Today marks the four month anniversary of my unemployment. Being a scarred veteran of the job hunting scene in Geneva, I thought I'd share with you some of the most common types of personalities that I've encountered so far.
1) The Con Artist Recruiter - These are the guys who make sure they post a position sound that sounds attractive, urgent and important. This ensures they recieve hundreds of applications. They then use the forthcoming months to sift through these applications and identify the best resumes for their data banks. Most good recruiters let you know one way or another, so if you haven't heard from these guys for a few weeks, assume you've been scammed.
2) The Slow Movers - These are guys who take between 2 -3 months to open a file that has been emailed to them. This seems to include most of the international organisations here in Geneva. True Story - I applied for a position to one such organisation two months ago, they just emailed me last week, saying they had recieved my documents and are now processing them for the position! What is ironic is that most of these guys list "agility" and "speed of response" as standard hiring requirements.
3) The Opportunist Employer - These are employers who will try and get the best possible resource at the cheapest possible price. They use the desperation of candidates in the current market situation to pay less, or hire overqualified candidates for a role.
4) The Circling Vultures - Unemployment seems to hurt only the person out of work, everyone else is making a killing out of it. Consultants, networking organisations, advice groups, resume writers ... you name it, there is someone offering a service to help you get through it. Having closely worked with a couple of these guys however, I've reverted back to the "help yourself" policy. Its cheaper and saves you a lot of unnecessary irritation.
5) The Employer with a God Complex - True story - I spent three weeks interviewing for a multinational organisation that, in the name of professionalism, put me through four rounds of interviews, including a day long, torturous psychological assessment. They then took another week to tell me I'd done well and they would like to make an offer. Next, they took another week to "get approvals" from their head office. After which they told me that they had decided not to hire for these positions till next year.
The common theme that all of the above display is a startling lack of respect for the candidate's time,money and state of mind. There is a cynicism and a lack of concern here, the candidate is most times reduced to nothing more than a circus monkey jumping through the hoops, in the hope of getting employed.
The job market is the toughest its been in decades, especially in Europe; but what recruiters and employers seem to have lost sight of is that this will not always be the case. When economies boom , the shoe will firmly be on the other foot. It is when they will have to chase good talent that equity will come into play, then perhaps, they will wish they had behaved with more integrity when they could have.
