This is very common, especially in government jobs and contractors. They already have the candidate they want to fill the position and have already interviewed them when the position was opened for internal applicants.
Job bids are always opened for internal applicants before the job is advertised for public applicants. The bid is then held open for a certain length of time and a variety of applicants are interviewed.
Then they hire the person that they had in mind at the start and he/she either moves up or laterally within the organization.
Technically all the rules have been followed but the only real job openings are at the very bottom of the ladder. All the other jobs will be filled by persons already employed moving within the organization. This is the only and always way that it happens where I work, a contractor for the Dept of Labor even.
QFT. They want someone pre-trained in all their particular skills who will work for peanuts. One that I’ll never figure out is why hiring managers think they know what they are doing. Consider how many people who are employed hate their jobs, are incompetent or sabotage the workplace you’d think hiring managers would realize they are hiring a shit-ton of deadbeats. But they really think if you give them 100 resumes they can pick the best one of the pack.
Several years ago, I had a phone interview that I totally aced. They offered to pay me to fly to Tampa for a face-to-face interview. (Turned out that I had to buy my own fare and pay for my own hotel, then submit an expense report to get reimbursed!)
When I got there, the interview process was completely different, asking me questions that were not more in-depth forms of those that had been asked over the phone, but about completely different technologies that I had had limited or no experience with. This was followed by a hands-on demonstration of my lack of skills in those same, not previously mentioned, technologies.
The person asking the hardest questions and administering the physical quiz was a man from India (he had also been on the phone interview). I suspected that he was seeking a work visa. (I had learned from another H1B worker that companies that wanted to sponsor an alien had to show that they had made a good-faith effort to find an American Citizen to do the same job, and hire the alien only after they were unable to find an American that could do the same job.) I did not receive an offer.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that they aren’t out to get you.
George Carlin used to talk about oxymorons. Jumbo shrimp, yada yada
Then he started in on some of his own:
Business ethics, military intelligence, and so on …
I believe that there rarely is a “good faith” consideration on the part of corporations to any individual. Including there own employees. But, that could be a whole other thread.
I had one HR genius who told me that a student I had recommended for a job did not get an interview because they were lacking experience in “Squills”. What this heck is “squills”? I asked them.
Turns out the HR moron was looking for “SQL” on the resume, and the applicant had said that they had experience with “Structured Query Language”.
I heard a motivational speaker talk about the time he was hounded and hounded by a HR department to apply for a managerial position. He had said that he wasn’t really interested and didn’t feel qualified, but they kept pushing and pushing, calling every day, etc. He eventually caved in and applied. He was immediately called for an interview, and then told that he was a spectacular candidate and to wait a few days. He didn’t get the job. He later concluded that HR was targeting him because they needed to demonstrate that they were considering African-American candidates, and at that time he was one of only a few black people in his field in the area.
This is one of the reasons why I simply don’t buy the whole “Employees are our most valuable asset” crap. When lean times come, what do managers dump first? Employees! All that expensive equipment in the server room? Not going anywhere. Office space, hell no. Hardwood furniture in the executive conference room? No way they could possibly bear to sell that…nope, bye bye 10% of underlings, but the rest of them are still our most valuable asset!
Once, the ass-pipe in charge came into where I worked, and encouraged me to apply for a position, interviewed me, then…
[spoiler]…hired his daughter (straight outta High School, no experience/education) for the nice State Job with requirements that look like it was designed using my resume. :mad:
I can understand his fuckitry, but what about the 3 other assholes on the interview panel? They should be ashamed of themselves![/spoiler]
Sorry about the job, buddy. Sometimes it’s not a conspiracy. If they bring in three candidates for interviews, two of them aren’t going to get hired. Try not to think of it as a reflection of your worth. There are a lot of qualified people out there, and nobody has an easy time job hunting these days.
If you’d like career or job search advice, let us know your industry and we can offer some advice.
Well, when I wrote that post, what I mostly did was send resumes into a black hole.
Except, almost exactly one hour after I wrote that, I got a call back on a job I’d interviewed for six months ago. A new position opened up, and they want me to start in two weeks.
Virtually all government civil service jobs require that the job be posted and they interview several candidates when the decision makers are going to hire their favorite lick-spittle anyway.
That’s not true for work visas (H-1B or otherwise) in the vast majority of circumstances. It’s only true for labor certification, which is generally the first stage of the employment-based green card process. The only qualifications-related requirements for an H-1B are that a) the job must require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent in a specific field or fields; and b) the prospective employee must have the relevant education and/or experience.
$30k/yr for someone with a Masters Degree? What the fuck industry is that? Holy Shit. That’s especially shitty if it’s listed as a requirement for position and they only offer $30k. It’s a bit different if it’s entry level or something and you just happen to have your masters.
Actually, come to think of it, there is no way a company is going to list an MS as a requirement for a job only paying $30k/yr. I’d have to see it to believe it.
I get you. I haven’t had an interview in 7 years. I can’t move, and I don’t want to move, but making plans to go back to my job after this maternity leave has me so stressed out I’m too anxious to sleep at all.
Fuck it. Buy a tiny house on a farm and grow vegetables and have a hydroponic fish farm and some solar panels and a windmill or something like that. Masters and 30K? Our blue collar predecessors of previous generations would be rolling with laughter at that, things sure have changed in the last 30 years or so. I really don’t have any career advice for you, sorry. i’m just a bicycle mechanic.
Where they interviewed people just to get an idea of what the competition was paying and give some insight into what other companies are doing (people say alot at interviews).
To put paranoia into their current employees. At one job interview we had to be there early and I noticed, right when most of the regular employees were coming in to work. No better motivation than seeing some new people filling out applications as you are coming to work.
Sorry about the bad news. On the plus side, at least the TOLD you. I’ve had job interviews where no one bothered to follow up with me, after I had a face-to-face interview.
On the not-so-plus side, it’s pretty insulting to be told they are “still looking for applicants.” It’s one thing if they regretfully tell you they wish they could have hired you but there was another candidate who just barely edged you out, it was a tough call, yadda-yadda. But to tell you they are “still looking” is quite a slap-in-the-face rejection. Unless you have misread the situation and your credentials/interview don’t qualify you for the position as well as you imagine, they are not only ridiculously picky, they are insensitive to boot.
But you will get through this. By the time they are 40 or 50, almost everyone has their share of stories about incompetent rejections. (For the record, I’ve had a couple of good ones too - it’s really great when the person who interviewed you has the guts to call and tell you that you didn’t get the job, and kindly tell you why. Of course, then it hurts even more, because you know that great people work there
Of course it’s heavily field-dependent, but $30k is an insult with a Master’s.
My department’s new guy was hired this way. He applied for a different job 6 months ago, and HR pulled his resume out of the “Save” pile when we needed somebody.
