> As such, I glanced at Federal job openings and noticed a supposed
> shortage in information security, a field in which I worked for several
> years. Then I decided to look for more work with the Department of the
> Navy, then expanding outward to the entire Fedzyztem.
>
> And lo! I found, of course, ridiculous language that meant nothing to
> me, acronyms and initialisms galore. In short, all many of ways in which
> language was used to keep people OUT. That is, to weed down the talent
> pool or make the process so frustrating, so insider, that I can see how
> people would just give up from feeling excluded.
Tell me about it. I've been in the job market for over 5 years, so I have lots of stories about job interviews and the application process. On the one hand, the Internet has made it easy to apply for tech jobs. I
applied for around 15 jobs the other night in the span of about 30 minutes. On the other hand, university jobs and government jobs, in my case, jobs at public libraries, always require stupid amounts of paperwork. The Kansas City Public Library makes applicants to professional positions fill out 3-5 pages of essay questions as part of the application process. I find this offensive, because it is a waste of my time, it disrespects my professional degree and experience, and I end up getting asked the same questions in the interview anyway.
Right now I'm doing some daily research for a local headhunter which involves me looking at people's resumes n Monster.com. Looking at other people's resumes has not been the eye-opener I expected. People's resumes all look pretty much the same. I do get impressed when I look at resumes for engineers and computer programmers with lots of experience. But on the flip side, employers constantly throw in all kinds of obscure requirements into their job ads. Experienced people like myself know to apply anyway. Employers just throw in everything but the kitchen sink.
The other night I applied to this one job where the employer stated that it was mandatory that applicants have experience with XYZ content management software. I'd never heard of this software, so it's safe to say that this was some off-the-shelf system that they company had bought from a vendor. The odds are that they will find nobody with experience with that exact software.
How is the job market for geeks right now? Still sucks. I had an interview last week for a web designer position at a local company which would probably fire me if they found out that I was an anti-capitalist. The good news is that I was one of the top 12 people out of 200 applicants. The bad news is that even in KC, there are 200 people applying for web designer jobs.
> Again, these are REAL fucking problems, that affect people's lives every
> fucking godamned day. The government is probably filled to the brim with
> incompetence because of their supposedly "meritorious" hiring system
> which ends up turning the application process into a nightmare of
> obscurantist lingo, a grand insider's game that gives those with a
> built-in advantage a leg up over those with none -- and thus reproducing
> the system.
Incompetent people are in every workplace, which has long had me wondering about the supposed high level of "productivity" in the American workplace.
One of my little sisters is a high school dropout. Yet she is practically running the financial operations of a local corporation. She tells me stories about all of the incompetence, nepotism and gold-bricking in her workplace. Much of the incompetence can be found in the college-educated co-workers who are often getting paid $20,000 more than my sister. She's risen to her position because of her responsibility and competence. It has created a big headache for her because everybody comes to her because she knows what she is doing.
> But no, the focus is on the least significant issue to people, given
> that the work of the pomos affects less than 1 percent of the fucking
> population. And this would be because .... it's easier to rant about
> this shit, which means nothing, than to actually address the other shit
> which might make a difference if changed. At the very least, it would
> matter to people that lefties actually, you know, gave a shit about the
> crap they contend with every day.
Nobody gives a shit about pomo. I was exposed to that crap a bit in grad school. So I did what I do best and started sprinkling pomo buzzwords into the papers I was doing for one class. Really impressed the professor. He totally didn't figure out that I was such a bullshit artist in college.
> And I should poit out, of course, that having lots of exposure to young
> men (testosterone central) always on the hunt for better jobs, it does
> not end with the Feds but extends to corporations and their looney
> application process which, again, weeds people out who find the whole
> thing mindbogglingly obscurantist, difficult, etc. etc. One kid was over
> here two weeks ago, recently fired, I had to stop every five minutes to
> help him wade through online applications to places like Home Despot
> (not a typo!).
Applying to jobs like Home Despot is an entirely different level of hell.
Many of the bigger companies have gone to online application systems, which isn't necessary easier or faster. The system for Loew's (a competitor to Home Despot) involves a sit-down workstation in their stores. The application software asks easy questions, but it also asks a series of ethical questions. Barnes and Noble still uses paper applications, but Borders has an online system. As part of the online application process, Borders asks a set of 100 psychological questions.
For a system that worships work and employment, the bastards certainly make it had to find a job.
Chuck