In these trying and troubled times, when stocks are high and wages low, everyone still needs a job. And that's what I've been looking for. So far there hasn't been too much luck, but then it's January, and even contract work (which seems to be the only real work that's easy to pick up and pays worth a damn in the good ol' Silicon Valley) is a bit light on the ground at this time. However, in the midst of this sea of applications that I am dispensing to everyone I think will listen, I wanted to raise a couple of points I think it's worth making with regards to job hunting these days. One is very specific, while the other is broad and more far-reaching. In the interests of...whatever, I'll cover the big one first.
So despite whatever your parents and grandparents might tell you, walking into a place and handing your written application to a manager is more likely to get you a weird look than a paying position in this day and age. If you want a job that isn't dog-shit and want to prove you're in touch with the times, you go job-hunting online, preferably using a job board. My best results have come with Indeed.com, Glassdoor, Ziprecruiter and surprisingly enough, LinkedIn (even if it is a weird sort of not-Facebook for career enthusiasts as well as a jobs board). You might be asking why I gravitate to these sites. Well, beyond the obvious strokes of luck they've provided me in the past, they also tend to recognize the fact that there's a niche to be filled in the job hunting market through centralization and expediency. "What does this mean?", you say with shoulders and hands upraised. Simply put, people don't want to have to fill out the same information, be it by keyboard or by hand, over and over and over again, especially when looking for work, when time is often of the essence. Thus, things like Indeed's easy-apply function, which allows me to execute a mass dispersal of my applications with minimal effort, has quickly gained my favor, and companies that continue to insist that I make a profile just to submit an application to their shitty internalized HR system have earned my prodigious DIS-favor. Demanding that someone do something like that would be like if our parents, back when you really could get a job just by walking through the door, had been forced to fill out a disclaimer before crossing the threshold of their chosen establishment of pursuit. It's slow, it's dumb, and it also feels kind of unsafe, especially in this age when hackers will go after anything with an IP address. So yeah, to those companies that still do that, get with the program please. And now for the specific complaint: video screenings. So I recently applied to a couple of bank-teller positions, and after more or less doing what I've just complained about, plus interest thanks to their stupid personality test (another idiotic little addition to the modern job hunting process I won't get into here), they sent me a request to take part in a video-screening interview. This process, simply put means, they wanted me to record myself in full interview getup answering a list of questions they had prepared (but which they also ironically failed to provide). Not only does this speak to some brave new level of incompetence, but it also struck me as disdainful, and darkly representative of the corporate culture I would be entering into if hired. If the management couldn't spare the time required to interview me face to face, then I don't see how I could be expected to fulfill their silly request. I am not an answering machine. I might have done it if this were a written test, but asking me to put my time into recording myself answering questions that frankly should've already been part of the initial assessment you made me take strikes me as egregious and disrespectful to me as an individual. Maybe it's high-handed of me. Maybe I'm being picky and snobbish. But from where I sit, it's the last straw. Either schedule a damn face-to-face meeting and have the decency to talk to me like a person, or go fuck yourself. I don't know if any of this is coherent, but I just thought I'd put it here to vent. If you have any cogent responses or reasoning as to why things are this way, feel free to comment. Or don't. Y'know...up to you.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
About Me
I'm a blogger. I review games, mods, or whatever else I feel like, and voice my thoughts for your entertainment (and my portfolio). Reviews
All
Archives
January 2021
|