Rant #2,279: Nothing From Nothing Is Nothing

I look at my job situation as a saga, almost like a long, long book with many chapters.

The prologue has already been written, but the final chapter and the epilogue are still a ways off.

Yesterday was one of those chapters, and it was a very weighty chapter indeed.

Before you say, "Oh, goodness, this is another one of those 'woe is me' Rants," please read on, because I think that the latest chapter in my saga is an interesting one, and has nothing to do with such a stance.

After I write my Rant each weekday, usually between 4:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. in the morning, I post various alerts to the Rant on Facebook, and then I go directly to the job boards, and one in particular, to look for jobs to apply for.

All told, during the past more than two years of looking, I approximate that I have applied for probably about 400 jobs, and have received a grand total of three face to face interviews and just a handful of phone interviews.

Anyway, I did exactly what I described to you yesterday, wrote my Rant about the Ecstasy that was found in a Sonic Drive-In kids' meal, posted alerts to it on Facebook, and then went right to the job boards, and one in particular that I use pretty regularly.

I went down the list of jobs being offered, and I reached one job in particular--and did a complete and total double take that would have made Oliver Hardy quite proud.

The job being offered was a senior editor position, and it was from ... the company that I work for!

Yes, the very company I am trying to remove myself from because of the toxic environment there, the very company that is on the brink of going out of business, the very company that has reduced its workforce to just six full time workers--we recently got rid of another person who had been with the company for decades--and the very company that has no to few ad pages in the books it puts out, which dumped another publication several months ago due to lack of interest.

The ad read:

"We are seeking an experienced, dynamic, detail-oriented Senior Editor to join our staff. Must be a self-starter with the ability to multi-task and the willingness to wear many hats. Excellent writing and interviewing skills a must, as is a keen eye for correct and consistent grammar, style and punctuation. The ability to consistently meet deadlines is absolutely crucial. Some familiarity with magazine production a plus. Competitive salary and benefits."

Why would a company going out of business, or at least currently on the verge of going out of business, place such an ad?

I don't get it, but the ad was there, in plain sight, and I later discovered that it was running on several editions of one particular job board's available job lists.

Shaking my head every which way but loose, I went to work, and decided that I was going to ask our chief operating officer what was going on.

After entering work and doing what I normally do to get ready for the workday, I went into his office and questioned him about this ad placement.

He told me to send him the ad, which I did, and then he came up with his explanation:

"We did not place the ad ourselves. They evidently picked up the exact ad that we have had on our website for over a year, verbatim, and created a new ad out of it. We will probably now get some resumes in, and we will have to tell them the situation here. But in order for us to go on, we do need someone in that position."

He added that he will talk to the chief executive officer about it.

So, did they place the ad or didn't they?

I still don't know.

The COO is right in one respect. The ad does seem to be a lock, stock and barrel pickup from our website, as it also includes a mention of our books--which I did not list for you above--including a book that we no longer publish.

So, still a bit confused, I decided to contact the particular board and ask them to take the ad off their listings. I also questioned them about how they get their postings. 

I wrote to them the following:

"There is a job listing from the company I work for, which is looking for a senior editor which is a pickup of an old notice posted elsewhere. I work for the company, and we are, in fact, going out of business or at least teetering. I did not know that you are allowed to glom onto job notices placed outside your site. The notice reads: "We are seeking an experienced, dynamic, detail-oriented Senior Editor to join our staff. Must be a self-starter with the ability to multi-task and the willingness to wear many hats. Excellent writing and interviewing skills a must, as is a keen eye for correct and consistent grammar, style and punctuation. The ability to consistently meet deadlines is absolutely crucial. Some familiarity with magazine production a plus. Competitive salary and benefits." It was placed on December 10. When I did my job looking early this morning, I saw it, and I noticed that it was old and out of date. Why are you putting up ads that are old and advertise non-existent jobs?"

Here was their reply:

"Thank you for contacting us. We include all of the job listings from major job boards, newspapers, associations and company career pages. If a job is no longer available, it will be removed from the original location where the listing was posted (such as a job board, newspaper, etc.)

We constantly update the search results and remove expired jobs. However, sometimes there is a delay in this process and you may find some job listings that were removed from the original website but not yet removed from our job board.

Other times, a position has been filled but the employer has not removed the original job posting. Until this happens, the job will continue to appear wherever it was originally posted and on our job board as well.

If you see any expired job listings in the future, feel free to email us and we will look into removing them.

Please let me know if you need any further assistance."

So basically, in addition to new, fresh and REAL job posts, this job posting service, and I am sure others, put up bogus, non-existing positions too, to fill out their daily job lists.

I wrote back to them about this, and here is what I wrote:

"Well, first of all, I would like that entry removed immediately.

Second, my opinion now, I think what you are doing is somewhat fraudulent. You should not be posting job openings collected from sites that have not contacted you to post an open job that they have.

If I did not work for the compnay, I would have applied for that job--a position that is non-existent.

That is bad for you, and reflects poorly on your company.

And it is also wasting the time of those looking for jobs.

How many jobs have I applied for during the last two years that are fraudulent as this one obviously is?

It is time to change your canvassing for positions to feature on your emails.

What you are doing is just plain wrong."

And here is their response: 

"Thank you for expressing your concerns and I apologize for your frustration. 

Because we are a search engine, it is similar to sites like Google which provide a list of links that often redirect you to other sites where the information you are seeking is actually located.

That being said, our job posting includes all the job listings from major job boards, newspapers, associations, and company career pages - the jobs contained in our search results, or linked from those results, have been created by people over whom we exercise no control. Our job search results are indexed in an automated manner and we are not able to screen all of the jobs on its site.

Please email us if you have any questions or need any assistance."

No, the whole thing doesn't wash at all.

Of all the jobs that they post each day, how many are fraudulent, for jobs that don't even exist?

How many of the more than 400 jobs that I have applied for are actually bogus postings?

And the most important question: how are they allowed to get away with this?

I don't know if it is legally wrong, but ethically, it is plain wrong. 

How many people have applied to that supposedly fraudulent ad?

Do I fully believe what my work told me about them not knowingly having placed the ad?

I simply do not know who to believe anymore.

I do believe in myself, and I do believe that I--and millions of other people looking for jobs--have been getting hoodwinked on a daily basis with posts for non-existent and/or expired jobs, and to me, that is simply plain wrong.

So yes, my job saga continues, but the final chapter and epilogue have yet to be written, and the rate it is going, that chapter and epilogue are, indeed, a long ways off from ever being written.

Let me end this by saying that yes, as the old saying goes, a sucker is born every minute, but I am not that sucker.

No way, no how.