So.
The job hunt has been quite the adventure. Things are changing since the last time I was looking for work, back in '05. And a lot different than the last time before that, in '97. The process now is utterly dehumanizing and demoralizing.
The current situation has made it very much an employer's market, and I can't help but get the feeling that it's going to their heads. Every job I've applied for has been online, either by sending a resume out, or using a web-based interface. In the vast majority of cases, I didn't even get an acknowledgment that I'd sent anything at all. Not even an automated response telling me that their system even noticed me attempting to interact with it.
I know that a lot of places are now using text scanners that are specifically designed to reject the majority of submitted resumes if you don't have pretty much the exact same keywords in the exact same order as in the job listing. So I'd literally have to rewrite my resume for every single job I applied for. At the very least, and automated "We got your resume. We will evaluate it to see if you are a good match for the job you applied for, blah, blah, blah" would be nice.
OK. So let's say that I made it past the machine and a human being actually looks at my resume and calls me.
Here's what happens next. I get a call from a recruiter. In too many cases, the recruiter simply reads the job description back to me, often with a certain timbre to their voice that makes me wonder if they'd ever actually talked to the client company at all, of if they just reposted whatever the company gave them without any further thought to the matter. We'd chat, they'd say they have to send my resume to someone else, and would get back to me. And then not. And it wasn't always the recruiter. When I got the offer for the Rhode Island job, I called a couple firms that had also submitted my resume to clients to see if they'd heard anything, and the clients wouldn't then get back to them. Yet another step in the chain where simply ignoring a job applicant entirely is the norm, not the exception.
Of course, sometimes it is the recruiter that doesn't feel like giving me a two-minute call to tell me the client selected someone else for a job, as I've found on some of the follow-ups I've made after not hearing anything at all one way or the other for a week.
And then there are the true fucking incompetents.
( Cockpunches! )On the other hand, there are the kudos.
( Compliments! ) crappy jazz...
okay
cranky
exhausted
