Friday Funnies

After a week of gripes & job tips, we figured it was time to kick back with a cup of coffee and enjoy a few good jokes. Since we don't know any, these will have to suffice.

Enjoy the weekend!

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A guy walks into an office for a job interview. The interviewer asks him a few questions and then says, "Tell me what your dream job would be."

"Well," says the guy. "I guess my dream job would be one with a six-figure salary, corner office, and four weeks of paid vacation."

The interviewer thinks for a moment and then says, "Well, I guess I can tell you that we offer $150,000 for this position; it does come with a corner office; and we have six weeks of paid leave for all employees."

"Really??!?" the guy asks. "You're kidding, right?"

"Actually, I am kidding," says the interviewer. "But you started it."

********

A woman takes a job at a temp agency. She reports to work and discovers she will be filling in for a woman who will be out for six weeks of maternity leave.

"Is she a blond?" the woman asks.

"Why, yes," says the supervisor. "How did you know?"

"Well, the white out on the computer monitor was a start..."


*********

A common story about Harry Truman involves his well-known disposition for profanity. Reportedly at one formal function, the president was overheard exclaiming, "That's a bunch of horse manure!"

An elderly woman nearby raised her eyebrows and tugged at Bess Truman's sleeve. "Really," she whispered. "You should do something about your husband's language!"

Bess rolled her eyes. "My dear," she said. "I have. It took me twenty years before I could get him to say 'manure'."

The Importance of Due Diligence

Earlier this week I had an interview with a company out in Texas. Although the firm is based in San Antonio and thus far too close to Dallas for my tastes - growing up a Redskin fan does entail certain unavoidable idiosyncrasies you eventually learn to live with - I decided that given the current economic climate, I should at least keep my options open as far as relocation if the right job presented itself.

It turned out that this was not that job.

Well, to put it more precisely, the job may be right, but I learned very quickly that the firm wasn't. I also learned yet another lesson in the importance of doing one's homework in advance of any interviews. Allow me to elaborate.

I first heard about the firm on Linked In. One of the groups I belonged to ran an ad announcing a new position with this company. I clicked on the link, read through the job description, and found that the job looked like a strong match for my background and skills. I dropped the fellow a quick e-mail, and long story short, he wrote back and said he would forward my name & resume to one of the company recruiters and that I should expect a call.

Fantastic, I thought. We're off and running.

As part of any interview, I did some checking on the company's Web site to learn more about the work it does, what its history was like, where I thought my skills might be a strong benefit, etc. But I also did some additional checking on sites like Glassdoor.com, Hoovers, Jigsaw, and the Vault. What I found made my jaw drop.

No one had anything nice to say about the firm.

"Well, hold on," I told myself. "Every company's got some disgruntled employees, and it's not like anyone who is happy out there is going to go the extra mile to cheer the company or refute the gripes of a few bad apples." Besides, anyone with half a brain knows not to trust everything that appears on the Internet, right? But I kept digging and digging, and the more I found, the more concerned I became.

Someone actually started an anti-company blog about this place. I found the blog and read every entry. The gripes - high turnover, low morale, bad management - all paralleled the comments I saw on the business Web sites. The blog had had hundreds of visitors, and no one refuted any claims.

Now granted, this could simply be a vast outpouring of negativity by a few disgruntled people. And there's no way of knowing just how many of those hundreds of visitors to the anti-company blog were repeat ones or people telling their friends to check out their "gripe site." But the impact it had on me was admittedly quite strong. "Let's see, do I really want to move across the country to take a job with a company that has such a bad reputation on the Internet?" I wondered. Sure, there was always the chance that the vitriol I was seeing was misplaced or inaccurate, but did I want to take that kind of chance with a job? Put another way, if I accepted a position and moved across the country - and that would be at my own expense, I later learned, since the firm would not cover the relo - and the gripes did turn out to be valid, how would I feel then?

So what did I do? I went through the interview - it never hurts to have practice in answering the typical initial questions - but inquired at the end what the interviewer thought former employees would say about the firm. "Oh, I'm sure they would say it's a great place to work," she told me. "I've been here five years." When I pointed out the negativity on the Internet, she was - understandably - dismissive. "Every company has that element," she said.

I couldn't have agreed with her more, but the fact remains that other firms don't have anti-company blog sites about them with complaints that echo comments on job research sites. Sure, some do, and some are probably valid while others aren't. But if you're a job seeker looking for information about a firm and you come across multiple sources saying the same things - and all of them bad - you might be forgiven for deciding it's better to take your chances elsewhere with a different company.

Moral: Remember the old adage about looking before leaping. You may save yourself a great deal of future trouble through a bit of caution now.

Beware the Undead Job Description...

I had coffee with a college friend a few months ago who worked at a firm I'd been targeting since being laid off last year. It had been a while since we'd caught up, so I checked his company Web site to see if there were still any positions that I might fit in case he could forward my resume and perhaps earn a referral bonus. It turned out there was one.

It was the same position I'd applied and interviewed for almost one year ago to the day.

I went back and pulled up my notes - yes, I save everything during my job search, much to my wife's occasional complaint about my pack-rat behavior - and sure enough, it wasn't merely an identical position description, it was the exact same one.

At first, I was slightly confused. Had the search been reopened after the initially hired candidate failed to work out for some reason? No, I quickly concluded. If that had been the case, the company would undoubtedly have modified the description at least somewhat. That meant one of two possibilities: a) the company had been unable to fill the position over the past twelve months in a job market teeming with available talent that was desperately looking for work, or b) the job was frozen but still online.

Either way, I was angry. Why had I wasted my time a year ago applying to this place AND going through not one but TWO subsequent interviews if they weren't even going to be filling the job at all?

"We're not hiring anybody right now," my friend confided to me when we got together. "In fact, we're actually downsizing by attrition. But don't tell anybody."

"But then why are you still advertising for open positions if you're in a freeze or cutting?" I asked.

"Beats me," he said. "Probably because we're a publicly traded company, and pulling job descriptions off the Web would send a bad signal to shareholders."

To say I went home dejected that afternoon would be an understatement. How many other times had I done this? Applied to positions that were the job equivalent of the undead? Positions that weren't actually live jobs but which roamed cyberspace forever and lured fresh victims to feed on their frustration? (Yes, I'm stretching the metaphor here, but I had to find something to go with the picture above - I love it because the undead apparently still require corrective eyeware, which I never knew...)

I mentioned this to some recruiters and HR folks, and the answers I got were rather surprising - at least to me and probably anyone outside HR. "Companies do that all the time," one recruiter told me. "They may not be hiring at all, but they want to keep their finger on the pulse of the talent that's available. So they leave job descriptions up online even after something's filled or after it's determined not to be a priority position. That way, they can be assured of a constant pipeline of resumes to help them monitor the talent that's out there, see what the likely salary demands will be, and so on. And whenever someone at the company does leave, they have an immediate pool of applicants and know what it will take to fill a comparable position."

"But why not just say you're looking for people with XYZ skills instead of misleading applicants with what amounts to a fake job position?" I asked.

"Who knows?" the recruiter told me. "Someday they may decide to make it an actual position if they find the right candidate."

"But what if you ARE the right candidate?"

"Then it comes down to a matter of being in the right place at the right time," he told me. "You could be the perfect candidate and have all the right skills and experience, but if you apply at the wrong time - during a freeze, for instance - you won't get hired. But if a new manager comes in and decides that the position is urgent and does finally need to be filled or that the time to unfreeze has come, someone with lesser skills may make the cut if they're there at that moment and you're not. It all comes down to timing."

I went back and looked over several of the jobs I had applied for and cross-checked them against companies' current Web pages. Sure enough, in a number of instances many of the firms I had applied to - and in some instances interviewed with - still had the identical job descriptions posted online. Verbatim. Either they hadn't been able to find someone with the qualifications they were looking for, or the postings had turned into "zombie positions."

My advice? Do whatever you can to learn about a position before bothering to apply. Nothing will frustrate you more than spending a good deal of time crafting a carefully worded resume outlining how you match the various requirements for a position (and then preparing for a subsequent interview or two) only to get rejected and yet still see the exact same position online twelve or thirteen months later.

In other words, learn to watch out for the zombies.

How to Turn Off a Prospective Employee

Over the past year we've all seen countless articles and news reports about the do's and don'ts of job interviews. You know the kind - they advise you what to wear, what to say, and what not to do during an interview.

But I've yet to see something advising companies about what to do or not do when interviewing candidates.

So, based on my own experiences and those of my close acquaintances (you know who you are), here is an incomplete list of ways to turn off an interviewee. See how many look familiar:

Forget you scheduled an interview with someone. Nothing says "I respect you and your time as much as I want you to respect mine" like this. Better still? Come across with a I-can't-believe-I-have-to-do-this attitude that makes the prospect feel welcome. Once you've done that, you're ready to -

Keep the candidate waiting for at least a half hour if not forty-five minutes in the lobby. Nothing says, "I love playing mind games and want to let you know just how much more important my time is than yours" than this, especially if someone has already made an effort to be punctual for you.

Don't cancel the interview in advance, wait until the candidates arrives! I once interviewed with a Fortune 500 company - since defunct - where I successfully managed the delicate task of getting out of work for an afternoon without raising too many suspicions at my then-current job only to be told at the front desk when I arrived that, "Due to some unforeseen emergencies, we're going to have to reschedule the interview. We're very sorry." Now, admittedly, this sort of thing can happen, but bear in mind just how difficult it often is for candidates to repeat a disappearing act at their current jobs without raising any eyebrows. If you can't do that, then at least give some consideration to letting them know in advance rather than at the door after blocking out an afternoon to talk with you.

When you conduct the rescheduled interview, do it in the lobby instead of an office. This lets the candidate know just how well you treat your employees. Want to earn bonus points? Wave to your coworkers as they pass by so you can let the candidate know just how much s/he doesn't have your full attention. If this isn't enough -

Cancel the interview repeatedly. My wife once interviewed with a large consulting firm where she received a call on her cell phone as she was in the parking lot walking up to the entrance telling her they needed to postpone the interview for an hour. An hour later? They called her to say that they needed to reschedule for another date. Despite the less-than-respectful treatment, she actually agreed to another interview. (Yes, the unemployed can be desperate, and no, it's not nice to take advantage of this.) Guess what? The exact same thing happened again. On the plus side, she got an immense feeling of satisfaction when the firm called her back twice to plead for yet another chance. "I'm sorry," she told the placement firm trying to set up the interview. "That place showed no respect for my time and did me wrong not just once but twice. I'm not interested." Either the company in question couldn't manage its time effectively or was simply too disorganized and chaotic to pull off something as simple as scheduling a meeting. Either way, she knew it wasn't a place she wanted to work.

If you forget about the interview, put the blame on the candidate. I once showed up for an interview with a placement firm where the interviewer wasn't content to simply forget he had scheduled an interview with me, he tried to put the responsibility on me as the candidate for his oversight. "Did anyone call you to confirm this interview?" he asked me in the lobby. "No," I remember replying. "But nobody called me to say we had to reschedule, either." We met in his office forty-five minutes later, and afterward I e-mailed him twice to thank him nonetheless for his time and assistance. In retrospect, it was probably not too surprising that I received zero replies. Like my wife, however, I did get some sense of eventual justice: A year later this same fellow reached out to me to see if we could connect on Linked In. Apparently, his business partner had left him, and he was now struggling to make it on his own with his placement business. Needless to say, I declined his offer.

Use the candidate for free labor. I've heard of several firms that ask prospects to come up with a proposed business plan - a marketing initiative, product launch schedule, you name it. Before you block off several nights or an entire weekend to put some enormous PowerPoint deck together, ask yourself if the company is really looking for your input or if they're simply trying to use the job interview as a way of getting some fresh ideas. Remember, if you go to great lengths to put something together and they don't hire you, you've just given away the keys to the store; they can then take your ideas and those of other candidates and implement them without even bothering to hire anyone. (Yes, this happened to me, but no, I was not naive enough to give them everything I knew nor did I leave any soft or hard copies behind of what I produced, but the memory still haunts me.)

Everyone knows the job interview is not a level playing field - the employer has what you need (the job), and your job is to try and convince him/her that you have what they want (skills and competence). In plainspeak, this means they've got leverage and you, well, don't. That said, however, I think it's readily apparent that many firms forget just how much of a two-way street the entire interview process is; candidates are shoring you up just as much as you're looking them up and down to try and find a weakness or a flaw.

So if you're a manager who's always complaining about just how "difficult it is to find good talent these days," take a moment to stop and think what you might be doing wrong in addition to your candidates. You might be surprised to learn just how many things your company may be doing to turn off the very people you're supposedly trying to attract...

Lifestyle Changes of the Pre-Employed

Even by my standards, I have to admit yesterday's posting was a bit of a downer (although in fairness, it should be noted that no less an authority than Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post commented pretty much along the same lines, albeit in a bit more detail - yes, I'm taking 100% full credit for this & the line for congratulations forms to the right, please...), so in an effort to keep the collective chin up for today's readers (both of you out there), I thought I'd step back from the ledge and comment on the humorous (?) impacts of unemployment on one's life. To wit:

1. You stop drinking Andrew Murray and develop a profound appreciation for the fine wines of Charles Shaw (aka, "Two Buck Chuck").

2. When your TV dies and you have to replace it with your brother-in-law's old set, you may think your viewing problems are solved...until you realize the remote doesn't work and you must PHYSICALLY GET UP FROM THE COUCH to change channels. (For a guy, this qualifies as one of Dante's levels of purgatory...)

3. That vow you took after college to never again drink Budweiser and to only consume finer, respectable ales and lagers? Yeah, about that...

4. Speaking of college dieting, say hello to your old friend, Raman noodles! ("It's been a long time, hasn't it? How have you been?")

5. It's truly amazing how your Ipod never needed replacing or had any problems until you started watching your income like a hawk...

6. Speaking of appliances, that warranty on the microwave went out a few months back and - well, whaddya know? It's almost like the unit knew it was time to give up the ghost...

7. Good Side: More time for exercising and running! Bad side: "Well, this heatwave makes jogging dangerous...and the couch looks pretty comfortable right about now...and don't we have some pudding pops leftover in the freezer?"

8. Mac-n-cheese can be made into a gourmet meal with some chopped onions, a leftover jalapeno, and some crouton toppings. (And it goes wonderfully with the aforementioned Charles Shaw white, by the way...)

9. It IS possible to survive without cable TV and Netflix - however, the DVD selection at the local library is depressingly highbrow in terms of its nothing-but-PBS-selections. ("Oh, look! Ken Burns had another 36-hour documentary we never saw...")

10. You are ALWAYS awake because while you're technically without a job, you're somehow keeping Starbucks in the black with all the coffee you're guzzling as you network and meet with people every other day...


Got any other suggestions? Post 'em in the comments below.

Job Market Still in Deep Freeze?

Suppose you got a letter from your state government telling you that property taxes were going to be going up, but they couldn't tell you by how much. After you crumpled the paper in your shaking fist, your mind would probably start racing -as you tried to decide whether to reach for the bicarb, the bourbon, or both - with questions like, "What was last year's rate again? How much more will I be paying for the house now? What are the two cars in the driveway going to cost us?" You'd then start doing a mental tallying of your expenses and probably conclude that you wanted to hold off on any new purchases or expenses, and any thought of replacing the older car with a newer one would probably be shelved for the time being since you didn't want to deal with higher taxes on top of new monthly payments.

Welcome to every business's current nightmare.

Over the past 14 months, the federal government has approved two enormously complex legislative packages in the form of healthcare and financial reform, each with thousands and thousands of pages of new requirements that no one fully understands or has yet had sufficient time to analyze. Consequently, many companies have understandably put any major hiring plans on hold until they can figure out what the likely costs of these new laws will be. Assuming they will face higher insurance and compliance costs - something that seems all but inevitable given what we're reading in the papers every day - they're going to be less likely to hire more employees or make new investments.

In other words, the unemployment numbers we're currently seeing are likely to remain high for the foreseeable future.

It gets worse. According to the Wall Street Journal, the actual numbers of unemployed workers is significantly higher than official estimates when discouraged workers (i.e., those unemployed but who have given up looking after getting too many thumbs-down) are factored into the mix. Since the official rate - 9.7% as of this writing - only includes people looking and filing for unemployment, it doesn't reflect the actual number of people who are out of work. When these "I give ups" are included, the number is more like fifteen percent or seventeen percent.

That's one out of every six workers.

Just some food for thought as we head into the next legislative session with a (checks Washington Post online) $1.4 trillion deficit and still higher taxes on the way. Methinks we'll be looking at extending unemployment benefits a lot longer than 99 weeks.

By the way, want some perspective? Think of a trillion this way: If we simply measure time in seconds, we need to go back over thirty one thousand years to reach one trillion seconds. That's before the earliest known permanent human settlement and about the same age as the oldest cave paintings known to archaeologists.

FAQs

Well, only a few entries along and the questions are starting already. Take a look at these & feel free to post some comments. If I get a lot of the same, I may even answer...


Who are you?
I'm a "pre-employed" management consultant currently living in Virginia with my wife and our German shepherd, Iris. I was laid off from my job last year and have been trying - without success as of this writing - to land a new position. I figured it was well past time to start a blog about my experiences, and I'm also assuming one of two things will happen: I'll either get a LOT of material for further entries as the job search progresses, or I'll find a job and have to write about what that's like. So, either way, I guess it could be thought of as a "win."


Why should I follow your blog?
Why not? I'm writing about the same things millions of us are going through, but I'm trying to share what I learn along the way. I'm not claiming that I'm the most well-known expert on this, I'm just one of the folks who's trying to document the process as he lives it & have a bit of fun along the way. (Because if you can't laugh about being unemployed, the only other thing to do is cry...)


It's been a while since high school, my friend - who was Sisyphus again?
For those who don't have their faded copy of Edith Hamilton handy (or who spent their college years in practical & useful fields of study instead of English literature like this author), Sisyphus was the poor soul condemned by Zeus to forever roll a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down whenever he neared the top. Apparently, he divulged one of Zeus's secrets and supreme deities can hold rather supreme grudges. For anyone who's ever been oh-so-close to finally landing a job after months of searching only to have it yanked away for some ridiculous, undisclosed, or nonsensical reason, it feels pretty much the same.


How come you don't mention any of the firms you interview with?
Because I want to have a job again someday, that's why. Look, I promised myself when I started this blog that I wouldn't post anything specifically denouncing a particular company - no matter how badly I feel it mistreats me or people I know through its interview screening and processes - but also that I would always be as 100% honest as I could about whatever I experience. That means if /when some company mistreats me or someone I know, I'll write about it, but I'm not going to name names because the last thing you want is for someone at a prospective firm to Google your name someday & find a blog entry criticizing another company by name. (Career suicide, anyone?)


But don't blogs have to be provocative and controversial to generate readers and publicity?
Probably, but that's not my goal here. My aim is just to share job hunting tips & experiences that people can identify with, not to land myself in some kind of Internet infamy.


So you're just chicken, is that it?
Pretty much, yes. Thanks for noticing.


Anything else about you we should know?
Yes - I have a background in content management, marketing & communications, and two years of change management training. Spread the word.