Nothing continues to happen.

Tatter helpfully provided this link to the Snopes message board which has "Crazy things seen on resume" (worth a look alone for the newspaper ad of the pot smuggler looking for legitimate employment).

But alas, I continue to have no homegrown recruiting laffs. Everyone is all well-behaved, or is misbehaving in ways too minor, boring or repetitive to previous posts to bother noting. I am very disappointed. I need to go back to entry-level recruiting.

Easy there, Tiger.

So guess what, Candidate?

It is 2007 and there is this thing called telecommuting.

What this means is that although I might sound super duper professional over the phone, the fact is I might be in yoga pants at my kitchen table trying to shut up the dry-heaving cat and to ignore the hot married guy across the way who is surprisingly and somewhat disturbingly visible through the frosted glass window in his shower that is directly, distractingly in my line of sight when I look up from my laptop.

This also means that I am receiving calls on an ordinary home phone line.

The kind of phone line which, unlike many office phones, has caller ID and call waiting as opposed to multi-lines. And it might be the annoying kind of call waiting which instead of being just a little click is an annoying interrupting momentary drop out in the current call (back in the day, wasn't it just a little click? What happened? Why did the technology get WORSE with time?).

So let's set that fact aside for one moment, shall we?

Okay, so then, also, Candidate? Remember how I called YOU and left a message on your voicemail that I would like to set up a time to phone screen you for a certain position? In that message, there were two important clues: one, I was making a phone call and two, I conduct phone screens.

Now certainly, you being old enough to have this professional job, it HAS occurred to you that it's not really plausible I might be a recruiter who has been designated not just to recruit for this particular position but also just to speak with you personally, correct? That I would just be sitting there, staring off into middle distance waiting for you to call back.

So it IS plausible that - if I was contacting YOU for a phone screen via the phone - I might also be talking to other people on that same phone to conduct the very same phone screen I mentioned to you in my message.

Are you still with me? So let's put it all together, shall we?

When you get my message, and you call me back to set up this phone screen, I appreciate it. And I also certainly appreciate enthusiasm.

But when you call me back FOUR PLUS TIMES IN A ROW in twenty minutes, leaving a voicemail each time, and each time creating a momentary fall out of my current call, which means I have to keep asking the person I am trying to talk to to repeat what they were just saying OR reassure them that even though my voice suddenly went silent mid-sentence, the call was not dropped and I am still there.

This doesn't make me feel all too kindly towards you. And I know it's you, because you were on my caller ID every time.

So please. Call once. Leave a voicemail. Give me some time to call you back, because there are, in fact, other candidates, other jobs, bathroom breaks, lunch, teleconferences, lying down on the couch for five minutes trying to figure out how long it is going to get me out of this dayjob...you know, stuff. Things that are not you. They do exist.

Word Cop: WAIT! Something DID happen!

Today, on a work teleconference, someone actually said the word VAJAJAY.

Key words in the above sentence:

"WORK TELECONFERENCE"

"VAJAJAY"

Nothing funny happened yesterday either. Today isn't looking any better.

Somebody did forward a resume from an acquaintance. The message from the acquaintance said something like "Find me a job, hook a brutha up." Now, the candidate was sending the message to a friend, so whatevs is all I say to that.

But the friend - employee of the relatively buttoned-up company this person wants a job with - sent that message to HR. Like...from what I understand, "hook a brutha up" would include...um...deleting the chatty silly crap your friend puts in the message before sending along it along to like professional people.




I am scraping. SCRAPING.

Nothing funny happened today.

I am back at work and ready to be all focused and bring you all the laffs, but absolutely nothing funny happened. Some candidate's name was "Sweetee" but that isn't so much funny as...well, kinda cute, actually.

WHAT IF THE BLOG HAS RUN ITS COURSE?

Hmmm.

Deborah Ng from Freelance Writing Jobs and Finding the Right Words (Hello! *waving*) has tagged me to write about why I blog and so at some point this week I will but I am feeling apprehensive. I know WHY I blog but I am feeling a bit lately like WITH WHAT.

CANDIDATES PLEASE START ACTING UP! MY POINTLESS BLOG DEPENDS ON YOU FOR COMEDY.

Apologies, Again

To the Candidate I Spoke to Yesterday: I am so sorry my cat was near-deafeningly dry-heaving while I was conducting your phone screen.

To Readers: I have no additional recruiting-related laffs this week as it has been a crazy time trying to juggle two jobs. I am not cut out for juggling two jobs; I am barely cut out for passing for mediocre at one. What I am well-suited for is either a) staring off into space (seriously, I'm like a champ!) or b) running around, you know, eating and drinking and making some merry. And the latter of which will be happening over the next few days as I will be ON VACATION, so I will be back here late next week and I am going to make a concerted effort to actually pay enough attention to at least one job to have more to write about.

Resume Bullet Point of the Week

This is not, mind you, from our Army...but it's still pretty special nonetheless.

"Winning the Excellent Supermarket Award of Army in 2001"

Off-Topic Word Cop:Temporary Restraining Order

I would like a temporary moratorium on the words "musings," "rantings," or "ramblings" being used within 50 feet of a blog for the next six months. There is an exception for Copyranter because...well, because he's earned it.

Sorry, bloggers, but it had to be done. Own your thoughts! Did Hemingway muse or rant or ramble? No, he stated! State, I say! State your thoughts!

I will be probably imposing a restraining order on myself in the next few weeks, as this genre (complaining about how the people you encounter in your job are just so ungodly stupid) is also beyond tired. But I keep hoping I can ride out the trend past the trendiness.

Word Cop: Nails on Blackboard

For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with language and how people use it. Um (gestures to entire blog) OBVIOUSLY.

I don't know why it is. If someone has a verbal tic or uses certain words, I cease to be able to actually listen to the content of what they say, and instead become completely focused on the tic or the word. Sometimes it's in a good way. My gay husband refers to a certain kind of girls' short-shorts as "Cooter Cutters" and sounds exactly like some sassy seventy-year old lady when he says it. And the channeling of a Golden Girl through this Banana Republic-wearing hot gay potato never fails to make me giggle endlessly.

Then again, sometimes it's NOT in a good way. We recently had a call with our team to talk about certain things, and we kept discussing "basic qualifications." Instead of calling them "basic qualifications" everyone on the team calls them "basic quals."

Quals.

Quals.

I don't know why...I mean I REALLY don't know why, but this word "qual" makes me shudder. I have tried to parse my reaction but I cannot. I just inexplicably hate this abbreviated word with every molecule in my body. I didn't hear anything else I'm supposed to be listening to because every time they said "qual," I tensed up.

Secondly, they also kept talking about making our job descriptions "pop." I think it's great that we're trying to improve our ads, but "pop?" It's not a red accent wall. It's not eyeliner. POP?

Anyway, this post is less to critique anyone on my team and more to wonder: what is wrong with me? Why am I so fixated on this stuff? Does anyone else do this?

"Emergency Colonic"

Although not quite as horrifying as "decapitated head," "emergency colonic" is yet another two-word phrase I would not have normally expected to encounter in a job-searching related capacity.

And yes, Reader, I have noticed the slight uptick of late of my posting links to other sites and then brushing off my hands like I've done a good job with this blog for the day. As Boris Becker would say: Lazy!



(Here's a little quick story for you...I once worked with a former tennis pro named Jenny Byrne. Jenny is an AWESOME person and hysterically, pee-in-your-pants dry-Australian-humor funny. She told me a story once of watching a match with Boris Becker and some other dude. The...um...ref? Umpire? What do you call it in tennis? The person who's supposed to be watching where the balls lands and stuff? I only watch tennis for the men's thighs, I don't know any of the terms. Anyway, so a ball landed and the guy in the chair called it in, and Boris insisted it was out and kept pointing to...something on the ground, the line. CRAP. This story is impossible to tell without actual tennis knowledge. Anyway, Becker wanted the dude in the chair to get OUT of the chair to come look at the irrefutable physical evidence on the ground that the ball was out. The dude refused. Becker points his racket at the dude and spits out two damning Teutonic-inflected syllables: LA-ZY! To this day, when decrying anything lazy, in my head, I hear the staccato sound of Jenny's imitation of Boris Becker. The story is REALLY funny when she tells it. Not so much when I do.)

So I am actually not entirely being lazy. After-Dark Ill-Suit has a new gig AND the long-distance gay husband is coming for a visit next week so all in all, things are a little hectic around here. But will continue to post other people's crap as my own once things settle down.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I'm not EVEN going to feel bad about it anymore!!!!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/302397_grumpyworkers05.html

Confidential Again to Mr. Pissy Pants

Mr. Pissy Pants, I called you to follow-up on your bitchy note. I called the number you provided on your resume, the resume you submitted for this potentially $100K/yr base plus some kinda bonus job.

When the voicemail answered, it informed me in your smoove playa voice, that if the person leaving the message was female, most likely the call would be returned. If the person leaving the call was not female, "maybe you will, maybe you won't" return the call. I was delighted that you made it so clear that due to my gender I was more likely to receive a call back.

I wonder, though, if maybe, contrary to your bitchy note, it isn't that the hiring manager never attempted to contact you, it's that she called this very same number, again, provided on your resume. And it's possible that rather than being delighted, she had visions of the future sexual harassment lawsuits you would inspire with your colossally poor judgment on when and where is it appropriate to get your game on, and just hung the hell up.