jobFAIL

HRladyFAIL

Costello — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:05:55 +0000

My contracts are not that complicated. I intentionally make them easy enough for some human resource mouthbreather to understand. This one potential client that called me on Tuesday has been crying for me to send over some resumes ”in good faith” – they need three people in Nashville ASAP – while they wait for HR to sign and approve our deal.

No fucking way. I don’t do good faith when my agreement is on a fourth grade reading level. In fact, I won’t even call on an existing candidate on your behalf until this sucker is signed. I have made that very clear to the two people I am in contact with over there. Odds are anyone that is wishy-washy with a damn contract is going to try and weasel out of a full fee or they’ll slow pay, so why waste my time?

So the holdup is that HR gave it to legal, legal approved and gave it to operations, operations approved and gave it back to HR, and HR won’t sign it. She doesn’t want to “put her name on anything” even though the field ops people are screaming at her and she got approval from everyone that matters, and both legal and ops say it is her responsibility to sign since this is under HR’s budget. Of course she doesn’t want to pay for me to do her job.

The regional calls me again and is begging for help, and I tell him I have paying clients to deal with, but if I was him I’d put the HR lady on a plane today and get her ass pulling double shifts at this place while he goes and finds staff.

offerFAIL

Costello — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:23:35 +0000

“You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are all part of the same compost heap.”

An unemployed executive chef’s offer comes in at 68.5, and he is looking for 70. So he turns it down and calls me at 7 AM, telling me how disgraceful it was that I couldn’t get him the money he wanted and how insulted he was by this country club, he never wanted to work with either of us again, blah blah blah.

This is food service, Space Monkey. You really think you were the only candidate I submitted? You are not going to get what you want by berating me and tossing a shitfit before I’ve brushed my teeth in the morning.

When he called an hour later and regained his composure, saying he would “reconsider”, I told him I already withdrew his candidacy and if he wanted to move forward, he could call the general manager over there and tell him exactly what he said about myself and the club.

pornWIN

Costello — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:43:24 +0000

I met a guy that wants me to help write a resume through a friend of a friend, and he seems pretty cool. But how do you write a resume on a guy that gets kicked out of the Marines in Fiji, winds up making friends in Amsterdam and goes into the porno business, and is now sitting in my office?

No shit. “Andy” made 400K a year when he made friends with a guy that managed a sex theater in the Red Light District, and they decided to install webcams in the peep show booths. The owner was a absentee German national and didn’t give a fuck about anything but his monthly take. He finally had to shut it down because “anyone with a heartbeat and a hard-on can find porn online for free these days”.

And now a natural entrepreneur like Andy wants to join corporate America for the first time at age 29. This fucking economy better turn around so he can get back to doing cool shit like this. Can you imagine making over 30K a month as a 25 year old PORN LORD, smoking weed and banging whores in Amsterdam? This man has a lifestyle to lead, my friends.

racecardFAIL

Costello — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:04:36 +0000

I have been waiting for an offer acceptance for a sales manager in Texas for about a week now, and my client’s getting anxious. I know he’s playing footsie with a iffy offer from some guys based out of the Caribbean and trying to hold my guys hostage for about an additional 5K base, and he’s extremely greedy. Turns out that he didn’t return the signed letter by 5PM Pacific today to my LA-based client (pissing them off) to start 2/1, and now about an hour ago he found out that the other group wasn’t going to make him a deal.

Now he is ready to whore himself out for 20K less than his original price, and can’t wrap his head around why I can’t put him anywhere at 9PM on a Thursday to interview tomorrow. He’s one of those guys that brags on his 10 year old mid-career MBA and that he is a ”diversity candidate”. Then he asks if he was white if he would have a job lined up, ’cause that would be “fucking bullshit”. When I said no he scoffed and said maybe I was racist and he didn’t believe me.

Look, I don’t care if you are a cross-eyed Martian with genitalia sprouting from your fucking forehead, as long as I think I can get you hired. Right now, I can’t. On January 21st, I could. I can’t turn water into Jagermeister and I can’t pull a job out of my ass after hours, no matter what your profile is.

jobsatisfactionFAIL

Presley — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:07:23 +0000

I want to reach through my computer screen and slap every single fucking person who keeps me waiting on documents, answers, etc. I just imagine them sitting at their computer screen, watching the .gif of the goddamn dancing baby or looking at the Pants on the Ground guy on Youtube instead of answering my fucking questions.

And those who claim they’ve been SOOOO busy. No you haven’t. You’ve been sending forwards about getting the “Dislike” button on Facebook or you’ve been eating too many goddamn donuts in the company kitchen. You are not that important. None of us are.

I’ve noticed that with age, my approach to people who aren’t responding to me gets harsher and harsher. I used to be so afraid of OFFENDING someone with a strongly worded email or phone call. Now: bring it on. You can’t respect me as a business partner? I will burn that bridge with a quickness.

Average recruiters will bite their tongue and deal with client abuse because they need to make bank. Above average recruiters have enough clients that want to work with them that they can pick and choose. 25 year old Presley was an average recruiter. She dealt with 120 day late pays, shitty response rates, and rudeness. 30something year old Presley doesn’t take your shit. She’ll reject your business and steal your A players and make money moving them somewhere else.

truthFAIL

Costello — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:03:58 +0000

I have another industry leader type client that is the most disorganized group of humans I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with. People in the field tell the home office to fuck off, HR is in a million places at once, and corporate level leadership is more concerned about typing out inevitably ignored memos than grabbing this shit with both hands and fixing it. Everyone is fucking everyone else, both literally and figuratively, and everyone involved with them blames their situation as “struggling with new ownership”, even though that was three-plus years ago. When the operators don’t respect corporate, you know you have problems.

I learned pretty early on that the best way to get through to them is not to bitch about what an utter waste of time they are or to kiss their collective ass, but to completely ignore them long enough for them to request a lunch meeting. Then I get a free steak and a sympathy hire or two, and then this cycle starts over.

All of the junior types in my office cream their My Little Pony Underroos at the prospect of working with this client, as name recognition is high and the fee is above average. They hear “lunch meeting” and get jealous, like I am being handed SEKRET reqs or something.

So Wednesday was the meeting, and much to my surprise the CEO and the COO was there, along with the HR Director. The idiot corporate recruiter I have the privilege of interfacing with when I decide to work with them was conspicuously absent. I am invited to share why I am not helping them find people, since I placed six with them in 09 and haven’t even sent over a resume this year.

The question now is, do I want to mouth off or kiss their asses?

I told them that if they wanted to put me on the payroll to source candidates we could negotiate, but my job is to get my folks hired and get paid, and it is easier to do with my other clients. There’s several people in my office that love you guys to death and send over tons of resumes that get lost in your abyss. I choose not to until you get your shit together. On top of it all, you use every agency in the universe.

Two million dollars a year is staring holes through me. I am not Billy Badass by any means, but there’s really no reason for me to be quiet if I am not sending them people, and I have nothing to lose by giving an outsider’s view of their system. Well, the silence afterward was ridiculously awkward. At this point, I decide dessert is a bad idea. I shake hands and get the hell out of there.

I’m not even onto the freeway yet and the fucking corporate recruiter calls me and pleads with me to help him find someone in Norfolk. I ask if he’s talked to his boss in the last ten minutes and he says no. I tell him he probably needs to, and to call me afterward.

I haven’t heard a peep from them since.

tatFAIL

Costello — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:10:55 +0000

I have this client under contract that does job fairs about once a quarter, and I and another recruiter are invited to send our candidates to them for 80% of our fee if they are hired as entry level sales reps. This place isn’t WalMart or Denny’s, but it’s where the folks that think they are above either of those two wind up. Usually this is where I send all those candidates that reside on the Island of Misfit Toys that can’t figure out that I can’t help them and keep bugging me. Yesterday was the big Employment Extravaganza and this morning I started getting feedback.

Their favorite person I sent showed up in a “Blossom Hat”. Thank God I’m old enough not to have to Google that. Blossom has two graduate degrees and was applying for a 32K job. She has strange choices for her body art. Stars behind each ear, the Illuminati Eye on the back of her neck, and a Bettie Page-as-a-devil tattoo on on of her inner forearms. But hey, long hair and long sleeves can hide all that nonsense. I have to admit, the hat was a good idea. It hid the head tats and as long as she dressed like a polygamist wife, nobody can see the pinup girl. This isn’t a tattoo friendly place, by the way.

Oh, and they’ll pass on everyone else. No surprise there.

So I call Blossom, tell her that she is a finalist, and let her know she has to take a Batrus test in my office Thursday. She says that she’ll call me back ”after they are done”. I get suspicious and ask what she is doing. Her and her boyfriend listened to some MP3 about a Indian warrior that went off into the unknown to retrieve a flute for his people, and were so inspired that they immediately went to get the characters from the tale inked. I tell her to stop by and get the application and background check on her way home.

Blossom now has a deer head, an owl, the Florida State helmet logo, a flute, an arrowhead, and a woodpecker tattooed around each wrist like bracelets. I actually wrote that down so I wouldn’t forget. When I tell her that her hopeful employer isn’t going to like that, she says that she can wear a wristband or clunky bracelets and cover them up. I actually keep a fucking athletic wristband in my desk thanks to all these people that insist that the Super Mario mushroom or the Chinese ideogram for sex machine is important enough to brand their wrists with. This thing didn’t even come close to being wide enough to win the Pepsi challenge, and she had to keep her wrists open and lubricated anyway.

So I sadly inform her that her new body art is going to disqualify her from consideration, and instead of being pissed off, she smiles and says that ”it wasn’t meant to be”. I’ll never understand how a tattoo is more important than a job.

gayFAIL

Costello — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:16:09 +0000

This is pretty fucked up, even by jobFAIL standards.

There’s a candidate that constantly contacts me who’s been looking for a new job for at least six months, and he’s pretty employable. Nice guy, decent tenure, dresses sharp, even breathes through his nose. The catch is that he won’t look at any position that doesn’t have same sex benefits available and he has a very inflated sense of what he is worth. What further dumbfounds me is that his domestic partner “Trevor” hasn’t worked in years – he ”works in the home”. It’s not like “Ross” makes enough money for his boyfriend to plan Junior League events and polish candlesticks all day either – this is a 45K base retail general manager.

So Ross rolls into my office and starts telling me about the new Land Rover he bought at the end of the year, and how he needs to make an extra $400 a month now, and wanted to know what was available. I asked Ross why Trevor doesn’t go work part time to make that income as a waiter or a sales rep somewhere, and was told “she has high blood pressure and gets stressed too easily”. Yes, SHE was not a misspell. I am slightly intrigued by this particular development and asked Ross if Trevor dressed like a girl or wore makeup or something, and he immediately commandeered my laptop and went to Trevor’s Myspace page.

I see why Tre’Vonne can’t find employment outside the home. He/she has bright red hair almost down to his/her waist (“she got new extensions!!!”), bright red nails about 2 inches long, eyebrows from a Sharpie or something, and dresses in gowns. Not just gowns, Elizabethan era rock-me-Amadeus contraptions of lace and corsets. I think he looks like a redheaded Elvira without the tits, but Ross is a pretty good sport and handles my LOLs well. I ask the first politically incorrect thing that popped into my head.

me: “If you’re into all of that hair and crossdressing stuff, why not be straight?”

his reply: “Once you get me that 100K job I deserve, Trevor WILL transition.”

Dude, you just bought more car than you can afford. What the fuck?

languagebarrierFAIL

Costello — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:57:29 +0000

I am working with a rather nice Japanese restaurant chain that is looking for a Director of PR. Japanese fluency is a requirement, as the hands-on ownership doesn’t speak much English and there are trips to Tokyo involved.

Obviously, the ideal candidate is a American of Japanese descent that grew up speaking both in the home and it’s gotten out in the industry today that I am working the account. PR was one of the first areas slashed in the great economic toilet flush of the last couple of years, so quite a few people want a crack at it. Of course, how many of these people speak Japanese?

Correct, zero. So today has been full of people spending five minutes introducing and selling themselves to me, then I ask if they speak Japanese, they say “no, but…” and I cut them off, say that’s a deal breaker, thank them for calling, and hang up. Then they call me back and start coming up with creative excuses to get around the language barrier. Apparently half of America has my fucking cell number, and it’s the half not working.

“I can hire a translator when I need one.”

“I’ll go buy Rosetta Stone and bust my ass learning the language for 6 hours a day.”

“I have a translation iPhone app and Japanese is one of the listed languages.”

“My kid loves J-Pop and can teach me the vital phrases.”

I understand the Hail Mary’s, but you are wasting my fucking time. And your own.

industryleaderFAIL

Costello — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:27:59 +0000

I really dislike it when clients call my office and demand to be prioritized. In my world, most-favored-company status is attained by the amount of your fee or how easy it is to get someone hired. Especially if this isn’t an exclusive. This particular “industry leader” has called me three times demanding candidates even when I know my competition is bending over backwards to get people rejected there. I’ve had this account for a year and change and have one successful hire, and that’s only because I knew that West Memphis was in Arkansas and everyone else they retained didn’t.

There’s a 911 in a very, very remote area right now and apparently I am the recruiter they thought would perform this particular miracle.

So some VP calls me from his car this morning and threatens to yank my contract if I don’t start producing. I said that that decision was up to him and I will keep looking for that unknown person that is employed, qualified, and will relocate anywhere in the country after completing two months of training sequestered in some bumfuck town away from their family. Then I ask him why he just won’t move someone from one shithole to another if this search is so difficult.

“Don’t mock our process. We’ve been successful longer than you’ve been alive!” **click**

Very motivational. I’ll get right on this one.