Recruiters 25a

In recounting my experience with the agency recruiters earlier this week I forgot to mention that both PS and IM are actually working on-site at the client company in a contractor capacity.

By that I mean they're not on-site account managers, they're getting paid to do a job for the client. One is listed in the directory as an engineer, the other as a program manager.

That means they're pimping people to the client on company time. And actively trying to poach contractors from other agencies.

What a business.

Green & gold memories

A friend of mine sends round this compilation of, well, History du Jour—historical events that took place on a particular date. And here was one of the vignettes for yesterday:

“In 1693, a charter was granted for the College of William and Mary by co-sovereigns King William III and Queen Mary II of England to develop clergymen and civil servants for the colony of Virginia. The scholastic honor society Phi Beta Kappa was organized there as a social fraternity in 1776. Seven signers of the Declaration of Independence (including its author, Thomas Jefferson), US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, and President James Monroe were college alumni, as were President John Tyler, General Winfield Scott, and statesman John Randolph. George Washington was the college's first American chancellor (1788–1799).”

(Thank you, Pundit’s Apprentice and Roger.)

And it brought to mind my personal association with W&M & the headquarters of Phi Beta Kappa:

I had my orals for my master’s degree at Phi Beta Kappa hall. My director, Ludwell Harrison Johnson, III, ran the society and thought it was appropriate since I had a key. Professor Funigello and Professor Genovese (the Big Gun visiting from Rutgers) were on the committee.

Professor Johnson started out by inviting everyone present to have a drink (choices being sweet sherry, dry sherry and whiskey). I declined, thinking it better to keep my wits about me, but encouraged them to suck it down, thinking it might be better if theirs were somewhat addled.

They asked me all the usual questions and I answered as fluidly as you would facing the Grand Inquisitor.

After I’d been sent out for a while (Professor Genovese later insisted they’d all sat around discussing football, which I doubt because it was May and therefore Not the Season), wishing I’d not worn a suit and nylons because it was hot and humid, and my shoes with the fishies on them weren’t very comfortable either, Professor Johnson ushered me back inside to announce I’d passed and I could therefore have a drink.

Which I did. Whiskey, not sherry.

My other sharp memory of W&M is of watching a mockingbird strafe a squirrel halfway across campus. Apparently the squirrel had come too close to the bird’s nest and was being taught a lesson it wouldn’t forget too soon.

Oh. And I did get the degree.

Recruiters 25

My latest close encounter of the recruiting kind has been straight out of a Dalí painting.

My first contact with this agency was a few months ago when I was contacted by one of their reps after a conference call at work. My sole contribution to the call (and I’m not making this up) was, “Hi, I’m [Bas Bleu]. I work in XXX, and I’m wondering why I’m on this call.”

IM, the recruiter contacted me a day later. He’d looked me up in the company directory, saw I was a contractor and wanted to know if I was looking for other contract “opportunities”. I wasn’t.

But when my contract ended (with less than two full weeks’ notice) last month, I got in touch with him, saying I was now looking for product manager positions.

Next thing I know I’m called by PS, “I work with IM”, announcing that a hiring manager with a program management opening wants to talk with me. IM had sent my CV to this person without consulting me.

Leaving aside the unprofessionalism of sending out my résumé for any position without inquiring whether I was interested, I pointed out that I’m a product manager, not a program manager, but didn’t matter.

That position went nowhere (despite PS demanding to know when I could start about every 37 minutes), but then PS called me to announce that IM had sent my CV to another hiring manager, for program management. Again, I told her I’m a product manager, not program. Oh—it’s project management. Hello? ProDUCT, not proJECT.

Oh, but this is change management.

Well, I’m kind of interested in CM, & the rate is $10/hour more than I was getting. So I agreed to talk with the hiring manager. That was a couple of weeks ago.

I went through six scheduled different times for the call (including being notified 25 minutes before a couple of the assigned times) before I spoke with MC. Who thought I was interviewing for a different position. Additionally, I knew it wasn’t a good sign that MC could not explain to me exactly what this job encompasses. It’s hard to implement change when you’re completely clueless.

Then I spoke with someone else, who’s allegedly a “stakeholder” in the change management process. He didn’t really know what the person would be doing either, but I needed his imprimatur somehow. (Again, it took several scheduled and cancelled call times before we actually connected last Tuesday.)

Friday PS called to congratulate me that they’re moving ahead with bringing me on, and I will start on the 9^th.

Well, more flags started going up when I got the “offer letter”—illiterate, and with a non-compete clause that basically says that if I ever go to work for any of this agency’s (unnamed) clients for a period of two years after I work for them, I’ll have to pay some sort of penalty. I called PS and told her I wouldn’t sign the contract. So they backed down to a clause (illiterate) saying I can’t go to work for the hiring manager.

I can live with that, especially for an at-will contract.

But as I was engaged in this back-and-forth on Monday (discovering that the agency is pretty amateur hour in every respect, including on-boarding; folks: I can’t fax you the I-9 form; someone  representing the employer has to verify the original documents that confirm my legal right to work in this country), PS called to say that, well, actually, MC doesn’t have responsibility for change management, so I need to talk with someone else, HP. Uh—so, is HP the hiring manager and I’ve not actually been hired? PS didn’t know.

So we set it up that I’d speak with HP at 1500 yesterday, for some unspecified purpose. and then, at 1237 PS called to say that HP didn’t think I have enough change management experience, so I don’t have the job & she’s not going to call me.

Well, okay, then.

But wait—there’s more. At 1435 PS called back to say that HP would talk with me after all, so could I please take the call at 1500.

And we’re not done yet, because HP told me that she “only found out yesterday” that this position would report to her, and she doesn’t know what the remit is, either. So I couldn’t even find out from the hiring manager of record what they want this person to do.

Seriously, between the incompetence of the agency (they’ve actually accomplished what I thought was impossible: they make my last agency look reasonably professional) and the utter cluelessness of the client company, I’m wondering if this gig is worth it. The only plus at this point is that it would be an income stream.

Stay tuned. HP told me that she’s interviewing more people and has to make a decision by the end of the week or she’ll lose funding. For a position she didn’t know until yesterday that she’d have open.

Seriously—you can’t make this stuff up.

Bank of last resort

I’m not saying that we’re going to hell in a handbasket, but here’s another example of the plummeting common denominator in the use of language in business:

It’s a come-on for high schoolers to open checking accounts at a Chase Bank in a supermarket in Palm Springs. Not sure how much of the smaller print you can see, but here are a few random thoughts on it:

Of course there’s the illiteracy factor—neither “can’t” nor “it’s” has the required apostrophe for proper usage in this case.

& I wonder what the “real worl” might be. I looked, & the “d” hasn’t been erased, so someone put that up & everyone else left it. Like the “cant” & “its”.

How does “they can’t overdraw” relate to “teaches them to manage money”? Wouldn’t the effects of having a check bounce be a much better instructor on how best to manage money? I mean—would the economy be in such a mess if people from house-buyers to Fortune 500 CFOs had a better grasp on the limits of finances?

Considering the trouble Chase has been in, this rather reinforces the idea that they don’t quite know what they’re doing, & would make me reluctant to put my after-school earnings in their institution.

Nuclear winter

You’ll note from this photo that there’s a great gaping hole where the microwave oven should be.

Last Wednesday evening I noticed that my egg wasn’t cooking, no matter what setting or for how long I had it in there. Thursday I called the property manager And Friday the repairman came out. (Not quite the service I had at the Apartment Megalopolis in San José; but this property management company is decidedly more down-market than that place.)

It seems the magnetron tube has died. And the repairman was exceedingly upset about the fact that I live on the third floor and there’s no elevator. Meaning not only did he have to remove the oven from the wall (“These things are really heavy!”), but had to get it down two flights of stairs.

(“How did they get the appliances in here?” he wailed, looking at the side-by-side refrigerator. I assume they schlepped them up. Unless they built the unit around them.)

I expect he won’t be the one to bring either the repaired unit or a replacement back up here.

Anyhow, I’m finding that not having a nuclear device cramps my cooking style considerably. No bacon. No quick zapping of leftover Persian food from the takeout place across the street. No heating up the coffee that’s gone cold.

Bugger getting the appliances up here. How am I going to survive until I get my microwave back? I actually considered buying a teeny one for the interim, because I know it’ll take forever for the property manager and owner decide on what action to take.

Prisoner of technology, that's me.

No kissing

February is American Heart Health month here in the US. So let me bring you a story that’s associated with heart operations: the no-kiss, hard CPR method.

And here to show us how it’s done is that master of vascular sensitivity, Vinnie Jones:

The British Heart Foundation endorses the method, and created the Jones video. We’ll have to see how it flies this side of the Pond.

The bark side of Super Bowl

Ordinarily I tune out commercials on TV, if I can’t fast-forward past them. (I’ve also trained my eyes not to see ads on web pages. All those billions of dollars spent on SEM just swirl down the drain as far as I’m concerned.)

I also don’t watch sporting events. I used to like the Olympics before NBC got hold of them & turned them into xenophobic yak-a-thons.

So the Super Bowl is a great big glob of non-interest to me. However, I do understand that this is where advertisers seriously strut their stuff, & sometimes the commercials are quite entertaining. Maybe more so than what’s happening on the gridiron.

(Well, unless Janet Jackson is involved.)

Here’s one that’s been “leaked” to the Net, from Volkswagen:

It’s not clear to me what dogs barking a John Williams piece has to do with German cars. But it’s certainly more entertaining to watch the piss being taken (so to speak) out of that pompous, self-important musically-bloviating, um, composer.

Enough, already

J.C. Penney’s new CEO is taking an interesting approach to the Applification of the retail giant. As of today, no more sales-du-jour; just consistent, low pricing.

& when I say “sales-du-jour”, I mean even more than that: last year they ran 590 sales.

I don’t know how they do that—sales on sales, I guess.

But Ron Johnson led Target for some years before moving to run retail operations at Apple. You can apparently thank him for the no-discount but really cool Apple Store ambience. (If you don’t know about Apple stores, all the customers look like they came from either Skid Row or a developers’ bullpen & the fixtures & the help are all minimalist chic.) He seems to be intending to meld the low prices of the former with the…well, the experience of the latter.

If so, he’s got a long row to hoe. I haven’t been in a Penney’s store in a while (by which I mean somewhere around 30 years), but peering into them at the mall, they strike me as seriously shabby.

Meanwhile, the company has been running commercials touting the shift in strategy. See for yourself.

 Here's what I wonder: if it works for Penney's, will Macy's follow suit? I certainly hope so, because they must run at least 600 sales per year, too.

Muppet news

Evidently it’s not enough to have Sunnis fighting Shiites, or Tutsis going at it with Hutus or Serbs taking on everyone in the Balkans. No—Fox News and the Muppets are now firing across each others’ bows.

Not watching a whole lot of TV news, I hadn’t been aware that Fox’s Eric Bolling proclaimed that the latest Muppet movie indicates a “liberal media” bias that’s brainwashing kids against big business, especially (in this case) big oil.

Actually—I hadn’t been aware that anyone named Eric Bolling exists.

Nonetheless, it does seem a bit mean-spirited to go after the childhood icons. But it turns out that the fuzzy friends are not partially armed when it comes to a battle of wits. At a press conference in London this week, Kermit and Miss Piggy had a few words of their own:

I’m just helping fulfill Kermit’s prediction that this’ll be all over the Internet. Happy to do my bit.

Calculated to bring you down

A writer for Slate has come up with a Mitt Romney comparison calculator. It’s an algorithm that uses Romney’s income for 2010 (based on the tax returns he finally made public) and calculates how long it would take the Republican candidate to “earn” whatever you made that year.

Then it tells you how long it would take you (at your income level) to amass what he does in a year.

If you’re not depressed when you start out, you are when you’re done.