I’ve cut down on my blog writing (and reading), cut down on my game playing, cut down on nearly everything. I’m extremely uncomfortable, it seems, with doing anything but looking for work.
My days are spent working on job skills (I have tried out some new development environments and today am looking at the Lua scripting language), posting my resume places, following up on anyone who shows interest.
It’s really hard to send a resume to a specific company. Or to even know when you are sending your resume to a real company. Jobs these days are like… real estate listings, passed along from one headhunter to another, from a website to another… Are these real jobs? Or are they fake jobs, nothing more than profiles of a potential job-seeker who might fit a potential contract?
That’s my fear. I find an interesting position on Dice.com, say. I follow up to the company that posted it, and… it’s another web-based recruitment place. So that’s another hour posting my employment history there, another place I have to look each day, and still no idea if there was a real job in there anywhere. Busy work. I am not actually applying for jobs, I am just improving the value of web-based employment firms by giving them my resume to add to their pool.
Phantom jobs are pretty fun. Job scams, even more fun.
I’ve gotten two of these already. I’m sure there are others. Here’s a sample mail from USAVoice.org.
Our tech department involves working as a team to constantly maintain and upgrade our website. The majority of our programmers/developers work from home maintaining contact by telephone, e-mail, and instant messaging.
We offer our Developers the following:
Highly competitive salary
Bonus plan that can add 25% or more to Base Salary
Medical, Dental, and Vision plan
Expense Account
Paid Vacation
Tuition Reimbursement
Rapid Fast Track Advancement Program
And another from TooSpoiled.com:
Our tech department involves working as a team to constantly maintain and upgrade our website. The majority of our programmers/developers work from home maintaining contact by telephone, e-mail, and instant messaging.
We offer our Developers the following:
- Highly competitive salary
- Bonus plan that can add 25% or more to Base Salary
- Medical, Dental, and Vision plan
- Expense Account
- Paid Vacation
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Rapid Fast Track Advancement Program
Sounds good, too good. Work at home? With web development? Earn lots of money, get promoted, get bonuses, full benefits… and…. hey, what’s that saying about when you find something too good to be true?
What are these “jobs”… really? I did some poking around on Google.com… and all I found for either are 1) pages from people wondering if these companies were scams, and 2) sites by these companies saying “we are not a scam, and people who call us scammers are twisted, warped people even kittens despise”.
It’s very hard to find out what they need web developers to do. However, it’s clear that both share common business models, similar to multi-level marketing schemes.
TooSpoiled.com recruits “scouts” who find people to post their information to their website. These scouts are recruited by managers whose job is recruiting more scouts. Those scout managers are recruited by others , and so on, and they all get paid a flat fee. If, during a reporting period, they don’t recruit enough people (or TooSpoiled.com doesn’t make sufficient money from selling advertising on those pages, I imagine), they get canned.
USAVoice.org recruits “reporters” who post news stories to their website. These reporters are recruited by managers, who are recruited by other managers, and so on. Same deal. If you don’t recruit enough active “reporters”, or USAVoice.org doesn’t make enough money from advertising on those “stories”, they get canned.
So, what do they need web developers for? They both have very professional sites, but those are not the sites you need hundreds of independent developers to do. Those are professional, slick sites, and they undoubtedly have people to do the main site.
I suspect they need hundreds of “web developers” to take those stories or model/actress data and enter them into the web page.
Envelope stuffing for the 21st century.
Job search continues! Today I applied for unemployment. It’s all online these days. Very slick.
Hi,
You didn’t ask for advice, but reading your story brought back painful memories from when I was last laid off. I hope you don’t mind a little suggestion from a stranger.
I work in (mathematical) finance, so it is a different field, but from what you’re saying it seems like the job search is similar. If you are in a field where headhunters are the gatekeepers, like in my field, then instead of searching for jobs, I would suggest searching for the right headhunter. Sometimes finding a good headhunter is more important than finding the ideal job on your own, because, like you’ve found, often those jobs are just “fronts” to get you to contact a sleazy headhunter anyway.
Be creative in finding a good HH, e.g. asking a company you’re interested in for a reference to a good headhunter they use (which may lead to direct interest anyway). That’s probably a lame example, but you can probably think of something better.
What you should NOT do is send your resume to a bunch of headhunters. What often happens is they will send your resume to every conceivable company you may like to work. Once they do that, you are essentially locked out from any other HH being able to help you. In other words, once your name gets in the system through one headhunter, that HH essentially owns you. When you find a HH you actually like who has a good relationship with a good company you might like to work for, then if some other sleazy HH has already blasted them with your resume, then it is too late. The good HH cannot help you.
Anyway, hang in there! 🙂
that’s so crappy!
I’m lucky not to have had to use headhunters yet. One job came through making initial contact at an academic conference, which didn’t lead to actual employment with the firm for two more years. But I just kept the connection with them, and they with me. The other firm I found through word of mouth and used my network to find someone inside to pass my resume on to HR. That worked so well. (I also introduced myself to the CEO a long time ago and gave him my card. He kept the card and so when my name came across his desk, he got that connection, which I think also helped to get me in for my interviews.)
Next time I see a job I want (not for a while, I hope!), I am definitely going to do some digging to find someone, anyone who works there through whom I can send my initial paperwork. I think this works so well because HR folks need to be responsive to folks who are actually already employed in the same firm. if they blow off a random job seeker, who will know? But if someone on the inside submits someone for consideration, and that job seeker isn’t processed properly, then the insitution now has some insight into the HR person’s job performance.
Chin up! I’m confident you’re going to land the big one. Or, at least the transitional big one. 🙂
I enjoyed this message this morning. Scam? Lessee… Indian name. Well, this isn’t a red flag. Most software development in the US today is done or supervised by Indians, apparently. But. Can’t figure out my gender from my name; in a formal letter, they should use my last name and not my first; misspellings all over the place; claim they have a specific job in mind but provide no details at all… Sigh… could make someone discouraged!
Kind Attention : Mr. Brenda
Dear Sir,
We have refered your bio data in dice.com and after refering it we have
found a good oppertunity for you. The job is as per your requiremnt and
your skill too. So if you are interested, please reply us soon. After
that we will call you and discuss with you.
Thanks and regards,
Chandni
IAmEric; I think the most fascinating thing about job searching in the 21st century is how much it is like everything else in the digital age; businesses are nothing more than a web page and a telephone number, and money is made not by doing anything in the real world, but purely by moving data.
We’re now two degrees removed from the real world. Way back when, you got a job by talking to an employer. Then you got one by reading an ad in a paper or hearing about it from a real person, perhaps a head hunter.
Now, resume hounds find your data and ship it to potentially interested headhunting firms. I wouldn’t be surprised if they search out position data and ship that around as well.
Life… is so abstract these days… It’s comforting, though, to know that if I die, my data will live on, still looking for work.
How’s the job search going? Do any java programming?
I do do Java programming. In fact I may have an interview with a Massachusetts-based company to do just that. But this morning I have to take a HTML/CSS proficiency test for Amazon.com. It’d be cool to work for them, though they’re in Seattle.
My gosh, USAVoice.org has spammed me three times with its fake job.
I’ve done a lot of test taking and telephone talking but only twice has it been with someone who actually works at the place doing the hiring.
I get called 1-2 times a day by various people with thick accents asking me if I’d be interested in a position someplace I have no family (today: Minnesota).
And once I get through their ringer, it’s always something more I need. Like for the people recruiting for Amazon. I got 98% on their XHTML test (16 questions, how do you get 98%? Did I spell my name wrong?). I showed them a dozen or so applets I’d written because that’s all I had that didn’t depend on a specific environment, like IIS/ASP/Oracle, sent them sample source code to the internal web pages I’d written for Surya, apologized for not being able to show them the actual pages since all my access was cut off when they laid me off… haven’t heard back from them.
Got an offer to write some Python programs on contract, sounded like fun projects, and I had the first one written and tested even, and no word from them.
I have to work every day filling in forms and taking tests and proving that I can program and design web pages and it all just spirals down into /dev/null.
Oh well. I have an email from ABC.com. It looks like it just might not be from a headhunter, so I’m going to go work on that now.
Once upon a time, I just called up a head hunter, he’d arrange interviews, and I’d have a job in a week or two. Now I bust my butt, go way beyond what’s requested, and zilch.
I’m a java programmer too. I think my team in Hartford, CT is looking for java programmers.
I actually do the interviewing.
Oh? Hmmm!
Lots of corporate red tape stuff, but I could put your resume through our employee recommendation program. If you want, and CT doesn’t make you want to hurl, send me your res. We do a lot of complex applications here. We have tons and tons of work to do here too. Our business partners love to come up with new stuff. We have a project team (I’m lead) and a prod support team and we are tight-knit with our business partner. Good set up here if you like corporate life.
I sent my resume to the email address you give here. Thanks!
Welcome 🙂