WHOSE JOB IS IT?
Author: Clarke Douglas Constant

© Clarke Douglas Constant

During my search for employment some patterns have emerged; patterns not so savory. There are seemingly jobs out there (or are there?) but I am uncertain as to how many actually exist even though advertised and suspect others are subject to certain schemes and are never filled.

First of all, most recruiters; be they company human resources types or associated with recruiting firms, are for the most part incompetent. Here are a few scary examples:

- I received a call from a recruiter telling me the position had been filled. I said “Okay thanks for calling and keep me in mind,” At that the recruiter’s tone changed and the recruiter went literally on the attack, demeaning my credentials and stating that I did not have the proper “key word” for the position in my resume! Turns out, the job description did not emphasize that the position was heavy on this one word, and portrayed a position requiring multiple talents. Had I known I may have structured the submitted documents differently. But further, the recruiter did not realize that this one word was part of an overall, encompassing acronym which was in the resume. These days, if recruiters are going to require every single applicable “key word” to be listed in a resume, only titles, abbreviations, acronyms, and buzz words would comprise the resume and even at that would create a tome that no one would care to wade through.

- Associated with the above example, most recruiters don’t read anything anyway. I routinely receive calls telling me I don’t have this or that experience. When I advise them otherwise, they emphatically state “Well, it’s not in your resume!” After directing them to the location in the resume they reply; “Sure enough, I’ll be darned, I didn’t see that.” Many who call want you to read the resume to them saying “You applied for this position, what experience have you had?” Some even admit upfront they’ve not read the submittal. Makes you wonder.

- Other instances of recruiters exhibiting their lack of knowledge has involved my having to explain what the position was to recruiters calling me and what the meaning of acronyms were to which the response was “Well, thank you, I’ve always wondered what those meant.”

- I’ve had seemingly perfect matches between my experience and job requirements; later verified by independent parties, yet submittal of an application was followed by an e-mail in less than ten seconds saying I was not qualified while a seemingly less appropriate fit with the same firm was followed by a less than ten second e-mail indicating “Congratulations you are qualified and will be considered.” Obviously someone had a less than adequate knowledge of what the requisites for a given position were and thus could not produce an accurate description. And another thing concerning this one, how could even a computer scan; by today’s standards, what is a rather lengthy and complex cover letter and resume in such a short time? As we shall see, maybe they really did not want to fill the job.

- Here are some other indications of recruiter problem areas and deficiencies, which mercifully for readers do not include the misspellings, incomplete and nonsensical sentences, etc.:

- Received an e-mail saying “Good News, we have three position that match your
qualifications!” Turns out there were only two (?). Also, I am an engineer and the two positions were Administrative Assistant at a financial firm and Front Office Dental Assistant. On the ball there!

- Job description that reads “Recent college graduate with consulting experience.” Can’t be much if any!

- Another description requires “Recent college graduate with five years corporate
experience.” There are many examples of the situation where something does not add up such as “Looking for a graduate from college within the last year with five years experience.”

- Applied for a position in New York State which it turns out was in Blythe California! Close enough, right?

- One of my favorites, “PhD with seven years experience to run the department, perform field work, oversee security, assist human resources and management, and fill in with supervisory support as needed. ,000 per year.”

- Perhaps my most favorite is “Need 5-7 years experience for this position but 10-15 is required.”

- Yet another reads “Phase I and II Auditor with 1-2 years experience. Must have performed 75-100 audits.” Now, I realize you all may not know about Phase I and II auditing but if you only have one year experience that’s two audits per week. Possible I suppose but unlikely for someone with only 1-2 years experience and even more unlikely if very many Phase II audits; much more complex, are in the 75-100.

There is also afoot schemes to not fill positions yet continually advertise them for some reason; ones such as these:

- One trick is to write job descriptions so vague that you think you might fit but really don’t know. Well, guess what, you don’t and no one else does because there is so little information it is easy for recruiters to disqualify you. “We are looking for someone with Front Desk Porter experience [not in the position description] and I don’t see that in your resume.” This was an actual case even though the position was for an Environmental Engineer.” The recruiters excuse; “Well, you may have to go out into the environment to tote bags.” Could be the makings of an “Indiana Jones” sequel; see there are some positives in all this! Come on, how bogus can you get! Of course this could possibly be merely a case of the incompetence issue noted above but someone that, well you know, it seems hard to believe.

- Another is to never allow you to update your resume once submitted; “You’ve already applied” or, “Duplicate entry is in the database” or, “Once you’ve applied for a position, no need to apply for others.” Seems rather cut and dried doesn’t it?

- Here’s a goody. “Posted date 01 Jan 04, Closing date 01 Jan 05.” What company would or could carry an opening that long if the position is really to be filled?

- There are several recruiting firms; some related to each other, that as near as I can tell have not filled a position in a year or so. One firm has the same speech every time and it goes something like this. “Why do you want to live in [wherever the job is located]. You really don’t want to live there and besides you really don’t want this position. Do you know what we do and how we operate?” I finally began saying no to the question and after some hum-hawing around the response was always “Well we fill positions for employers.” Da, I’d have never guessed that, besides that is supposed to be their purpose anyway. They routinely have ads that state “Recruiter turning into Sales.” I wondered what that meant; sounds like an MLM or otherwise home based business. I wished to know more about one of their recruiting positions before applying so I found the phone number and called. The individual answering didn’t have a clue what or who I was asking about and for. Finally the individual found someone who asked ”What do you want and how did you get this number?” I told the person of the position I wished to discuss with so and so recruiter and that the number came from an Internet search. “Just a minute.” Another person came on and I repeated my request. The recruiter was out but the individual said they would have the recruiter call, which of course never happened. “And by the way that’s not the name the recruiter uses.” Why was the actual name not in the job advertisement? I then asked if this was an MLM or work at home business; the response, “We work out of an office.” The MLM portion of the query was never answered. As an aside to this, I had an acquaintance who had left the recruiting business; being just about as fed up with all the hoorah surrounding this mess as I am, ask me if I had tried to land a recruiting position. I said yes. He responded “And you didn’t get anywhere did you? And you won’t. You know too much and probably soon would be running the place and fire them all and they know that!”

- Many companies and recruiters have the same positions over and over either day after day for literally months or years or re-advertise every week, other week, or on a monthly basis. Salaries seem to be dropping so the companies may be playing a waiting game; trying to find the market bottom. “After all, we advertised the job at ,000, then at ,000 and still got takers, so, let’s try for ,000!” Sort of like the; “to the extreme” case of the PhD advertisement described earlier. The recruiters though are perplexing. One notorious firm that has not filled jobs and repeats is slowly but surely taking over the entire recruiting and job board industry; doing it with only a few offices and recruiters. Now, recruiters make their daily bread by filling positions. How are any of them that don’t’ fill positions or are in the repeating game, let alone this one that’s taking over, surviving? Almost sounds like some outside money scheme is financing the whole show!

- SPAM is a big part of the job market. All of a sudden, this company or that has job openings in just about every city in the country and they are either a daily, weekly, or monthly advertising event. One company has had 10 pages of the same openings on the boards daily for at least six months or more. These are well known firms. Seems like someone doesn’t have enough to do!

There’s the tale of my observations and research into the consistently incompetent, always confusing, often bogus, and seamy world of jobs. These revelations leave us with the question, where does one go to seek a valid employment opportunity?







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Engineer/ Environmental, Civil, Mining, Manager with over 30 years experience.

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