More Bogus Vacancies

This is another case of a recruitment agent contacting me with a job offer. Here’s how it goes:

From: <totaljobsrecruiter@totaljobsmail.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:00:06 +0100
To: <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
ReplyTo: <xxxx@frogconsultancy.com>
Subject: Frog Consultancy has found your profile on Totaljobs.com

Hi There,
I m recruiting for a Compliance Director position which might be of interest to you.
Are you still in the job market?

[signature]

My reply:

Good afternoon Xxxx,

Yes, I am currently available and keen to consider new opportunities.

Would you be able to send me a job description so I can have a look?

Many thanks and kind regards

He comes back with:

from Xxxx@celcius.co.uk <= Note: the domain has changed
to xxxx@gmail.com
date 24 August 2011 13:32
subject RE: Frog Consultancy has found your profile on Totaljobs.com

Hi Xxxx,
Please see below as requested.
Can you send me a copy of your cv, when able.

A job description follows, I have a look, nothing really related to what I do, however I reply:

Thanks Xxxx,
It looks interesting and aligned to my profile. Just two questions:
what salary do they offer and where is this position based?

Thanks

The recruiter disappears. Clearly, his objective here was collecting my CV and chances are that the job description that he sent is just a copy and paste from somewhere else. In fact I found that the same job is repeatedly advertised by various recruitment agents in the UK, none of which, I am sure, has a mandate or a contract with whomever is recruiting. Ultimately, it could be yet another bogus vacancy made up by someone who then has seen it copied all over the web and even if it was a genuine vacancy, what are the chances that your application will ever reach 1) the recruitment agent that is directly acting for the employer and 2) the employer itself?

Low cost airlines? What low cost?

When low cost airlines were coming up fast and were pretty much a new thing – I am talking about the period around the turn of the century – I used to say that they were growing at that speed because they were about to fill a (big) gap in the general supply. There was no saturated market and “there was no competition” meaning that the demand for low cost was higher than supply in any case, so this was relatively manageable.

I also said however that all this could not last forever and that when their niche market turned into mainstream, they would start facing the problem of all other carriers.

Today’s question is: where are we now?

I can give my opinion under the consumer perspective. Low cost carriers are now fighting, whatever Stelios and Micheal O’Leary say about it. The market, at least in Europe, is well supplied and for what I can see low cost is no longer neither convenient (well, perhaps it never was) nor inexpensive.

The last five flights I have taken from London to Milan and Athens, were cheaper on Lufthansa and British Airways than on the usual low cost choices. Not only that. No hassle to go find a seat that I like, no add-ons for the baggage, and so forth. I won’t mention the convenience of the airport because this depends on where travellers live but the baggage is a big decision point for me. Having a child I need to travel with a pram, a car seat, and a couple of suitcases and you can quickly see how this makes low cost uncompetitive.

Then again I may have a point when I say that low cost carriers deliberately squeeze out people who have needs that go beyond a chair to seat on. Children, families, people with special needs, in my experience are not very welcome on low cost. It is more for people travelling with hand luggage and who need no help at all. So you now pay a lot for getting little in return.

I remember when Nokia seemed to be invincible: look at them now. I don’t see any reasons why this may not happen to low cost airlines.

Can Italy come out of its mess?

This is what I am wondering today and I bet it’s also what many other people around the world are trying to figure out. Whether you live in Italy, somewhere in Europe, in Japan or the United States, if the $1.8 trillion debt of the country becomes too big to service, then “Lehman Brothers on steroids” becomes reality.

So, whose fault is all this? Silvio? Well, he has his black marks and should leave his chair to someone else but is it all his fault? This past weekend I went on a trip to Como, a relatively small town located by the beautiful lake name after it. I stayed a couple of days, enough to check the temperature among the people.

My opportunity was almost served to me on a silver plate when I was trying to get a funicolare ticket to Brunate, a small village about 700 metres up the hill with a view on the lake. Four people ahead of me in the queue, fifteen minutes to get my tickets. Once done and after having missed my train, I approached a few of ATM (the company managing the service) employees who were chatting outside the station. One of them, who identified himself as being responsible for the operation, said that there was nothing to do to reduce the waiting time at the counter. Another one, after having listened to my comments about the inefficiency of the service with trains running half empty because people can’t make it beyond the ticket counter, said “It’s Berlusconi’s fault”. I rolled my eyes.

Then they announced that eventually it will get worse as now there are going to be some cuts and possibly redundancies and at that stage I was just hoping that these parasites would just be encouraged to leave with a ticket machine taking their place.

If there is something that Italy needs, it’s a change in mentality and heavy reform. Shame that the way things look at this moment in time it is likely that even a new government would just be more of the same: no reforms, no innovation, co-co-co, etc.

Good luck!

Autonomy

I’ll be curious to see what the Autonomy stock will do tomorrow: it closed today at about £14.25 and Hewlett Packard announced an offer for £25.50 or so.

Definitely something to watch.

The 2011 Financial Crisis

These days you can read in the news all sort of things and their opposite about this financial crisis. Incredibly, you will read all of it at the same time and it will be written by the same people contradicting themselves many times each day. They have no clue of what’s coming next but have to keep their pens and keyboards running… so I prepared my own version:

Another Bogus Job

I am now becoming really curious about all this, as there seems to be so much rubbish in the recruitment industry arena at the expenses of people who genuinely look for a job.

This is another example. I have been actively contacted by an agent who thought my profile (what profile if I haven’t been available for two years now) would be suitable for a job, I replied and below is the brief exchange:

QUOTE

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Xxxx Yyyyy <Xxxx@yyyyyyy.co.uk>
> Date: 10 August 2011 10:42
> Subject: RE: new contract
> To: my.address@myemail.com
>
>
> Hi Wwwww,
>
> Thank you for your interest in the Project Manager position.
> Unfortunately the position is on hold now. I will contact you if
> position will become alive.
>
> Good luck
>
> Regards
> Xxxxx
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: my.address@myemail.com
> Sent: 06 August 2011 09:19
> To: Xxxx Yyyyyy
> Subject: Re: new contract
>
> Hi Xxxxx,
>
> I may be interested as my profile and experience tick all boxes.
> Before going any further, can you please send me a detailed job
> profile and salary?
>
> Regards
>
> Wwwww
>
> On 5 August 2011 17:39, Xxxxx Yyyyy wrote:
>> We are searching for an Engagement Manager/Project Manager with both
>> Italian and English for a long term contract role.
>>
>>
>>
>> My client is happy for the work to be done remotely but of course
>> client site visits to both UK and Italy will be essential.
>>
>>
>>
>> You will need to be capable of working with minimal supervision. With
>> a project management qualification and many years track record project
>> managing in an Enterprise environment.  Responsible for the client
>> relationship as well as producing project plans, and maintaining and
>> tracking progress against deliverables. Experience with any Security
>> Software is also useful. This is an urgent role.
>>
>> Please email me for more information if you are interested in this or
>> any other roles that you may like to consider?
>>
>>
>>
>> Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.
>>
>> Xxxxx Yyyyyy
>> J & C Associates Ltd

UNQUOTE

A very typical example of yet another junior who has in his/her KPIs the collection of as many CVs as possible to refresh the database of the company. What better and quicker way than advertising bogus vacancies? Shame this involves wasting genuine job-seekers time to collect data and tick a box. Yes, they may argue that at the end of the day by having your CV on file you have more chances of finding a job but then when you see from the other side of the fence, when you need to recruit someone, how good these people are in sending irrelevant CV you can see how this time wasting self perpetuating loop works.

Dulcis in fundo, probably the recruitment agent won’t last long enough in that job to collect a bonus.