I'm tired of all the holiday cheer in all the recent topics. I want my old bitter TiB back. In the past couple of years, many employers seem to be taking advantage of the recession by acting like complete assholes since they know their applicants are so desparate for jobs they'll put up with anything. And if they won't put up with it then, well, there are hundreds of people in line behind them. Focus: What horror stories have you experienced while job hunting? What dickish move are you still stewing about weeks, months, years later? (I'm sure this behavior hasn't solely existed in the past couple of years, so it doesn't have to be limited to apparent Recession-related explanations.) My experiences: 1. Two summers ago, I had applied for some day joby job at what I think was a tea cafe as a barista. They called me back and said they actually were looking for someone to do writing and marketing for them, and would I like to interview for that position instead? Fuck yes I would. The next week, I giddily take the hour subway ride to their shop in the Upper East Side only to find it was closed. I check the time on my phone only to see I had a voicemail. During the subway ride (just to reiterate, that means an hour or less before the interview) I got a call from the assistant of the woman who was going to interview me saying she was sick and wasn't going to make it. I call her back, presumably to reschedule, and she says "Actually, since there are so many candidates, we're just going to cancel her interviews from today. Indefinitely." 2. About a month ago, I applied for a position that was basically tailor-made for me. It was a Canadian company that was looking to expand to New York, and they basically needed someone to start and run it from here. It was advertised on one of the most popular fashion blogs, so it wasn't some sketchy Craigslist find or anything, and when I got the call for an interview I was really, really excited. I had just gotten laid off, and had all this hope that it would be good luck to finally get a full-time reliable job. A few days later, I go to meet this woman who has flown in from Montreal, and I sit down and she explains the position and only after her little speech does she mention that it is part-time, temporary, and commission-only. It was basically set up so that I would work for free. Really bitch? You couldn't mention that in the ad? Or in the email to set up the interview? Or anywhere else along the line so I didn't have to waste this time and energy on a job it turns out I actually don't really give a shit about at all? 3. This didn't happen to me- thank god, or else I would probably be in jail right now for murder - but I heard it through the alumni grapevine since all the writing majors are all up in each other's shit when it comes to jobs and publications. A friend of a friend was being interviewed for her dream job and was so excited and thought the interview was going really well and her chances were really high when, at the very end of the interview when she asked what the process was from there, they told her that there wasn't actually any position open. They just wanted to conduct interviews to "see who was out there." I've pretty much been job-hunting non-stop since graduating in May '10, either to find more freelancing work, or to find a full-time position so I could stop freelancing, or now to find any kind of work at all, so I have a million of them. But those are the worst.
I had almost exactly that happen, I was applying for "Junior Java Developer" with requirements that said "1 year experience or post secondary education" and after our interview he said "Great personality but really we'd prefer it if you had 5-7 years development experience already." Thanks asshole.
1.) At my last place I was promoted as an analyst. The only issue was they couldn't get my pay increase approved, so I spent over a year doing a job a pay grade higher than I was actually being paid for. Right before I left they got my official transfer to the department approved... but still no pay increase. The kicker was that my terms of employment changed which took me from 1.5x overtime pay to 0.5x overtime pay so I effectively would have taken a pay cut getting a promotion had I stayed. 2.) Not really job hunting, but I have a friend who works at a fairly upscale restaurant. When they hired him they had him on as a waiter, but over half his shifts are spent as valet or host where he makes significantly less money. Is this common? This happens quite frequently in this economy, I'm still not sure if it's a polite way of saying "we don't want to hire you" since pretty much every company that says they have a hiring freeze is still hiring, or if it's HR's way of filling their schedule to look busy to avoid getting laid off.
I have a pretty good job but I still keep my resume circulating and go to interviews occasionally. Recently I got a call from an HR guy at one of the big names in the energy services business. They wanted me to come in and interview for a position in their materials group. I went to several interviews and in the last one I discussed salary with the head of the group and he was very reasonable and we agreed that my salary requirements would be easily met. Fast forward to several days later and I receive the official job offer letter. The salary is significantly lower than what we discussed and is almost exactly what I make now. I assume they're just trying to lowball me so I send a reply stating the salary that I want, reasons I deserve it, yada yada yada. The next day I get a call from the original HR guy. He tells me that he thinks they "did a good job on their offer" and they "hope I find an opportunity elsewhere". It was a strange phone conversation because before he had been friendly and personable but this time he sounded like a petulant child who was told his painting wasn't good enough for the refrigerator door. No negotiation at all just complete withdrawal of the offer. I've had people tell me that they can't meet my requirements or that they can't negotiate salary but always been given the option to still take the job. I might have taken the job even without a salary increase because this company's benefits are a little bit better than what I have now but now I'm glad I didn't since their HR department is apparently total dicks.
Job hunting is a lot like dating. When you first get into the job market you're excited and optimistic then after a while start to grow bitter and depressed. Then you get an interview and you're spirits are lifted and you think this could be it, the job you've been waiting for. Then you find out in the interview what exactly what you're getting into and start to become a little hesitant but hey a job is a job, and its better than being unemployed right? Kinda like dating, its better to be getting laid than sitting at home on your ass not having sex. The interview process is just like flirting, everyone is putting on their best face trying to hide whatever failings they have and trying to impress the other. I've got plenty of stories, but all in all I'm pretty disillusioned with job hunting. The odds that anyone gets the job they want and think they can live with are slim. Maybe its like dating, not finding the perfect scenario, but maybe finding one thats good enough for the time being.
My personal experience with job hunting is that it's almost impossible to get noticed out of the pile of applicants unless you can personally speak to someone in recruiting/hiring. I just got hired for a job that I'll be starting next week, and I got hired because I called HR out of the blue, told them my qualifications, and asked them if they thought there were any positions open that I'd be a good fit for. The recruiter told me to apply to a certain job posting and give her a call back once my application was submitted, and a week later she called me for an interview. Often times, the position was created to be filled by an internal hire already. A lot of the time, HR is required to post the job publicly even if they have already selected their candidate. Sometimes, depending on internal policy, they are also required to interview a certain amount of people as well. For example, I went to a hiring event in which the company policy was to interview 10 people—no more, no less—for every position filled.
I went to a career fair at my school a few weeks after I graduated and really should have seen the bad interview coming. I didn't know when I scheduled an interview with the recruiter that the company was a multi-level marketing company, read pyramid scheme, that dealt in insurance and loans for low income people. Primerica! While in general I do believe low income people need access to affordable loans and education on personal finance, I wasn't going to be doing any of this for this company. After the beginning spiel on how you'd sell financial packages to make money he then dropped in that the legal certifications would be handled through the company and I'd have to pay them for the training classes. That was the first warning sign. Then he got into the fact that what they really wanted as a motivated leader that could handle running his own office as they had X new ones opening in the near future in our city, warning two. Finally he tells me the way to advance in the company was through recruiting new sellers as the leader of my very own branch office. It was at this point it dawned on me that this was a pyramid scheme type company and there was no way to make any livable money (turns out the hourly break down of a company like this is something in the 1.16 cash money and hour range). I politely declined and told him I wasn't going to be a good fit for this type of company and that finance really wasn't the area I really wanted to get into. He got petulant and snarky. He basically resorted to belittling my high school and college part time jobs and the poor pay they provided, really winning me over I tell you what. I repeated the "I won't be a good fit" line two or three more times before he gave up in a huff and slammed the door behind me. The kicker. I got a call from him six months later at 3AM in the morning. He left a message wondering if I was still interested in joining the company and hoped I would contact him if I was. A few years later job hunting on monster, I came across the company again, having forgotten the name I called them up. They gave me the word for word spiel and I told him about the last guy. Furiously apologizing they tried mightily to set up and interview but I declined.
My current company does "informational interviews" which is kind of a clever way to get candidates in, feel them out, and the decide later if they fit an opening or would work for positions which might open soon. FOCUS: Ive talked about my job struggles post college here multiple times, but in helping my sister with her recent job search, I thought back to the only significant interview I had while I still was in college. An alumni of a business organization I belong to in college worked for a scrap metal brokerage firm. He was killing it and multiple mutual friends said we were very similar and I should look into it. He was based in Chicago and loved it. He had initially declined their offer, worked for a company in Indy for 3 months, hated it, so called them back, they reoffered and then asked if he preferred to be in Chicago or Cincy, he chose Chicago and the rest was history. So on his reco, I began the fairly detailed interview process. I made it through 4 rounds and was feeling pretty good. Though it was sales and brokerage, you were given a substantial book of business to begin with and didn't have to slog through the miserable early weeding out portions of sales. Things were sounding great. Then in one of my final interviews, the facade started to crack. It was casually, almost offhandedly, mentioned that I would be placed in an office. I figured this meant I would have a similar option to my aforementioned contact. Nope, I would be sent to either Omaha, Salt Lake City, Rapid City SD, or Montgomery with no preference given and only 2 weeks notice. As I admittedly did not react with a believable poker faced, I was assured that this was temporary and after my initial period, I would basically choose where I would like to be transferred to, pending open positions. How long after was that you ask? "Oh, usually 3 years, sometimes closer to 4 depending on where you wanted to head after" I realize now that its not the worst thing in the world. But first semester of senior year, I still thought I would be treated to a bevy of options and getting shipped off to remote hinterlands without much prep time seemed miserable. As if that wasn't enough, I learned a decent portion of my initial first year would be working in a damn metal recycling facility so as to better learn the business. Did they mean 2 weeks? No, more like 6-9 months off and on. Maybe I was a spoiled bourgeois college kid, but walking into a job thinking I was going to be trading metals in Chicago or Cincy and finding out that MAY be in my future, but for now I would be working in an outdoor factory in SD, was a bit of a shock.
Has anyone met any of those dumbasses who work for Quixstar? A quick google search turned up this from a message board. How dumb can you be? The company is trying to force it's way into an established oligopolistic market with high barriers to entry by turning naive college kids into glorified door to door salesmen. The best part? You have to buy products from the company if you're going to work for them, and there's a certain number of 'points' you have to make in purchases each month. From what I remember it was like $300. The last guy I met who did this told me he was going to be a millionaire in five years. He thought he was really smart. The more you try to talk them out of it the more convinced they are it's a fool proof plan. For me, the worst company I've worked for was Evaluation Solutions. The interview went great. Roughly a 60k salary not too far out of college, and while it sounded boring I was happy to be raking in some decent cash. That place was a fucking nightmare. They provided no training whatsoever and just had us sit behind other employees for a day while being instructed to not to ask questions because they were busy. The next day they sit you at a computer and tell you to fill orders AND MAKE THE FUCKING DEADLINES GODDAMNIT. STOP SITTING THERE ON YOUR ASS TWIRLING YOUR THUMBS. NUMBERS PEOPLE. GET ON THE FUCKING PHONE! While trying to desperately complete my orders I was simultaneously getting called by real estate agents threatening to sue me because the company had never paid them. I literally hadn't even finished the o in hello before they were screaming in my ear. They were taking me to court and it was personal asshole! They called me in on every one of my off days too. I didn't stay there long. Never again.
Oh, you found my first college roommate, I wondered what happened to him. He started in Amway (They started Quixstar) his freshman year. He was onto Quixstar as a sophomore. He would tell us about all the rich people above him and how much money they were making. The best part is about five of us asked him to give us the pitch(we knew it was a scam but wanted to hear it). By the end of it we were all laughing so hard at how stupid it was that he left the room. He even had a picture of him in a suit on stage with an Amway speaker with a paper banner hanging that said "Thank you for following your dreams." He failed out after his sophomore year. Too bad, he was a nice guy and we tried to warn him about it.
One of my jobs that turned into a trainwreck was working in the head office of a startup direct sales company. Not all multilevel marketing gigs are necessarily bad (you can make real money), but you should need to read the fine fucking print and know what you're getting into. Oh that trainwreck place? I joined the company right before things started going downhill and quit at a good time. The CEO never had a real job before starting his own businesses so he handled tension between everyone poorly. Eight out of twelve employees including myself were gone in a five month span, and that was down to two within a couple months. I got some real good experience in the "what not to do" category.
I filled out a Cutco job form one time off of monster. It was something like "Teamwork and sales opportunity". The online form you had to fill out was something to the extent of: Name: Phone Number: Age: Please answer this question: "Do you work well with people?": I then pressed next, and instead of asking more questions it said "Congratulations! Thanks for applying. Someone will be in contact with you shortly!". I filled that out at 3am, had a recruiter call me at 9am. "So I read your application, and it looks really impressive. What time can you come in for an interview?" "I applied for a lot of jobs last night, which one" "The <vague marketing front for Cutco> group" "Oh ok. Well I'm not going to be home for 2 weeks until college is over." "What day? And what time is best? How about 8am <Monday I get back>?" Then I realized it was the shady application where the only criteria was literally a two sentence answer, I google the company, and realize it's the front for cutco and the 2nd google link was a class action lawsuit filed by the employees. No thanks.
We do this and I am STRONGLY against it. First of all it makes our current employees panic because they know the backlog of work that we have and that it doesn't warrant adding people right now... so obviously these interviewees are there to take their jobs! In this economy you shouldn't be wasting peoples fucking time and energy with an interview that puts a resume on file for a year which will likely never be used. I get called all the time by head hunters because our industry is extremely incestuous. I take their calls, will conference with the company looking to hire but I never step foot in a real interview unless we've already hammered out what my compensation expectations are. "I make X. 1/3 salary, 2/3 commission (with a 10-15% increase stated obviously). Can you beat that?" Unless the answer is a strong affirmative I wrap up that call quick. No need to waste time filling some exec's quota for interviews. I'm a rarity that I've been selling for the same company for ten years. I know sales managers that have jumped to 3 or 4 of the 5 other competitors out there, and finally just left the industry all together because who the fuck trusts a sales guy that's selling a different brand every 2 years? Nobody.
I guess I'm a fool then because I thought the point of starting up a law practice was 'to be your own boss' or whatever slogan all those advice columns shout out. If it was a joke I missed the funny.
<a class="postlink" href="http://bit.ly/vAvn56" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://bit.ly/vAvn56</a>
My city has some sort of stupid invisible policy in which you cannot- CANNOT- get a job without knowing somebody that already is in the company. Seriously, every job I have had in my life except one was achieved through some sort of "connection." And these same fuckheads wonder we have the worst emplyment ratio in the country. Clueless twats.
Seems like many of us have had similar experiences. A re-post: I sat through the first 30 minutes of a Cutco recruitment before deciding that the cheesy guy with a " There's Something About Mary" blob of hair gel on his cowlick was full of crap, and I left. I've also been courted by Amway - creepy doesn't even begin to describe their "pitch". They target people with families, and proceed to tell you that you are lazy, a coward, a bad husband, bad father and on the outs with Jesus H. Christ himself if you don't join their organization. And no, I'm not exaggerating.
I find it funny that that Google joke does not spell depracating correctly. Unless self-depreciation is a thing, too. I'm with 'sack on this one. I busted my ass and was a partner at a 25 person engineering firm by the time I was 30. I decided to change some priorities. I started my own firm almost 8 years ago. It's much more laid back, which means I make less (and my boss is also a dick), but I'm much less stressed.