The day I fired CareerBuilder

There comes a point when you have someone working for you – or pretending to work for you – when you just can’t take it anymore.

And when that “employee” is a job-search Web site, there comes a time when you just have to terminate it – with extreme prejudice. Remove your resume, delete your profile, dump its shortcut in the computer’s “Trash” or “Recycle” bin (then empty it) and decide that there are better uses for your time.

Seeing a job posting for a career fair on CareerBuilder, I clicked on it and saw that there’s one in Tampa in early February. The list of companies looking for “workers” is not really overwhelming: one is a pest control company, and the other is a multi-level marketing company in the financial services field.

Something in me snapped. Ten minutes later, my life was free of CareerBuilder.

Sometimes you have to let go. After yet another day of searching for love, romance, something on dating Web sites, I did a clean sweep some time back. No woman in her right mind would go out with me: I’m not on drugs, not in recovery from drugs or credit card debt, and have no police record. That adds up to BORING!

I don’t blame women for rejecting me since I’m now also unemployed.

There are job Web sites that are on the level, and they’re in my career field, journalism. Otherwise, the rest (Monster.com, Craigslist, the state of Florida’s online job board) aren’t worth the pee in my cats’ litter boxes.

You see, there are rules to the job search game, and unfortunately the game is stacked against the job supplicant. The economic dice are loaded against us right now, with more entering the ranks of the unemployed every day, and employers know it and use it to smash our will and dignity.

For example, The Wall Street Journal recently had a front-page story on Unicru, a company that devises those devilish psychological tests you have to take when you apply for a minimum-wage job. (“Job Test Spawns Culture of Cheating”) Those of us who don’t “pass,” and there’s no way to know which answers are “right,” don’t get our information sent onward. So jobs that were once easy to find for anyone with some education and intelligence are now behind a giant wall.

Unicru acts like it’s the savior of American capitalism, but I say it’s a Trojan horse that can destroy retailing as stores find themselves with job candidates who test well but are incompetent. It’s cheating when regular people do it; it’s just part of doing business when businesses do it.

The companies don’t care because they consider low-level workers to be little more than animals anyway, and those of us who are economically challenged right now probably will never buy anything from them again.

Unicru personnel, who I bet didn’t have to take their absurd tests to get their jobs, acted offended that people might try to discover the “right” answers to beat their test and get back on their feet economically.

The thing that frustrates me about the whole job search thing is that I am willing to be honest and forthright about my past work experience, skills (and lack thereof) and everything else, but companies posting jobs can lie about everything and still get away with it, and pat themselves on the back about how “principled” they are.

For example, multi-level marketing companies posting jobs on Monster.com and CareerBuilder routinely make sure that prospective salaries and benefits are listed, and hide their postings behind job titles that are not the actual jobs. They know that if they told the truth, no one would fall for their fake ads.

Monster and CareerBuilder let it happen because the MLMs pay well for their postings. So what if there are 40 or so identically worded job ads in a row? One way the companies get around that is to post each job as if it were in a different municipality.

Now, if I lied about myself, my skills or my experience, I would be considered a bad person and someone with low morals and no values. But somehow, it’s OK to lie if you’re an employer.

I actually landed an interview for one job, and started asking questions about benefits. The interviewer confessed that while the ad touted full-time jobs with benefits, the job on offer was actually a part-time job with no benefits. So why the lie in the ad? “To bring in better-quality applicants.” At least he was honest about that.

So why don’t the newspapers blast the news to the high heavens that Monster.com and CareerBuilder are posting bogus job ads? One commenter on a story in a newspaper in the Northeast noted that newspapers have deals with one or the other. It’s one thing to write about all the job scams on Craigslist, because they have no agreements with Craigslist. Start saying that your business partner on job ads is letting scam artists run wild, and a source of revenue may vanish in a flash, and newspapers would have to go back to running their own classified jobs sections or ship them to India.

I’ve learned a lot in the past few months about the indignities of looking for a job and being rejected. It’s not fun, and if things don’t turn around soon, it’ll be even worse.

If you’re looking for honesty and hope in today’s world, those job boards are barren.

The pointless work evaluation

When I first started with the Postal Service in January 1983, about five months after I left the Marine Corps, I knew that there was a 90-day period in which I had better do a good job or I would be back on the street.

True, in the Marines there was Parris Island and I passed that test, and I did OK enough in the service to make Corporal (E-4) before my honorable discharge, but this time it was for keeps.

During orientation for the post office, I remember hearing multiple times about the need for perfect attendance and punctuality, and how any absences can and would be held against me, even if I had a 108-degree fever. Misuse of sick leave during probation would lead to a short postal career, so you had to be there, and be on time, or else.

I wanted the job, so I was a willing and eager worker, but there was one instance where I did not come to work, though I did call in, and I feared it would be the end of my career in the Postal Service.

I did have an excuse. Sometime in February 1983, a giant snowstorm hit the New York City area. I was living with my parents in Queens and working in Plainview, N.Y., at a postal facility, and it was a beast of a drive in my parents’ Chevy Impala. I desperately needed to make enough money to buy my own car, as I didn’t want to impose on my parents much longer, and of course I wanted a place of my own.

I worked the night shift, and the snow had fallen all day. That night, I went to leave for work, and the snow was up to my thighs. I decided that it was too dangerous, so I called in to work and said I could not get through the snow.

You would have thought I had just called the Postmaster General and said bad things about his wife. They advised me that I had better come in the next night, and that my absence would affect my 90-day evaluation.

The following night, I made it to work, and several people commented on the fact that it was really bad that some of us did not make it to work. True, the facility ended up with no mail to work since the trucks couldn’t get through, and employees were sent home early due to lack of mail, but that was no excuse.

I did not miss a single scheduled workday through the rest of my probation, but I still worried.

But there was a co-worker who had an even worse attendance record than I had. He had been hired with my group, and he was a 15-point veteran (I got just five points for being a veteran). He had a terribly long commute, no car and used to drink a 40-ouncer of beer on the way to work, when he came to work. He did very little work, and often spent the whole shift in the men’s room.  

He missed two out of three months and, when the new hires all moved to a new facility, showed up a couple of days but then gave up again.

The thing that blew my mind about the whole process was that when we all got our evaluations, I passed my probation despite my missed night due to snow, and he made a rare appearance and passed his despite being a rare visitor to the facility. That’s how I learned how such systems can be so unfair, and how some folks can get away with almost anything.

In fact, there was only one employee who did not make her probation, and she had a pretty negative attitude from the start. Still, this was the Postal Service, and the story was you could get away with almost anything and keep your job once past your probation.

The rarely-appearing veteran eventually stopped coming to work and, since he did very little work anyway, his absence was hardly noticed. A couple of co-workers had talked to him one night, and he said this job was his last chance to live outside a Veterans Affairs hospital for the rest of his life.

I think the deck was stacked against him. He lived too far away, had no reliable transportation and I guess the word had come down that he was to get a satisfactory evaluation no matter what.

As for me, I worked for the Postal Service for almost 11 and a half years, then moved on to other things.