When I was unemployed I was taken aback by how difficult it was to get a regular job then (2012 and 2013) compared to 2006. In 2006 I had six years of Unix experience and I decided I wanted a new job, so I sent out 2 resumes to jobs I found on craiglist and out of those two jobs I sent out for I got two job offers and one I accepted that ended up being a wonderful job filled with really sharp people whose companionship I enjoyed immensely.
In 2012 I assumed it would function much the same way. I see a job online and I apply for it and I get an interview.
Wrong.
The jobs I saw often did not exist.
I learned this the hard way when I applied for (what I thought) was a very good position with Windstream. It was only for 4 months and in upstate New York but it payed well enough where I could have afforded a very temporary place up there and still kept my apartment in New York. My fiance (now wife) was very supportive as we assumed it would be a cash infusion right before our wedding and give us some time after to enjoy ourselves.
The company that I dealt with was Keshav Consulting out of North Carolina. Everyday someone named “Steve” would call me (his accent made me guess Americans have trouble pronouncing his name so he adopted “Steve” to be easier) and ask me some questions and finally he would say that the Client, Windstream, had rejected my offer of $50 an hour and would only pay $48. Calls like that kept coming every day, Taking a $1 or $2 off before the interview could be set up. I think I was down to about $40 per hour when I decided to do some research and contacted Windstream. They told me that no job existed in the place I was applying for and we both scratched our heads. They said Keshav Consulting was on their list of consultants but had no idea as to why I was in salary negotiations with them about a job that would be impossible to get. I asked Keshav consulting about this in an email and the reply I got from Akhil Reddy was this:
“Erik,
Yes, you can not give authority to other recruiter to submit your resume to Windstream, if you do also Windstream will not accept your resume as we already representing you. Also for each position we are supposed to submit 2 consultants and as of now we only submitted you and unless until we submit one more resume we will not remove the posting from Dice.
Regards”
Windstream advised I deal with them directly and that they had no idea why I was being told that another recruiter would not be able to represent me with them.
But anyway, it was weird and something was clearly wrong.
So now I frequently still get solicitations based on my earlier Dice profile so I investigate them now.
I have now decided to reveal my investigations on a per job basis, based on what was emailed to me and by whom.
First candidate is Ramy Infotech Inc
This is from
“MOI: Phone Then F2F
Job Responsibilities:
Operational support of Linux OS (RHEL 5.x, 6.x) and VMWAre ESXi 5.5 environment.
Migration of RHEL operating systems to VMWare environment.
Post-migration monitoring and tuning of virtualized systems.
Capacity planning of virtual environment
Job Requirements:
5+ years of Linux systems administration experience
5+ years of VMWare ESXi systems administration experience
Experience with OS imaging and conversion utilities (Storix, VMWare converter, Platespin, etc)
Experience with Cisco UCS Blade Infrastructure (Desired but not necessary)
Experience with enterprise storage systems (EMC, Hitachi, etc) ”
It was from Pramila Kafalia on February 23rd.
So I googled the part of the job description: “Experience with Cisco UCS Blade Infrastructure (Desired but not necessary)
Experience with enterprise storage systems (EMC, Hitachi, etc) ” since I thought that would be unique and I got this:
http://www.simplyhired.com/job/inwnyfmwhz
Its from a job by a company called Focusmindz.com and it was closed on Jan 15th. This was just a cut & paste of an expired job emailed to me as a current job.
If you want a job that exists with them, check here:
http://focuzmindz.com/job-openings
Who knows where your resume will end up and for what purpose if you sent it to Ramy Infotech Inc.