Dahahaha!

Okay so I was sick again today and now I feel fully caught up on your life. I’m such a stalker. Anywho, not only do we have similar names, I think we have similar tastes in TV. What have you latched on to this fall season? I haven’t been awed by anything yet. I watched Pushing Daisies and it was interesting but I’m not sure. My husband likes Chuck, but I don’t know…

Hope your having a good night and good luck with the job search!

Hillary

We’re on the other side of the hiring table here. I’ve got to tell you, from Atlanta, if we find a candidate who can write cogently in complete sentences & paragraphs and who can also ‘figure some’ using (oh My!) Math, and who’s either in college or a grad, we usually hire them.

We regularly get college grads who are as dumb as dirt, and have the common sense of eggplants. Accounting grads who can’t (and won’t) add properly. Accounting ‘professionals’ who can’t write to save their lives. For whom logic is a foreign language they can not comprehend. Ever. Well concealed drug addicts in search of easy treatment options. Mid life millionaires in search of the easy life to park their non productive carcases. Dizzy former sorority sisters who obviously got by on something other than their wits or smarts, but do interview well enough. Interns so green, they need to be instructed in detail on how to load paper properly into a copier. They can’t even search using ‘Google’ properly.

It’s really amazing, and it really hampers all levels of business. We think it’s a combo of the water, the really ’soft bigotry of the lowest expectations’, (thanks George!), and well a bunch of other ’stuff that would probably insult several younger generations. But it’s truly amazing. Presently we’ve got an office of part timers we pay full time salaries with handsome benefits to, and between them we might get about 2 full time equivalent positions worth of ‘full time work’. (But perhaps only on alternative fortnights when really lucky). Fellow business owners we know now solve this problem by hiring no one under the age of 40 or 50, but they’re almost ’semi-retired’ by that age. Hence the reliance on scads of ‘independent contractors’. Still everyone we hire seemingly has a side business (or several) that they’re nursing along. Property development deals. Non profit marketing. Modeling. Rebabing. House ‘flipping’, etc. We just supply them with the office they’ve always wanted. But full time work? Not so much with us.

We too have to pay Monster for the incredible privilege of a deluge of know nothing fresh grads/interns to hand in garbled resumes for positions that they’re not even remotely qualified for. It’s like a slot machine mentality for all too many. ‘Hey if I can manage to get this job, and then leverage it up after 6 mo. until this new position opens, then it’s making my move to Mogul-dom by the time I’m 35!’ Everyone wants the Big Score & Right Away. They deserve it dammit! They’ve got a 3.25GPA, a ‘good personality’ and they’re good at Word too. Almost no one under the age of 40 we’ve ever met is ‘good at’ Word. No one is ever proficient at or on any of the vital business tools & many computer software/languages they cite.

So just like dating, you’re up against a blizzard of vaguely attractive sounding lies. All looking for that ‘big break’ on your dime or back. In order to ‘move on to bigger & better things’. They just know they deserve only the best. The problem seems to be that they can only (typically) render dreck & sub par performance, but expect everyone to be truly grateful for their ‘good efforts’. As a result, we’re in a constant hiring mode, and it’s costly. You can tell I’m real happy about that too.

Cheers & Good Luck in your search! ‘VJ’

Such a good analogy, and so funny that I hated dating but love interviews. Seriously. If I could make a job of being interviewed, I’d be all over it. Not that I’m particularly good at it, but I do enjoy the process. Yeah, I’m weird.

Anyway, I hope that BOTH go well. Job first, then boy.

Ways in which the job search is nothing like online dating:

1- I’ve never interviewed with a company and had them complain about the last person who had the job.

2 - The company rarely asks is I’m interested in having children.

3- My prospective employer has never come back to my house and stolen anything.

4- The person interviewing me has never told me that they were molested during our first interview.

5 - I only have to be concerned with my job interview skills.

[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptWays in which the job search is nothing like online dating:. 1- I’ve never interviewed with a company and had them complain about the last person who had the job. 2 - The company rarely asks is I’m interested in having children. … [...]

Loved the info provided by VJ! I’m so hesitant to hype my skills in interviews now I figure I can pad a bit (I know that’s not what he intended). Good luck with the interviews H, I’m going to have to start interviewing for a job too and I’m not looking forard to it. I can avoid the dating interviews, but sadly I have to get out there and get another job ASAP!

I hate applying for a job via the Internet, too. I guess companies have taken this opportunity to be completely neglectful about receiving resumes. They seem to think they are anonymous and it’s okay to be rude.

And yes, it is just about as bad as online dating — which I’ve been doing since they thought of it (well way back to 1994).

I did have one good experience with the personnel department of a university. The person assigned to recruiting for the position actually e-mailed me to ask for more information. (I had to certify my driver’s license! Who knew?)

Then, we had a series of back and forth e-mails. I never did hear from them about an interview, but I admire their personnel people — or at least one of them. She said they had reclassified the position. ARGH. My dream job down the drain.

So funny, and Dawn, I am the same way, I love being interviewed

A tip for online job searchers, do anything possible to find contacts in that company (hoovers.com., google, etc) or even just a main phone number. Call and ask for different people (ie director of operations, vp of sales, etc), than try to find their contact info. It is actually pretty easy to get someone to spill the email address. Than send resume and cover letter directly to that person, referencing the online posting. They will be impressed that you circumvented the system and are most likely waiting for in house recruiters/hr people to forward them resumes.

With jobs, whenever I get my check, no matter how much it is, I know I’m gonna get screwed.

With dates, it ain’t necessarily gonna happen.

VJ, are you hiring?

ideally, you should be using Yahoo! Finance to vet your dates and Myspace to vet your prospective employers.

We’re Always hiring good folks. So if you’re in Atlanta, have a degree, can write & figure, & have some business/RE experience/management experience (broadly defined), look us up.

But yeah, pad the damn resumes as much as you can, we’ll sort them out anyway. We’ve caught out several plagiarizers too, using nothing much more than logic and sentence structure. They fail immediately. Out of the dozen resumes I’ve seen in the last week or so, we’ll probably interview perhaps 1-2 people. It will probably be 200% more than necessary, and they’ll likely be spectacularly unqualified. (Just like some of the staff). But being unqualified when hired and then Untrainable when employed? Well then, that makes you special indeed. We can keep you on for awhile while looking for your replacement. That’s how desperate we are for warm bodies. But yeah, to the miserable experiences with accounting folks, add the banking folks to that too. Most can’t add & figure. Why should we expect such from former bankers? Geesh! Cheers, ‘VJ’

“They will be impressed that you circumvented the system and are most likely waiting for in house recruiters/hr people to forward them resumes.”

Actually, when I was hiring people, I would get really annoyed when someone circumvented the system. I much rather preferred that the applicants followed the directions I asked them to follow in the job listing, because that means, to me, that they can follow directions. I’ve had people track down my work email to send me resumes and I found the idea of someone going to extremes to find out information I didn’t want to give them in the first place as off-putting professionally as I would romantically.

Of course, if you’re a friend of a friend and she told you to email me your resume, and you note that in your email, that’s fine. But a “cold” email from someone who decided on their own not to go through HR went in my circular file every time.

as usual, have to agree with jessica. I’d use linked in and facebook as much as possible to try to connect with people at companies you’re interested in so you have a personal “in” but I def wouldn’t go the circumvention route. that’s why companies pay a lot of money to recruiters and HR folks - so they don’t need to waste their time going thru piles and piles of resumes.

and I’m sorry VJ’s experiences has been so exasperating. we just went thru a round of hiring on behalf of one of our UK-based clients and it couldn’t have gone better. we were able to hired berkeley and SC grads - and they all came through personal connections or craigslist, believe it or not.

I have reflected on the dating/interviewing parallels many times as well. To add to your list:

Both dating and interviewing require crazy amounts of perseverance and self-esteem.

However, with interviewing at least you (usually) have a chance to talk about yourself. The ratio of talking is the opposite of dating: dates talk 90% of the time; interviewers talk maybe 10% of the time (unless they’re REALLY bad interviewers).

Also, to respond to the question of whether to circumvent or not … I had a guy apply for a job at my last company. He was immediately weeded out because he did not have direct experience in the field. He called to follow up. I retrieved his resume from the “no” pile. He explained in a really nice, respectful way why we should consider him. He excelled in the interviews. We hired him. Far and away the BEST guy for the job. He was an organizational lifesaver. His initiative was a really good thing for him and for us.

Belatedly, I wish to add my experience to that of Dori.

I recently changed jobs, joining a very large, very well-known firm. (I mention its size and prestige in order to contextualize my circumventing story.)

I was initially rejected because the HR rep who did the initial interview didn’t understand enough technology/writing stuff to transmit my interview answers faithfully to the hiring manager. Fortunately, she also did me the favor of forwarding me internal correspondence including his name and e-mail address. So I circumvented, and where Dori writes

***
[Her circumventer] explained in a really nice, respectful way why we should consider him. He excelled in the interviews. We hired him…His initiative was a really good thing for him and for us.
***

My now-boss seems to have felt much the same way.

In circumventing, I decided I had little to lose and plenty to gain. This assessment turned out to be on the money.

Good luck!