I’m slowly (and by slowly I mean, not really at all) starting to think about looking for a job. I’ve been off for almost a month now, I’ve accomplished quite a few things at home, got some starts on other things that can be continued on nights and weekends, and I generally feel like I’m getting close to returning to the land of the worker bee. One thing I’m running into is that 95% of the posted jobs on the big boards suck. And not just suck in a “That job will clearly suck” sorta way, but in a “The recruiting firm couldn’t be bothered to write a decent description because they know this job really sucks” sorta way.
At the very end of this suckage highway where the road drops off the end of the world, we have job descriptions like this. A job description that amounts to “Winforms and C#” does not exactly get me all hot and bothered enough to send in my resume. How does a recruiting firm stay in business when they can’t be bothered (or don’t know enough English, more likely) to write a half-ass description of the job along with maybe just a couple of the benefits?
While that is not common, it’s not far from the average of these jobs on Dice. In 30 days of irregularly surfing through the postings there, I’ve run into exactly 2 jobs that I didn’t immediately equate with an anal probe. On top of that, you are almost always dealing with a recruiter. You have no idea what company the job is with until they get your resume. Are companies that pressed for resources that they can’t put up their own add on Monster? These are not the companies I want to work for.
Speaking of recruiters, how does a recruiting firm get anyone interested when all their job postings look like this? The job description is “Need 2yrs up programming with C#”. Really? What is up programming? Is that really a description or more of a requirement? How desperate would you have to be to basically send in your resume blindly to something like that? Isn’t it completely obvious how much that job must suck that they are perfectly OK with their recruiter completely mailing it in? In the end, I’m sure they stay in business because there are people out there who blast their resume out to every single job posting on Dice and see where their shit sticks. Like dating in college, it’s about quantity, not quality.
I’m sure that there are plenty of decent recruiters out there (I’ve worked with exactly 1 good one and I think he got tired of dealing with me) but overall, recruiters seem to suck balls on average. It’s too bad that they have a monopoly on most of the jobs.
All that said, if you’re willing to wait and willing to do a lot of searching on your own, you can find decent jobs. I have 3-4 right now that I’m doing research on to see if I’d want to work there. I’ll probably apply to at least 2 of them and see what comes out of it. The plan right now is to have gainful employment on January 1.