King of Excellent (according to Scaryduck)

Friday, February 11

On job websites

There is a problem with being a leading microprocessor embedded electronics engineer when you start looking for a job. Companies don't know exactly what they want in terms of technical specs, so along I come and I might as well say fluent in Pan-galactic Gargle Blasters and qualified to program 32bit zenbobs. So, they hire technical employment agencies to do the vetting, meaning the technical questions are taken off of them. The original way of contacting these agencies (back in the 90s when I first started using them) was to fax off your CV, with a short covering note, sit back and wait for the call to come in. Now, with the advent of the interwebs, you can sign up online, and wait for them to send you thousands of jobs via email. Even that would appear too difficult though, and along came Monster, the 'google' of the job websites, who send your CV off to all the other agencies automatically. Monster in the UK were crap. They sent my CV off to agencies the other side of the country, and so I still get emails daily from "Simon & Simon, technical agency to the stars" offering me temporary work in Lowestoft. In Ireland it would appear Monster has contacted a handful of agencies. Philip Brady Recruitment in Limerick were quite upbeat when I contacted them in the UK. As soon as I actually moved over, they changed their tune and haven't emailed me once. ICDS, based in Dublin, have emailed me a few times. Last week, shock horror, they emailed me a job as a Process Engineer. This was great. It's not something I can do, I have no qualifications showing I can do it, I have no experience, and I have no wish, but then to cap it all off, it's in South Wales (!). The automated emailer had picked up on the fact that I'd lived in South Wales, and that in it's eyes meant that I was qualified to apply for the job.
Then there's Recruit Ireland. They're again based in Dublin, and offer loads and loads of jobs (in Dublin) in all aspects of technical employment (in Dublin). They email me loads of jobs each week (in Dublin). They have even phoned me once or twice and asked if I'm interested in a certain post (in Dublin), and if I'm prepared to relocate (guess where to?). Then last week I got an email via them. It was a nice email.

Dear Applicant rik aitch. Uh oh, you know this is going to be full of grammatical and spelling errors.
agency is seeking for hardworking assistant in Ireland/UK. Yup, I was right.
No experience needed - free study available. Where are TDT and I going to put a study? The house isn't big enough.
Big Profit Potential. So's selling sand to the Arabs, if you can do it.
Firm will give application form if you are ready to work. Do I fill it out with bad grammar and spelling?
Requirements: * Must own a notebook with unlimited email access Well that's me out. I only have 2 desktop PCs and a couple of email addresses.
* Must own personal bank account Do you 'own' a bank account?
* Needs excellent organizational talents I'm a bloke. Organisation (note anglicization), excellent or otherwise, is not in my vocabulary.
* Applicants must be fair and business orientated. What about if you have dark hair? What are you, the master race?
Working only some hours per day As opposed to all of them?
You can easy connect our work with your main work. Erm...
Any person in Ireland/UK can be our manager. We'll take anyone stupid enough to apply.
Thank you for your attention. Thank you for receiving our spam and reading it.

The following day I got an email from Recruit Ireland, basically saying they'd been hacked. This means that anyone that has ever used Monster.ie has now got an email similar to the one above. I notice however that the following day, on their website, there wasn't a job advertised.
Wanted: Website and email security specialist. To work out of Dublin. Must be able to add a password to a website so that not every Tom, Dick and Harry can read a vast database of email addresses of people looking for work. Salary Negotiable.