Monday, November 29, 2010

Can you bring your computer to work?

An employee who has a lot of down-time was allowed to bring her laptop to work to alleviate boredom. One day she was logged on to the public wireless network on her laptop when someone brought her some extra work to do.

She logged onto the office computer and spent about four hours completing the assignment, but her laptop was set aside, still logged onto the public network.

Because she left her laptop logged on for four hours, the I.T. department reported that she was on the Internet for four hours. Because of this, management told her she couldn't bring her laptop to work anymore.

Who should be punished?

A. The person leaving the laptop logged onto a public network while doing work on another computer on a secure network?

B. Management for not making additional inquiries to determine the truth of the situation, instead of simply assuming that the employee was only on the Internet for four hours and not logged onto the office computer actually doing work during that time?

C. The I.T. department for cherry-picking only damaging information and using data to insinuate that the employee was wasting time on the Internet for four hours?

By the way, this really happened, but I'm withholding the name of the company.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

The corruption of employment tests.

Sometimes you must take a test for employment, such as when applying at Central Management Services for a job working for the state of Illinois, or perhaps a union job such as Engineering Operators Local 965, or to enter the MBA program at the University of Illinois.

You may become extremely frustrated while taking the multiple choice portion of those tests because there are inserted within the tests, questions with more than one correct answer.

How many times did you wish that you could explain your answer in a little box under the question?

How many times did you want to raise your hand for the proctor and explain that more than one answer can be correct on a particular question?

And finally, did you ever wonder why you consistently just barely arrived within a couple of answers of passing the test, but not quite?

With computerized tests, it's very easy to code a subroutine to automatically pick the answer other than that which you chose, as the correct answer, if your name in the test database wasn't part of another secret database, thereby giving you a non-passing grade, keeping you from getting a job, joining a union, or an elite fraternal organization.

Perhaps the other secret database is a collection of names of certain families, political contributors, certain organizations or associations, etc.

One way to determine if a test is corrupt is to file a Freedom of Information Act request for the tests results of, say, all the employees of the Department of Human Services, or the Department of Transportation, students in the MBA program, union members, etc. and check for the following:

1. Look for all test questions that were graded as correct, but with different answers selected. In other words, if the same question was answered differently by different people, but the question was graded as correct, then you have a guaranteed corrupt question, and the individual was flagged by the computer for a passing grade.

2. Follow the guidelines set by the authors of the book "Freakanomics" and look for patterns in the test questions among all the test-takers who were hired, and the test-takers who were not hired.

How do they try to cover up the corruption? By changing up the test questions under the guise of "preventing cheating." It won't really matter if you select all the tests over a ten year period, because you can easily divide up the tests into subgroups based on the question changes and still get the results.

So, if you must take a test to get a job and you don't pass, but the questions were vague, open to interpretation, and more than one answer could be correct for various reasons, then you probably need bribe money.

The problem in Illinois is that there is little or no fulfillment of Freedom of Information requests.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Jobs held hostage by jobs board.

I thought I would get a good lead on jobs closer to my field of expertise by signing up at Communicationsjobs.com. They consistently send me emails telling me they have a job that fits, but I have to go through this to find out? No thanks. I already have access to my credit report. I don't want to do this again because then I would have to pay for it.


Why are they doing this? What's in it for them? Are they [at CommunicationsJobs.com] getting permission from you for them to look at your credit report? This is such a glaring over-reach of "customer service" it's plain to see the self-service at its core.

Of course if some company wants to get its greasy little fingers on my credit report they can do it themselves already without my permission.

Companies, by the way, don't want to look at your credit score, they want to see if you have potential wage garnishments. They don't want you to be a liability risk for them. A fast way to check behavior is to get an economic profile of a potential employee.

So once again we have another jobs board to avoid: Communicationsjobs.com

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Wait! Before signing up at a job website, see if it's listed at Rip Off Report

Planning on uploading all of your personal information to CareerBuilder.com or Jobs.com, Monster.com?

Be safe and first go to http://www.ripoffreport.com
See if that job website is listed there first.

You're guaranteed to see it there, guaranteed.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Job Search Runaround continues

I was at Topix.com posting comments about political candidates when I noticed they had a section for jobs, so I clicked on it. The search engine was powered by "Simpy Hired" which sounded familiar, so I did a search for "forklift" and found that there was a listing for a forklift operator right in Springfield, IL.

So, I click on Forklift Operator and it takes me to a "Simply Hired" page that shows the listing and description with a button next to it that says "Apply". So I clicked on the "Apply" button.

The "Apply Button at Simply Hired directs me to a "Monster.com + Hotjobs" page that shows a window within which some business calling itself "Career Choices Network" is offering "Training"

So here's where I'm going to guess that they expect me to pay for the training, and this is just another scam to get people to pay for training in a job they will never find because they are not in a union.

I'm going to click it now. Cross your fingers and hold your breath.

We now come to a new page that says

"We need HVAC Technicians with Forklift Operator experience - Training Available."

Well that was huge waste of time. I'm not about to give them any personal information until they tell me that they have a forklift job waiting for me, starting immediately, with paid on-the-job training.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Did you work for WAND?

I applied for a job a while back. I imagine they didn't select me because I don't live in Decatur, despite my extensive professional experience and training. I was willing to relocate.

I read the newspaper every day and frankly, I'm a little unnerved at the frequency with which jobs appear in the classifieds for positions at WAND.

I'm almost compelled to research this at the library. It seems every month the same jobs appear for the television station. Did you ever work there? How long were you there? Why did you leave?

I never thought I would say this, but I'm thankful they didn't hire me.

Friday, February 12, 2010

When employers already have someone in mind.

I saw this first hand, actually it was when I was hired back in 1993. I was an intern, and the boss wanted to hire me, but he told me he was legally obligated to advertise for the position anyway.

He placed an ad in the local newspaper. It kept me on my toes for a month, but my supervisor told me not to worry about it. That's why the newspaper classified employment ads are a complete waste of time.

Serious employers will advertise in more than just the newspaper, they will advertise on college campuses for internships, where there's no shortage of cheap or free labor.

With the Internet it's easy to research whether or not an employer is serious. Check the online job boards to see if the same advertisements are present. You will find that most of them are not present.

The employment classified section of the newspaper is most frequently used as cheap advertising if not used for the obligatory job ad for whom an employer already has someone in mind.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Legends of Lowes

When I first started working at Lowes in Mishawaka, Indiana, I met the Building Materials manager and he seemed okay.

About a month later he was gone, just wasn't there anymore. Well, it turned out that somehow, I don't know if this is just a legend or if it really happened, but I heard that he stole enough building materials to build an entire house from the ground up.

A few employees from the appliance department were caught selling appliances to themselves. I don't know how they could do this, but they would buy appliances on a credit card, then cart the appliances around the back and return them for cash. I'm not sure if they were really capable of doing this because Lowes has a policy of exchanging store credit for returns instead of straight cash.

I imagine the credit card companies could take steps to reverse charges on credit cards, but that would mean they wouldn't make a profit, so I assume they don't

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

You're not going to hear from anyone.

Nope. Nobody's hiring. They say they are. Nobody's giving me an opportunity for an interview. I'm sure it's because of my age. Employers these days are looking for fresh impressionable kids.

Once you get laid off in middle age, your done. You're trash. It doesn't matter if you go to college and get a degree in anything. You're finished.

After putting in the time and effort to prepare the proper paperwork, how does one go about thanking all those potential employers who didn't respond at all?

I have to think of something creative.

Update 2018: Still thinking.