The down side of job hunting

About 15 years ago, when I first started publishing Ask The Headhunter online, I met a fellow that I’ve stayed in touch with on and off. Recently we renewed our acquaintance — and I encouraged him to start a blog.

He prefers to remain anonymous. He calls his blog Unemployed and Clinically Depressed in the Midwest. I’ll call him UCD. Though his medical diagnosis is “clinically depressed,” what’s notable about UCD is his candor and forthright perspective on who he is, what he’s been through, and where he’s going. He minces no words. UCD doesn’t feel sorry for himself. He reveals both his confidence in his future, and his fears about the things that confront his confidence.

Unemployment exacerbated UDC’s depression, and his story quickly pulls us into a realm that none of us want to look into.

There are a lot of people unemployed. Some get depressed as a result. Some suffered from depression to begin with, and the agony of unemployment has pushed them to the edge. Some jump. Some find the courage to turn around and take a new direction in their lives. Some, like UCD, find strength and power in teaching others — and in learning more about who they are. UCD has taken control of his next steps.

UCD has written a an anti-suicide note to the world. It’s his story, blunt and direct, honest and hopeful. It’s one of the most inspiring things I’ve read: Suicide. It’s about getting up from the down side of job hunting.

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TheLadders: Scam, complaints, rip off

Toby Dayton is a very smart guy. He did something that I really wish I had thought of, but I don’t have the Google brain he does… Toby has done us all a favor and boiled down TheLadders’ reputation to its essence. And it’s so simple I wanna cry because I never thought of it.

google-search-the-ladders-2Toby Googled theladders.com and watched as Google applied its “intelligent auto-complete” feature while he was typing… I’m gonna borrow one of Toby’s graphics that shows the results:

Try it yourself. Then go to Toby’s blog and read the rest of his insights. He uses this technique to look at the reputation of another notorious “jobs” site, with similar results.

Some might view this as a cute little trick, chuckle and forget about it. But this is profound. Google’s auto-complete tells you what people are looking for online — that’s how auto-complete works. It reflects public sentiment.

When people search for TheLadders.com, what they’re also searching for is information about scams, complaints and rip offs.

My compliments to Toby for posting these meta-facts. Don’t miss his article, Great Insight on Job Boards From Google.

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Readers’ Forum: Dropping a dime on the bad guys

Discussion: March 8, 2010 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter

From a reader:

I was let go suddenly from a very small business after only one month, despite being told I was doing a fantastic job. (They had me doing three jobs: office manager, paralegal and client intake.) To make a long story short, this two-attorney firm has a pattern of hiring and then firing both attorneys and paralegals before the benefits are due to kick in. Would you happen to know if there is any “red flag list,” maybe through the department of labor, to place suspect employers who are taking advantage of the high unemployment rate and changing employees like pantyhose?

Hmmm, a red flag list. A gallery of rogues. Pantyhose… I’d contact my state department of labor and ask whether any complaints have been filed about this company. Who else has dropped a dime on the firm? Get in touch, compare notes, then file your own complaint if you feel you have a legitimate beef. If others have complained, an investigator may look into any funky doings — and these attorneys may find they need a lawyer…

That’s my two bits. Is there somewhere you guys drop a dime on misbehaving employers?

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Colleges fail How

What do your kids learn in college? Lots of people ask the question only when they see the tab for higher education. It’s a good question. A better question is, do they learn How?

I’m a big believer in education for its own sake. Anything you learn is something that might “grow you,” and it might even be something you’ll someday use to good effect. So if that’s why you’re sending your kids to college, good for you.

If you’re paying for higher education because you think it’s gonna help your kids get better jobs, make more money and have a higher standard of life — well, think again. I’m not saying college won’t provide those benefits. I’m saying it isn’t really set up to provide them.

Lots of magazines publish annual college surveys that rank the schools and even suggest how much higher your kid’s lifetime earnings will be if he attends one school versus another. But I look at this another way — a far more pragmatic way.

My buddy Brooke Allen, who runs NoShortageOfWork.com, came up with a test of colleges that makes a lot of sense. Brooke is a numbers guy, so his test is really cool because it’s got nothing to do with numbers. Here it is in his own words:

Here is an experiment: Find an on-line college catalog. Search for the phrase “how to” and see if you find it anywhere, in a title or in any course descriptions.  (Things like, “How to sign up for this class” don’t count.) If you find a course that promises to tell students how to do anything, let me know. I haven’t found one yet.

I’ll tell you something: Nothing has gotten under my skin lately more than this. Sure, there are college courses that enable students to walk away and do something or other… so what’s the problem? The problem is that colleges don’t structure their curricula around how to do anything. Learning is fine, but where is the doing?

I think there are probably no courses about How to do something because colleges don’t value How. It’s not part of the institutional mission. So professors don’t teach How to do anything because to the institution, How doesn’t matter.

Why don’t colleges teach How to Be an Accountant? Or, How to Make Money? Or, How to Build a House? Or, How to Do Anything? (All are credible skills that would serve a student — and Mom and Dad — well.)

Now I’m re-defining what it means to me that education is good for its own sake. Learning What is fine, but that doesn’t “grow you” unless you learn How to put it to use. I don’t care if you never get a job or do any work or ever apply the How, because that’s up to you. What I care about is that the How is missing, and How is at least half of any education.

Any school that fails to teach How — about any subject it teaches —  fails its students.

Why don’t colleges teach How? And why do you pay so your kids will learn only What?

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What do your job interviews sound like?

I’ve spent years sharing advice about job interviews. My main advice is to walk into a job interview prepared to stand and deliver: Show the employer how you will do the work profitably so the employer will want to hire you.

But sometimes I forget that that’s the substance of a good interview. A good interview also has style and presence. What’s that? It’s how well you communicate. And how well you communicate is an indication of your conviction.

Employers are impressed with people who can and do speak with conviction. That’s who they hire.

Talk to a kid in grade school today, or to a high schooler or a college student or someone just starting out in the work world. You’ll experience one of two things. Either you will be amazed at how thoughtful some kids are and at how well they speak — you can hear their conviction. (You might cringe a bit, remembering how awkward a speaker you were at that age.) Or you’ll be shocked at the miasma of meaningless sounds emitted from their mouths — at the confusion they betray and at their lack of conviction.

In my opinion, our schools don’t do a very good job at teaching kids to write and speak. Some teachers pull it off and my hat is off to them. But I worry about how students coming out of college present themselves in job interviews. I worry how they present themselves when they try to develop the contacts they need to get in the door at the companies they want to work for.

Poet Taylor Mali makes the point better than I do — with conviction. Watch the video above.

You are judged by your presence and your conviction. What do your job interviews sound like? Which part of Taylor Mali’s poem do you sound like?

If you need help, I suggest these two books:

Talking Your Way to the Top, by Gretchen Hirsch.

How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less, by Milo Frank.

(Thanks to IT guru Bill Sterling for sending along the link to Taylor Mali’s poem!)

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TheLadders: Job-board salary fraud?

Honest, I don’t wake up every morning wondering, How can I slam TheLadders today? But TheLadders just seems to keep tripping over its own questionable practices.


UPDATE March 19, 2014
Angry, frustrated customers of TheLadders who say they were scammed finally get their day in court. Federal Court OK’s Suit Against TheLadders: Breach of contract & deceptive practices

UPDATE March 12, 2013
A consumer protection class action suit has been filed against TheLadders. If you believe you’ve been scammed by TheLadders, you can join the suit by contacting the law firm that filed the complaint. More here: TheLadders sued for multiple scams in U.S. District Court class action


I received a query from a reporter who’s working on a story about the perils of job hunting:

I am looking for job seekers, recruiters or hiring managers who can talk about job scams. If you have been a victim of a job scam or hired at one salary or job description, only to find out once taking the job that the company has structured compensation differently than promised, I would like to hear your story.

Job scams! Right up my alley. I’m always interested in stories about companies that advertise a job at a nice, high salary to get good applicants — then disclose a much lower salary for the job. Some people call that fraud, especially when the perpetrator does it again and again.

Hmmm, I wondered, What publication is this story for?

Turns out the story is commissioned by TheLadders.

Yah, TheLadders is doing an “article” about people who respond to job postings that turn out to pay less than promised. I suppose they want to warn Ladders members about consumer fraud.

Why doesn’t TheLadders just interview its own customers, who complain TheLadders itself is making scam salary promises? TheLadders home page, front and center, says:

“Only $100k+ jobs.” Not “…except a few” or “…except the ones our customers bust us for.”

People pay fees to access “Only $100k+ jobs.” Then they go on an interview for one of those Ladders-listed jobs, only to find the job pays nowhere near $100k.

The reporter who contacted me could explore job-ad salary fraud by interviewing someone who paid TheLadders $180 for “Only $100k+ jobs.” Customer Robin Lynn applied for a job she found on TheLadders with “Compensation: $100k.” The recruiter who posted the job responded:

This position is paying @75K-80K. Please let me know if you are still interested.

Robin complained to TheLadders that, “There are jobs under $100K on your site”. Customer service representative Joseph Giarratano responded:

We have very specific criteria we evaluate all our positions on to ensure they pay more than $100K. However, with the state of the current economy, albeit rare, sometimes a position will meet that criteria and still pay slightly less than $100K. I sincerely apologize that you came across one of those positions. I have removed it from our site to avoid further confusion… Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.

A salary range 20-25% less than promised by TheLadders is “slightly less?” We’re talking $20k-$25k less!

But forget about the numbers for a minute and focus on the system TheLadders claims ensures compliance with its salary requirements. I don’t get it. If TheLadders uses “very specific criteria” to evaluate positions “to ensure they pay more than $100k,” how is it that “a position will meet that criteria and still pay slightly less than $100k?” In logic, that’s called a tautology. In business, it’s doubletalk.

After paying her money and wasting her time, Robin Lynn was more careful with other Ladders listings, researching them more carefully than TheLadders did itself before she submitted other applications:

I’ve come across a few others in the intervening months and only knew they were sub-$100k because they had been cross-posted on HotJobs, Monster or another jobs board.

But what prompted this Ladders customer to search for other complaints about TheLadders and to write to me? She was annoyed by a January 18, 2010 e-mail she received from Ladders CEO Marc Cenedella. It was one of his frequent rah-rah advertorials, titled “Why is the job hunt so tedious?” in which he wrote:

…job-seekers like you know that the jobs here are hand-screened by two human beings to make sure they’re $100K+ before we let them onto the site.

(I’m really mystified by those two human beings. Ladders claims to have the most $100k+ jobs online. How do two human beings do all that checking?)

Annoyed because her experience contradicted Cenedella’s claims, Robin sent another complaint to TheLadders, only to receive another boilerplate response, this time from “Madelyn:”

Apologies for any inconvenience here, and I assure you that we make every effort to ensure that all jobs on our site qualify… Our team screens thousands of job postings each week. On the rare occasion that a job paying under $100k is posted on our site, we rely on feedback from members, like you, to let us know.

(“Our team screens thousands of job postings?” Is that the “two human beings” Cenedella is talking about?)

Robin Lynn paid $180 to TheLadders for a service. So perhaps her conclusion is not merely sarcastic: “Maybe they should be paying us to do their job instead of us paying them for the same listings that are on HotJobs and Monster?”

The reporter who contacted me about job scams could also interview Alishia, who shared the log of her customer service call with TheLadders:

Alishia: Hi Andy
Alishia: I have a problem
Andy: Sorry to hear that Alisha, how can I help?
Alishia: I found this job on your website: [redacted] Alishia: and after spending time researching the company, writing a letter and resume
Alishia: when I got a call from the hiring manager
Alishia: he tells me this position pays $50K

Perhaps the reporter should “go inside” and talk with “Andy,” a Ladders representative who admitted to Alishia that TheLadders does not have “only $100k+ jobs” and that, in fact, TheLadders has no idea what many of its jobs pay:

Andy: First of all, we make no claims that all of our jobs are submitted directly to us. Many of the positions on our site are linked directly to from external job boards. Since we don’t have a direct way of knowing the pay range of each of these positions, we make an estimate based on a rigid set of criteria.

According to this customer support transcript, TheLadders knowingly publishes jobs whose salaries TheLadders does not know, yet claims the jobs are “always $100k+.”

But lets get back to “the rare occasions” when Ladders customers don’t get what they pay for. The reporter should interview Phil, who says those occasions aren’t so rare:

I was bombarded with 60K jobs that were posing as 100K positions, and the endless flow of juvenile chatter from their “experts” became a real annoyance.

Or she could interview Tracy, who reports investing time going on three interviews after finding a “$100k+ job” on TheLadders:

I subscribed to the highest level of service offered at the time and applied to many positions but was only contacted by one company. After the third interview with this company I discovered that the salary was $48,000 per year with a potential $12,000 bonus.

If Tracy is paying top dollar for “Only $100k+ jobs,” why is TheLadders wasting her valuable time on jobs that potentially pay no more than even $60,000?

Then there’s Jerry Howard, who didn’t trust a Ladders job posting. Here’s the kind of enterprising guy I really admire: He went to the employer’s offices to doublecheck the salary before applying.

I sent this to TheLadders.com:

I checked into one of the positions you posted in Powell, Ohio with Star Dynamics. The job you posted doesn’t exist and certainly doesn’t pay $100k+ if it did. After personally visiting the locations in Powell, Ohio, a bedroom community that has only two RF communications companies (Star Dynamics and Aeroflex), it was found that the job postings do not exist. When I mentioned the $100k salary number, everyone laughed. None of the engineers working for these locations have salaries that come even close to that number.

Jerry Howard’s experience suggests Robin Lynn is on the right track: TheLadders ought to hire Jerry as its third hand screener. Problem solved, customer hired! (Do you think the other two hand screeners go out into the field like Jerry did, to conduct thorough salary checks?)

TheLadders’ misleading job postings don’t just affect its job hunting customers — they cost employers time and money, too. Corp Recruiter says her company didn’t even list its sub-$100k jobs on TheLadders:

We were never a customer of The Ladders and yet they kept posting our jobs on their site… We then had people contacting us directly asking about jobs they saw on the ladders [sic], jobs which had been closed months earlier. These same jobs never paid close to 100k.

“Only $100k+ jobs?” Not only are they not $100k+; apparently they’re not even real. I guess the money this employer saved by not posting jobs on TheLadders got spent anyway — dealing with unexpected and inappropriate applicants sent by TheLadders.

Ladders customer Chris feels he got scammed twice — once because he paid for jobs that turned out to be less than $100k+, and again when Ladders continued billing him and refused to issue a refund:

The Ladders posted a job in February for an IT Management job at Finish Line in Indianapolis. I applied, and got a phone interview. The interviewer asked me what salary range I was looking for. When I told him 100 to 110 he appologies [sic]. He told me the position was only paying $76k at max. I paid for my “TheLadders” membership. Now they automatically renewed my membership for the next 3 months for $75 and make it a point that they DO NOT PROVIDE REFUNDS. We’ll see about this. How do you spell SCAM?

Another Ladders customer, Greg, not only thinks he was scammed, he says he has evidence. Like Alishia, he saved his customer service chat log with Ladders’ representative “Andrew” and posted it on this blog(Think Andrew is the Andy who helped Alishia?)

Greg McGiffney: I interviewed for this position (great) – but I was told the comp is $7K per month – not exactly the reason why I joined the service as I am looking for over $100K (obviously). [11:19:09 AM] Andrew: Thank you for letting me know. [11:19:23 AM] Greg McGiffney: How did it get on there in the first place? [11:20:01 AM] Greg McGiffney: The other thing is that now I am kind of stuck – in that I have to follow through based on bad info. [11:20:50 AM] Andrew: You can always refuse the position, citing that salary. [11:21:32 AM] Greg McGiffney: Sure, but I kind of relied upon you to do your homework in the first place (that is what I pay you for). [11:22:11 AM] Andrew: I’m sincerely sorry that one of our jobs was not $100K.
Greg McGiffney: OK – so you are basically guessing about the comp for each of your listings? No verification? [11:24:25 AM] Andrew: Over half of our jobs are submitted directly to us with compensation listed. For the other half, we have strict guidelines to aid us in determining whether a job is $100K or not. Each positions is reviewed by 2 rounds of approvers before it is put onto the site. [11:26:54 AM] Andrew: However, with over 9,000 job postings each week, it happens that we miss one, albeit rarely. [11:27:16 AM] Greg McGiffney: What do the approvers do exactly? Seems like they should be able to verify something if there is a monetary transaction involved. [11:28:13 AM] Andrew: We cannot force companies to give us their compensation. [11:28:59 AM]

Andrew says they “miss one, albeit rarely.” (Hmm. There’s that expression again: albeit rare. Ladders rep Joseph Giarratano used it, too. These guys must attend the same vocabulary classes, with Andy and Andrew.) But maybe those “two human beings” doing the hand screening can’t keep up. Is it possible there are just two screeners “for the other half” of jobs — the ones for which TheLadders does not have compensation figures?

I’m not a lawyer, but now my antennae go up. I add up Cenedella’s “two human beings” hand screening jobs with the admission that “We cannot force companies to give us their compensation… for the other half [of jobs],” and what I come up with is that maybe TheLadders is aware that an awful lot of jobs in its database are probably not $100k+.

Suddenly customer Robin Lynn’s suggestion makes a lot of sense. It seems there’s no way TheLadders can eliminate all the sub-$100k jobs from its database — without its customers calling employers and going on interviews to find out which of those jobs pay less than $100k. Robin is paying TheLadders for the privilege of vetting TheLadders’ database, when perhaps TheLadders should be paying her for… “feedback from members, like you, to let us know.”

(Of course, there’s the possibility — Am I being cynical? — that TheLadders isn’t about to forego the revenue that comes from listing “the other half” of jobs whose salaries are unknown.)

As a headhunter, I understand exactly what Andrew (the customer service representative) means. I can’t force my client companies to make $100k offers when a job is only worth $75k. But I don’t mislead my candidates and tell them they’re interviewing for $100k jobs. (Of course, I don’t charge them for access to those jobs, either.)

Are companies intentionally posting jobs that don’t really pay $100k? Who knows? Certainly not TheLadders, which admits it does not know the compensation. Since TheLadders admits it is aware that it doesn’t know the real salaries… yet represents that it publishes “Only $100k+ jobs”… does that meet the legal definition of fraud?

fraud, noun, any act, expression, omission, or concealment calculated to deceive another to his or her disadvantage; specifically : a misrepresentation or concealment with reference to some fact material to a transaction that is made with knowledge of its falsity or in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity and with the intent to deceive another and that is reasonably relied on by the other who is injured thereby.

I can’t wait to see the “article” about job and salary scams once it’s published by TheLadders. Investigative reporting always needs a powerful punchline to rouse the public to action about job scams. Maybe the reporter should close with this quote from TheLadders’ customer Terry:

…can’t all of us get together and file a class action suit against them since we all paid money for something we are obviously not getting? If we file a class action suit we should at least get back the money we spent on a site that is misrepresenting itself. This is an obvioius attempt to take advantage of people who have lost their jobs and are in need of getting new ones.

It’s simple, folks. This doesn’t require complex legal analysis. There is no difficult or ambiguous interpretation to consider. TheLadders’ home page says, “Only $100k+ jobs.” Only.


Dear Marc Cenedella (CEO of TheLadders),

Are you listening, Bub?

Nobody makes you say Only $100k+ jobs. You choose to say only. Monster.com doesn’t say only. I’m no fan of CareerBuilder, but it doesn’t say only. What company CEO is stupid or arrogant enough to publish a bald misrepresentation in big print on his company’s home page?

Your jobs are not always $100k+. Your customers tell the story and claim that your customer service representatives admit it on the record.

Your competitors aren’t stupid; they know that no database of thousands of job listings can be always $100k+. So they don’t claim that. Only you do.

Your two hand-screening human beings must have missed recruiter Darren. A customer who paid you for only $100k+ jobs says Darren told her, “This position is paying @75K-80K.”

You have put a burden on yourself; no one put it on you. Only $100k+ jobs means there are no jobs under $100k on the job-listing service you charge people money to use. That’s what you’re selling.

“And job-seekers like you know that the jobs here are hand-screened by two human beings to make sure they’re $100K+ before we let them onto the site.”
— Marc Cenedella

“Since we don’t have a direct way of knowing the pay range of each of these positions, we make an estimate…”
— Andy, TheLadders Customer Service

It sure seems to me that TheLadders knows its claims cannot be true. Andy’s statement begs the question, Are you knowingly perpetrating fraud on consumers who pay you in good faith to get only $100k+ job listings?

Your company is taking money from people who spend it in good faith to buy what you promise to deliver. If you can’t “always” deliver “Only $100k+ jobs,” then remove what appears to be a fraudulent claim on your home page, refund the fees you collected for jobs that were not $100k+ and clean up your act.

   Nick Corcodilos               


If I were writing an article for TheLadders about job scams; if I were a freelance writer with any integrity; I’d kiss the fee goodbye, close the article like this, and then publish it on my blog instead of selling it to TheLadders:

Is there a U.S. Attorney out there reading this, who knows the difference between marketing and consumer fraud?

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Brazen Careerist: An indistinct notion of cool

A couple of weeks ago I posted a column on my FastCompany.com blog titled, Gen-Y, the Brazen Opportunist, and Curious Case of Penelope Trunk. It wasn’t until Nicole Crimaldi wrote about it on Ms. Career Girl that dialogue on the topic got interesting.

I just posted a comment on Nicole’s blog. Normally I wouldn’t reprint something here that I posted elsewhere, but I’d like to press this dialogue here, with this community. Ask The Headhunter is about advice, but you also know that I use this forum to critique the “career world,” which I believe is so out of hand and largely devoid of common sense that it does a massive disservice in the economy we’re living in.

I’d love to know your thoughts. Here’s my comment on Nicole’s blog:

I wrote the column in FastCompany that you’re commenting on, Nicole. You’ve stimulated a far better dialogue than my post did on FC.

As the title of the column suggests, its main topic is Gen Y — which is easily defined as people in their 20’s starting out on their careers. I closed the column with my point: I see a lot of pandering to an image of Gen Y’ers. Lots of businesses capitalize on that image. (But hell, people in their 20’s have always been a target of the media – the demographic spends a lot of money and pandering to it is a business unto itself.) I think people in their 20’s (no matter when in time we’re talking about them) deserve more credit than the advertising world — and Brazen Careerist — gives them.

Second in the title is Brazen Careerist, which behaves more like a social club than anything having to do with careers. (Nothing wrong with social clubs, but someone branded this one a career site.) Every generation of people in their 20’s needs and wants to reflect on itself. Brazen Careerist is a fun, if not rocky, place to do that. My point is that Brazen Careerist is a social clubhouse masquerading as a career-advice website.

The reference to Penelope Trunk points out that today no company can stand apart from the image and reputation of its boss. Brazen Careerist misrepresents itself: No matter how “authentic” people want to be, or how authentic they insist an employer must permit them to be, the reality is that most emlpoyers will eject a job candidate whose online persona is brazen and risky to the employer. I don’t care if someone doesn’t want to face reality; but don’t tell me employers don’t care, or that you’re likely to find an employer who’ll let you bring your dog to work and embrace your embellishments of brazilian waxes and board-room miscarriages. Good for you if that’s your objective. But good luck. You will need it.

Though some argue that the contradictions between the website and the boss make it all very interesting and instructive in a cool sort of way, there is no escaping the fundamental contradictions. They are fatal to most people’s careers because few will cultivate the successful brand and following that Trunk has cultivated. (You could also strive to be Britney Spears, Paris Hilton or Tiger Woods. You’d better have a backup plan, including someone who will clean up after you online.) Being brassy is fun and cool and it sometimes enables a person to develop a complex, compelling character that serves them well. But teaching, across the board, that being brazen while trying to establish a career is irresponsible.

“Living the authentic life” is an idea cultivated most simply and clearly by Aleister Crowley. His dictum was, “Do as thou wilt” and it’s very interesting. But Crowley did not hide the risks that walking on the edge of life posed. Hedonism, authenticity, personal branding — there isn’t even a debate today, because for the most part it’s all been reduced to b.s., with the apology that it’s up to you to figure out which is which. Crowley would puke. It’s a lot of fun to tell all in public forums, when you don’t have to worry about being ejected from a job interview (or from a venture capitalist’s office).

What anyone makes of Brazen Careerist or how they choose to use the site is up to them. My compliments to those who point out that they know how to separate shit from shine-ola. It’s been said again and again in this dialogue, on this forum, on the FC website and elsewhere: Beware of people who tell you to do as they say, not as they do. Asperger’s, hedonism, naivete – none of these are excuses OR explanations for giving self-contradictory advice to an audience that’s looking for legitimate guidance. Perhaps the worst of all the pandering and the gutless claims of “authenticity” is the use of Asperger’s Syndrome to foil criticism. Authenticity does not make anything and everything okay.

In a song titled, “An Indistinct Notion of Cool,” John Cale obliquely takes on what David (citing Rebecca Thorman) tackles in his comment [on Crimaldi’s blog]: self-indulgence. Cool is still a challenge to pull off, if it really is authentic. The character of the Brazen Careerist is mostly indistinct.

All of which tells me that Brazen Careerist is not a career advice site — at least not a credible or useful one. It’s a successful social club that takes its audience to a brink without warning them where they’re stepping. The message of my FC column: Gen Y’ers who want a chance to do work they aspire to should reflect on that.

Like I said in my FastCompany.com posting — I think Gen Y deserves more credit. What do you think of all this?

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Readers’ Forum: How to learn from failure

Discussion: December 22, 2009 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter

Usually the Readers’ Forum in the Ask The Headhunter newsletter starts with a problem or scenario posed by a reader. Then we all pile on it, here on the blog.

This week I’d like to pose a problem myself. The current edition of Wired magazine features an article about failure that occurs in science labs. It set me to thinking. (Everything I read flows through my headhunter filter.) How can this be applied to solve job hunting or hiring problems?

A sidebar in that article is titled How to Learn from Failure. It suggests that when scientific experiments fail, the outcome of the effort is an anomaly. Anomalous outcomes should makes us analyze failure in these four steps:

Check Your Assumptions
Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.

Seek Out the Ignorant
Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.

Encourage Diversity
If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.

Beware of Failure-Blindness
It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it.

Can these failure analysis tools be applied to job hunting and hiring? Here are my four suggestions about how to apply these tools to a failed job interview. Rather than think you failed at the interview:

  1. Ask yourself, “Is this the wrong job for me?”
  2. Explain to someone outside your business what the job is about, and what happened in the interview. Ask for their insight.
  3. Do (2.) with someone way outside your field. Ask your grandmother or a 12-year-old. If you’re forced to change the vocabulary you use to describe the failure, you might learn something new.
  4. You might believe that the salient take-away from a failed interview is that you failed at the interview. Is it possible you failed to pursue the right kind of job, company, manager?

I think there’s something here. Help me find it. How can these four failure analysis steps be used to learn from failed job interviews?

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An open question to Robert McGovern, CEO Jobfox

Dear Robert,

I just went to the Jobfox web site to send you an e-mail, but your profile page doesn’t provide an e-mail link. I wasted only about two minutes searching elsewhere on the site but gave up. Figured I’d just post a note to you here on my own blog. (You are welcome to e-mail me back: nick@asktheheadhunter.com. I love hearing from my audience. It’s something Tom Peters taught me a long time ago — it’s good for business.) I still can’t figure out why people who run websites don’t want to be bothered with e-mail. (Marc Cenedella over at TheLadders really doesn’t want to be bothered with e-mail.)

I did try clicking on your My Press Bio: Here’s what my handlers say to the press, but it goes to a dead page. Ah, well. Anybody who admits he’s got handlers to handle the press is out of my league anyway, but I guess if all they give people is a dead web page, that keeps you covered. (Cendella’s handlers write e-mail to his customers, who really get pissed off when they spend a bunch of money on an expensive new resume but can’t get a note back from the boss.) Hell, when I saw that you’re the founder of CareerBuilder I realized I’d be wasting more time communicating with you privately. We probably wouldn’t agree on much. I think the big job boards suck. (Hey, did you see the latest CareerXroads survey? CareerBuilder was the source of hires for employers less than 4% of the time among companies polled. Guess you’re glad you bailed when you did, eh?) **Update: Never mind. I just checked 2002, the year you left CareerBuilder. The figure was only 1.5% in 2002.

Jobfox has been characterized as another me-too job board and resume mill. (That combo — big job board + resume services — seems to tip people off to job boards that don’t work well and need alternate ways to suck some bucks out of customers. Did you ever think of offering special resume-writing services for the HR managers who pay to post jobs? That could be a real winner.) So I thought I’d take a look.

I don’t usually waste time with new job boards (well, I did post something nice about LinkUp, which doesn’t send out long sales letters) because let’s face it, most of the entries in this space are all alike — they load the database with crap, churn ‘n burn the customers, let them get lost among the millions of dusty old jobs and multi-level marketing come-ons, and sell access to their “info” to personnel jockeys who are glad to spend millions to… get lost in the database, because who cares? At 5pm everybody goes home and tries again tomorrow.

Anyhow… Here’s why I wanted to get in touch with you. An Ask The Headhunter reader posted a comment on You idiot, you showed this résumé to an employer?? (That’s a pretty old posting, but older stuff gets read around here — “Content is King” and all that.)

Skott Coffee (comment dated December 8, 2009 at 3:42 pm) was concerned that Jobfox has started using a lemon of a marketing ploy that Marc Cenedella has already squeezed all the juice out of. Skott seems pretty ticked off. He posted the entire sales letter he received from one of your people — and I have to say I agree with him.

I mean, 1,400-word sales letters selling resume-writing services kinda went out with hawkers selling oceanfront property in Arizona, Bernie Madoff-style “double your money” investment programs and TheLadders selling boilerplate resumes for $900.

Sales letters that just go on and on until you finally just break down and buy something generally make people feel like they’re being flagellated or something — and that’s not a good sign when you’re selling resume-writing services that are supposed to deliver resumes that make managers want to hire you.

I think Skott has a point. The sales letters Jobfox sends out make it look like the resumes you produce are going to flagellate the managers who read them. I’d have a hard time paying for that.

Skott says your resume services are selling boilerplate. I think he also means the sales letter is biolerplate. 1,421 words worth of it. Do your resume writers actually write those letters? You might want to take a look into that. They could be writing 1,400-word resumes! And charging for them. I could see how that would piss people off. Hell, it would piss me off if I were running Jobfox. But like I said, I think big job boards suck so that’s not even a remote possibility. What sucks even more is job boards that try to milk people for resume-writing services, using boilerplate sales letters that kinda demonstrate exactly the opposite of what a good writing service should be. That really sucks.

Anyhow, Skott’s comment (I read all the comments people post on my blog) got me thinking.

How do you sleep at night?

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The helpful (?) spouse

Is job hunting a solitary project?

I am currently job searching. My wife, who is in another field, constantly asks me how she can help me with my job search, and I don’t know what to tell her. I consider a job search to be a solitary activity, or an activity where the only help I get is from people in my same field. What should I tell my wife when she asks how she can help me?

You should handle all person-to-person contact during your job search, including e-mail. If a spouse (or anyone else) does it for you, there will be inevitable lapses when you are exposed as using a proxy. Employers don’t appreciate encountering the job hunter’s secretary or assistant.

If you need to do research, your spouse could help you with that. However, the risk is that while she’s exploring an info source, she may miss info that you might recognize (serendipitously) as useful. That’s up to you.

No matter how close your spouse is to you, I think you’ll find that job hunting and career change are indeed solitary activities. This is a time when we learn about ourselves and often find that we’re not who we thought we were. Another person can’t help you have this experience, except in passing. One of my favorite quotes is from Vladimir Nabokov, whose words might inspire epistemological terror in even the most self-confident person: “You are not I, and therein lies the irreparable calamity.”

No one — not even a spouse — can substitute their experience for your own.

One great way for a spouse to help is to listen and be a sounding board, without actually getting involved.

The worst thing that can happen is Acute Spousal Interference.

Let’s hear some other ways a spouse might be helpful (or cause problems) in a job search!

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