When you offer me a job that perfectly fits my qualifications can I suggest they should be within the 20mile radius I requested and not locations as varied as Glasgow, Yeovil and Porstmouth.
Also please tell me how a study of my CV has given rise to job notifications this morning of 360° Digger Operator, Beauty Therapist and work at The Breastfeeding Network?

Although maybe that was based on my browser history…😳

Haha! I know the feeling, along with a million train at home to be an xyz…

not locations as varied as Glasgow, Yeovil and Porstmouth

But everyone works from home now don’t they? I mean look how empty the roads are!

Dear commodities

Please realise we’ve no care about you or if you’re any good for the role, we get paid the same to place barely adequate staff as we do great ones, only we get paid twice if it takes two people to fill that position instead of one or people only last 6 months.

In order to look like we’ve not just sent the CV on the top of our inbox it’s helpful to pad out our lists with lots of unsuitable applications, this also makes poor applications look better.

All these objectives are best achieved with a scattergun approach that requires minimal effort from us.

Yours sincerely

Too morally bankrupt to be an estate agent

Having been an adult for most of my adult life, I am now well beyond done with recruiters who think recruiting is a one-way process.

So, so many job adverts are a massive long list of everything they want, from top-tier qualifications to years of experience in esoteric systems that like three people in the country will have even heard of, then an afterthought on the final line: “attractive benefits and competitive salary.” No, get in the sea, what’s in it for me?

“Well Mr Cougar, why do you want to come and work for Global Megacorp?”

“That’s a really good question. I’m looking to further my career, improve my skills, and be paid handsomely. Is that something Global Megacorp can offer?”

We shouldn’t be treating skilled candidates like commodities in 2022, and it’s high time we put on our big boy pants when it comes to being all coy and secretive about salaries.

And yet they expect you to tell happily them what you’re currently earning…

We shouldn’t be treating skilled candidates like commodities in 2022, and it’s high time we put on our big boy pants when it comes to being all coy and secretive about salaries

During a recent re-org there was much muttering and grumbling about shuffling the shepherds while we were treated like sheep and how we should go off to new places. In the middle of this someone let slip their salary and another person was surprised as they were on about £20K less so thought they must be a different grade. Turns out they are the same grade but £20K apart on salary doing exactly the same role. The third bloke chipped int hat he was a grade below the other two but almost exactly between their salaries. Much dissatisfaction raised with the new boos who just said that he couldn’t change anything now and would review in 12 months if they were still there.

I think companies rely on recruitment agents being soulless life suckers to dissuade people from leaving perhaps?

This is my experience on repeat:

Recruiters. “Are you looking for work?”
Me. “Yes”
Recruiters. “So you can start immediately?”
Me. “No, I’d need to work my notice period.”
Recruiters. “So you’re not currently looking for work?”
Me. “I am currently looking for work. But also currently employed”
Recruiters. “Why are you looking for work if you already have a job?”
Me. “I hate it.”
Recruiters. “Oh, we have roles that need filling by the end of the week.”
Me. “Ok”
Recruiters. “So are you interested?”
Me. Repeat conversation.

We shouldn’t be treating skilled candidates like commodities in 2022, and it’s high time we put on our big boy pants when it comes to being all coy and secretive about salaries.

The balance of power is definitely swinging towards the candidate nowadays I reckon so hopefully this will be a thing of the past (until the jobs market dries up that is)

So, so many job adverts are a massive long list of everything they want, from top-tier qualifications to years of experience in esoteric systems that like three people in the country will have even heard of

Yeah, this winds me up as some trying to recruit people.  We put in all sorts of requirements that none of the current staff in these positions have, especially stupid qualifications that don’t indicate anything other than a predilection for doing courses.  But it is virtually impossible to prevent these getting added to our job specs which put lots of valid candidates off 🙁

And yet they expect you to tell happily them what you’re currently earning…

I replied £250,000 to this question once and then said that I would review and adjust my reply once I had a firm offer. When the interviewer said this didn’t sound very professional, I pointed out that it was their exact approach to the salary offer. Short pause as he stared to see if I would add more detail or crumble and give him my real salary and then he shrugged ‘Fair point’ and continued the interview. I got an offer but rejected because the role described in the interview wasn’t what they had described in the ad/what the recruitment agent told me.

To those writing job adverts, the legal minimum of whatever it is you’re offering (pay/pension/holidays) is not a ‘benefit’

And yet they expect you to tell happily them what you’re currently earning…

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

Oh, no, wait, I’ve got it:

“What’s your current salary?”

“Competitive based on my qualifications and experience.”

I’ve worked in a variety of those “I work in IT for large organisations” roles that are basically impossible to explain to anyone for about 25 years now. So, I was pleasantly surprised at the opportunity offered for a career change when a recruitment bod sent me details of an offshore drilling engineer role I might be interested in.

To those writing job adverts, the legal minimum of whatever it is you’re offering (pay/pension/holidays) is not a ‘benefit’

To those writing job adverts it is, to those reading them, less so.

It is worth remembering that the adverts are describing the optimal candidate with everything they could possibly want, not the minimum viable person

It is what it is tbh. Hardly worth getting het up over.

To be clear though – they’d sell their grannies if they could.

“Hello – we’ve found the ideal job for you.

The office location is only 258 miles away, it pays 30% of your current salary and the job matches a role you did 20 years ago.

Click here to take the next step in your career”

From the employer’s perspective…

Employer: We need a Full Stack Developer with at least four years industry experience.

Recruiter: Here’s a candidate – a new Graduate with a degree in (insert absolutely anything that involved using a computer at some point).

… And if you like them we’ll take 12 months salary in commission please.

minimum viable person is a status I aspire to

i signed upto the glassdoor site a week ago and ticked, to be excluded from the mails,

since then i’ve had 3-4 emails a day off them :0(

I received an email inviting me to apply for a role as a furniture CAD designer in East London today, which is some distance (in more than one sense) from my current IT training role in Birmingham.

And yet they expect you to tell happily them what you’re currently earning…

and then they *still* pitch roles at you that are significant pay cuts.

Employer: We need a Full Stack Developer with at least four years industry experience.

To be fair, years of experience is a fairly terrible metric. The recruiter we use keeps using it as a pitch for candidates, and I hate it.

I got buzzed for a job at 10 Downing Street as head of compliance about during lockdown , I’m not making this up. It had absolutely nothing to do with my current role except the word Regulatory. It must have been around the time Cummings was trying to replace all the Civil service with people with other backgrounds.

I Imagine it would have been an interesting role over the last 12 months.

a job at 10 Downing Street as head of compliance…
It had absolutely nothing to do with my current role

This will surprise no-one.

Obliviously the awful thing about this is you’re a minimum viable person to work in number 10 and, given very long history of evidence I’m assuming that’s not to say “you meet the minimum criteria” but rather that the best candidate for number 10 is one which only just scrapes definition as human.

(sorry that maybe sounds like a personal dig, it’s not intended to be)

with that user name are you Boris’ valet?

a job at 10 Downing Street as head of compliance…

As an aside, can you imagine how soul destroying that job would be with the current crowd?

“hi I’m the new head of compliance”
“compliance? with what?”
“oh you know, parliamentary standards, the law, basic human rights, employment law, the whole shebang really”
“she bang, phnar phnar, yes we’ve all done that on boris’ sofa, part of the interview process isn’t it”

I’m trying to buck up enough courage to enter the job again, I’ve been with the same employer and role for the last 12 years. (My choice)

But I don’t know if I’ve got the fortitude and steel to enter that steaming pile of horse shit laiden turmoil again, or whether to look for a new job.

I think my best one recently was the email asking if I’d be interested in a new role – to be fair, it was a pretty good match for my CV, except for one detail.

I’m already in that role and the company was recruiting for someone to work alongside me, having realised that they needed two people to even begin to handle the workload…

Wait until the actual Humans who supposedly owe their living to matching people with jobs and vice versa call you out of the blue (and text, and email multiple times a day) saying they got a fantastic opportunity for you, only for you to wonder in amazement at how badly suited you are for it, and how terrible it would be for you.

Ohh and the recruiters that see a job ad saying ‘Strictly no recruiters’ then email saying ‘I know you said no recruiters but…’

I think my best one recently was the email asking if I’d be interested in a new role – to be fair, it was a pretty good match for my CV, except for one detail.

I’m already in that role and the company was recruiting for someone to work alongside me, having realised that they needed two people to even begin to handle the workload…

A friend had similar. Except there was only one person doing that role and he was quiet happy in it. And up until he got that email had no idea he was shortly about to vacate it.

Ohh and the recruiters that see a job ad saying ‘Strictly no recruiters’ then email saying ‘I know you said no recruiters but…’

Yep. I guarantee every time we put an advert up for a job I get more recruiters than interested candidates in the first week…

I once sat through a truly horrendous interview as the result of a recruiter “matching” me to a role.

Basically I was told it was X, the job was actually Y which had some vague resemblance to X in as much as it used the word “chemistry” (or maybe “chemical” – can’t remember, it was a long time ago).

Anyway, after 30 minutes of this becoming ever more painfully obvious that I was not what the employer wanted and they were not offering the job I was looking for, both the interviewer and I agreed that the whole thing was a disaster and I went home. A few days later the recruitment agency called me to tell me I’d been unsuccessful in getting the job. I pointed out that I already knew that and I was unsuccessful because IT WAS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT JOB.

Had it with the JobCentre as well. On seeing the word Chemist in my CV (in the context of “Synthetic Organic…”) they kept trying to send me to minimum wage jobs in branches of Boots 20+ miles from where I lived. In the end I changed the description of my former job to Chemical Engineering and that went some way to stopping the questions as to why I wasn’t taking a job in a pharmacy. Morons.

I’m already in that role and the company was recruiting for someone to work alongside me, having realised that they needed two people to even begin to handle the workload…

That’s the time to leave or ask for a substantial salary rise. Or at last ask the salary! It’s not unusual for people to apply for a promotion into what is basically the same job in the same department but offered at a higher grade. I’ve seen it happen.