As of yesterday, I no longer own real property in Seattle. The deal is closed & recorded with King County.
Thank God!
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Recruiters... (redux)
Okay, latest in the surrealistic world of recruiters:
Last week I was contacted (or “reached out to”) by an account manager for one of the job shops I’ve been speaking with. She had a requisition from PayPal, one of the large users of contract workers (although, as far as I can tell, they all pretty much use contractors as much as possible, as it saves them money & means it’s marginally easier to cut the payroll than to fire “full-time employees”). It’s not what I really want, & the money’s low, but it’s a three-month renewable, & I figure that 90 days would give me room to look around for something that really appeals.
So I reworked my CV to speak to the project management aspects, & then went back & gave her a bulleted list addressing their bulleted list, because God forbid they should have to actually look at my CV to find what I’ve done that would be useful to them.
Yesterday here’s what I got by way of update:
“Just wanted to follow-up with you on the Yahoo position and also give you a status update on the PayPal position. They are in the final stages with another candidate and said that they would circle back to me later this week.
“Please let me know if you have any questions.”
I consider myself a bit of a smart cookie, but I have no idea what that means. Am I out of the running for PayPal? If so, why would they “circle back” (again with the biz-speak)? Perhaps this is her way of telling me that if the other candidate turns out to be a raving lunatic with connections to Al Quaeda and the WTCU, the client might deign to reconsider my qualifications?
But what really threw me was the reference to Yahoo. As far as I know, I’ve not discussed any opening at Yahoo with her. Where did this come from, I wonder?
Which leads me to also wonder if she meant to send this “update” to someone else entirely, whom she’d proposed to both PayPal & Yahoo. Or if she actually had sent my CV in to Yahoo for a position, without telling me.
& lest you think this beyond the beyond, it’s happened before. Back in Virginia I’d been speaking with a recruiter for a position with Client X, tweaked my CV to address their job description, got the full pitch from him about what a perfect match I was, & then waited. When I finally contacted him, he informed me that Client A had concerns that I didn’t have a particular type of experience. When I told him that this experience wasn’t in the JD, there was a bit of a flutter & then it came out that he’d submitted my CV to the wrong client.
At least it was wrong as far as I was concerned.
After experiences like these it’s hard to take these people seriously. I wonder how it is their clients manage to keep using them?
BTW, I emailed this local Yahoo/PayPal chick to ask what, exactly, she was talking about. So far no reply. I guess “please let me know if you have any questions” didn’t mean she would actually provide answers to them.
Last week I was contacted (or “reached out to”) by an account manager for one of the job shops I’ve been speaking with. She had a requisition from PayPal, one of the large users of contract workers (although, as far as I can tell, they all pretty much use contractors as much as possible, as it saves them money & means it’s marginally easier to cut the payroll than to fire “full-time employees”). It’s not what I really want, & the money’s low, but it’s a three-month renewable, & I figure that 90 days would give me room to look around for something that really appeals.
So I reworked my CV to speak to the project management aspects, & then went back & gave her a bulleted list addressing their bulleted list, because God forbid they should have to actually look at my CV to find what I’ve done that would be useful to them.
Yesterday here’s what I got by way of update:
“Just wanted to follow-up with you on the Yahoo position and also give you a status update on the PayPal position. They are in the final stages with another candidate and said that they would circle back to me later this week.
“Please let me know if you have any questions.”
I consider myself a bit of a smart cookie, but I have no idea what that means. Am I out of the running for PayPal? If so, why would they “circle back” (again with the biz-speak)? Perhaps this is her way of telling me that if the other candidate turns out to be a raving lunatic with connections to Al Quaeda and the WTCU, the client might deign to reconsider my qualifications?
But what really threw me was the reference to Yahoo. As far as I know, I’ve not discussed any opening at Yahoo with her. Where did this come from, I wonder?
Which leads me to also wonder if she meant to send this “update” to someone else entirely, whom she’d proposed to both PayPal & Yahoo. Or if she actually had sent my CV in to Yahoo for a position, without telling me.
& lest you think this beyond the beyond, it’s happened before. Back in Virginia I’d been speaking with a recruiter for a position with Client X, tweaked my CV to address their job description, got the full pitch from him about what a perfect match I was, & then waited. When I finally contacted him, he informed me that Client A had concerns that I didn’t have a particular type of experience. When I told him that this experience wasn’t in the JD, there was a bit of a flutter & then it came out that he’d submitted my CV to the wrong client.
At least it was wrong as far as I was concerned.
After experiences like these it’s hard to take these people seriously. I wonder how it is their clients manage to keep using them?
BTW, I emailed this local Yahoo/PayPal chick to ask what, exactly, she was talking about. So far no reply. I guess “please let me know if you have any questions” didn’t mean she would actually provide answers to them.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Biz-speak 2.0 redux
Can it possibly be more than two years since I last took on the issue of the subset of business blather that we know as buzzword bingo?
Marlys Harris of Money Watch has stepped in to update us. (Came to me via the Soapbox maven.) A couple of thoughts on her list:
In addition to “human capital” I’ve also recently seen “talent management” to refer to HR. I suppose, like giving employees thank-you notes instead of pay raises, describing them as capital or talent is supposed to disguise the fact that they’re still treated like chattel.
Akin to “transparent” is “visibility”. You can’t be aware of something going on, you have to have visibility of it. Must be the noun—it can’t be visible to you, you must have visibility of it.
One monstrosity that pervaded the organization I recently fled was “learnings”. Evidently the legitimate “lessons” is insufficient, so they had to turn the gerund into a bastardized plural form to describe the aftermath of failed projects.
“Take-away” was big, too. I lost interest when I realized they weren’t talking about Chinese food.
And one of my bêtes-noires (mentioned in my earlier post) is still “socialize”, meaning to make others aware of something. There was a lot of that sort of socializing going on. And “circling back”; not to mention circling wagons.
What would you add to the list?
Marlys Harris of Money Watch has stepped in to update us. (Came to me via the Soapbox maven.) A couple of thoughts on her list:
In addition to “human capital” I’ve also recently seen “talent management” to refer to HR. I suppose, like giving employees thank-you notes instead of pay raises, describing them as capital or talent is supposed to disguise the fact that they’re still treated like chattel.
Akin to “transparent” is “visibility”. You can’t be aware of something going on, you have to have visibility of it. Must be the noun—it can’t be visible to you, you must have visibility of it.
One monstrosity that pervaded the organization I recently fled was “learnings”. Evidently the legitimate “lessons” is insufficient, so they had to turn the gerund into a bastardized plural form to describe the aftermath of failed projects.
“Take-away” was big, too. I lost interest when I realized they weren’t talking about Chinese food.
And one of my bêtes-noires (mentioned in my earlier post) is still “socialize”, meaning to make others aware of something. There was a lot of that sort of socializing going on. And “circling back”; not to mention circling wagons.
What would you add to the list?
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