet it would explain my experience. Last time I was jobless, I put in literally hundreds of online job applications, each with my resume attached or linked. No response; zero.

Yet several times I got (temporary) work because an employer had been browsing the resumes on CareerBuilder or Monster and saw mine. Strange.

Now I’m in my second week of job-hunting again (having gone nuts and quit my job last week). God, I can’t take it if it’s months without a nibble again.

“I was operating an escort service out of my apartment.”

CareerBuilder, HotJobs, Monster and TheLadder.com (if you are in the >$100,000 range) are probably the only sites you need. And I wouldn’t even apply to the jobs on there. I would just leave my resume up as part of my passive search. (Another peeve, spam from headhunters forwarding you to some bullshit career site).

Really the best tool you can use is networking through your contacts on LinkedIn or even Facebook.

I had this in mind when my husband applied for the position which he now holds. This job was such a perfect fit for him and at such a good place that we didn’t want to risk trusting to the company’s hiring website. So I typed up a very well-composed application letter and, in addition to applying at the company’s website, sent the letter to the department head to whom the job would report. I have no idea if this was helpful or not; several Dopers warned me that it mightn’t be a good idea.

However, he got the job. The place is more human (a boutique hospital) than previous places he has worked (giddy Silicon Valley biotechs), so perhaps the letter helped things along.

I don’t even bother with those anymore, I just stick to the MarComm-specific sites. Because anything I could want to/be qualified to apply for is already duplicated over on CreativeHotlist or the like, and the rest of the search is filled with chaff sales or MLM or “WRK FRM HOME $$$BIG MONEY$$$” positions that were stuffed in every conceivable job category so filtering the search is utterly useless.

And yes, I’ve checked.

I’ve tried a couple different so-called networking sites over the years. They pretty much just sit there, useless, and I’ve certainly never met anyone through them. Or gotten a job through them. I don’t even bother trying to keep in touch with my friends through them anymore. Email works better.

And unfortunately, both DigitalEve Chicago and ChicWIT are now defunct or virtually so. There was a lot of garbage on the mailing list (especially ChicWIT, no one stayed on topic) but at least there were a few job listings that didn’t go anywhere else, and a whole bunch of people who’d see you if you posted an intro “I’m looking for this kind of work” email.

I’ve been really trying to leverage the recruiting agencies, but if I “push too hard” they get snippy with me, so I have no idea what else I can do. It fucking sucks.

Oh my god. I actually got a kiss-off letter from the place I applied to yesterday.

Is it sad that I feel like this is progress? :stuck_out_tongue:

Last week I had interviews in Rockford and Springfield. Since I don’t have a car, I had to rent one for 2 days and get a motel room for one night. So I spent about $200 just interviewing for jobs I might not get. Awesome.

Heh. I just got an email from Mutual of Omaha because they are expanding their San Diego office and need great salespeople. Sure. That’s why I have a SENIOR FINANCIAL ANALYST resume on Monster.

Yep, this is the part of job boards that irritates.

Check out craigslist. That is where I found the job I have now and my job is AWESOME. Lots of the people who apply to jobs on craigslist have craptacular resumes so if yours is full of properly spelled words and doesn’t specify that you would feel more comfortable working in a whites-only office or anything you have an excellent shot for the positions advertised there.

About 20 years ago I couldn’t find a job to save my soul. This was back before the internet had really taken off, so I looked through the newspaper as one resource.

Someone later told me that just because it’s posted in the paper, that doesn’t mean there’s an actual job. I.e. some places have an HR person who keeps a boatload of resumes on file just in case someone quits. It wasn’t really false advertising; the item never stated that there was an actual opening.

Illinois? Springfield is (or at least was) uber political. I interviewed for a state job and got the rejection letter, snail mail, the very next day. The state job was in Jacksonville, about 25 miles away, so I think they waited till they saw the whites of my eyes but probably had the rejection ready in the envelope before I even arrived. I nailed the interview and I know that I should have at least made the next round.

Still, they have to keep up the pretense of giving everyone a fair shot.:mad::rolleyes:

I would be happy if the idiots responding to our CL postings would at least READ THE DAMNED JOB DESCRIPTION.

I need web design folks who understand customer service. Please highlight how you fill that needed space. If you write poorly (or not at all), and you do not respond to specifics - you are showing me how you will deal with my clients.

ARGGGHGHGHGHGHGHHGHGHGH

I have also been on the other side where it was obvious that I was being interviewed so that they could claim to have done a search before giving the position to the internal candidate. With one of those it was so obvious that I felt guilty for sleeping in the bed they provided at the hotel, and eating on their expense account. A little. Well, no, not a bit.

I’ve been job hunting for over five months now and I’ve netted exactly one interview for a job making over $3.00 less an hour than I’m making now. I’ve sent out countless resumes and have submitted many online applications. If I’m lucky, I’ll get letters that will say my resume has been approved to go into the next stage of the selection process then I’ll receive another letter saying, “Thank you for submitting your resume but we’ve chosen another candidate. We’ll keep your resume on file…blah, blah, blah.”

Almost every single letter I’ve gotten has mentioned that they’ve received literally hundreds of resumes for that one job. I have over 20 years of office/administrative experience but I don’t have a degree. I can’t even get my foot in the door for an interview to sell myself. How in the hell can I compete against such odds?

So I’m stuck at Wally World and I’m thankful to have that, at least, regardless of how much I detest the company.

It’s been damned discouraging.