Thursday, March 22, 2007

Despair: Now in Real Time!

Normally I do try to buffer in some time between the day job happenings and my posts due to my totally unwarranted paranoia.

But today I am feeling ca ca enough to just go ahead and LIVE BLOG THE AWFULNESS.

I have phone screened a gajillion people this week and 90% of them have been:

  • Unqualified despite what their resumes said. It stretches the boundaries of credulity, if you have only used a certain software once a month in a job you have held for a few months, to call yourself an "current expert user." Maybe so, but the hiring manager is going to think I am an idiot if I send you in for an interview. Now get off my phone. Thank you for wasting 15 minutes of my life with your fibs.
  • Complete nutjobs. I know I am the Girl Who Cried Nutjobs, BUT this week I received independent confirmation from someone who is not a misanthrope (she is, in fact, a REGULAR and NORMAL person) that all of these candidates are, in fact, totes crazeeeeee.
  • Argumentative and vaguely belligerent. I am not a person who goes looking for confrontation - the LAST thing I want is more interaction with humans - so I am usually eager to deflect and avoid. Nevertheless, I seem to have stumbled upon a group of candidates that is itching for trouble. I know I know I should show and not tell but I am too exhausted to give you some specific examples. It's just all oddly adversarial out there, which, to me, is not a word I would normally associate with recruiting. And again: independent confirmation from a cheerful, non-curmudgeonly co-worker.

AND WHAT IS WORSE:

It is THURSDAY! Not Friday! I mean, it's nearly Friday and that means it's nearly not a workday (although they are ALL workdays right now, but at least on Saturday and Sunday it's just me and the laptop and I don't have to talk to any people). But I have about four more hours of phone screening today and I do not know how I am going to get through it without losing it all over one of these people. Even the cheerful co-worker admitted yesterday that she was nearly yelling at a candidate.

Having to pay deep attention to complete strangers all day long sometimes feels like zombies are eating out my brain.

2 comments:

AngryMan said...

I just want you to know that I am a total expert in Bluetooth networking (I have a Mac with Bluetooth), an expert in Microsoft Acces (I have created one database), and in lieology. Can I get a job?

tbd said...

See, you would think that would be a comedically-exaggerated example...but that is what these people actually do! The hubris! So much hubris I get woozy! Argh.