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How Some Companies Are Scamming Job Applicants
By EconMatters
After posting our latest piece about getting hiring now takes longer, we learned a disturbing trend in the current company interview practice (we are talking about Fortune 500 companies) from some of our reader friends. What we are about to describe is probably more often seen in the sector or city experiencing large layoffs such as the energy sector or City of Houston.
Top Talents Floating Round
As Zero Hedge previously reported, the new 'lower for longer' oil price environment has brought the State of Texas the worst job recession in 80 years. Indeed, the graph below from Reuters (updated through May 12, 2015) shows a clear inverted relationship between oil price and U.S. energy sector layoffs.
This has lead to a lot of good talents (typically higher-paid and high-skilled workers) now available in the job market within the energy sector and Houston, the Energy Capital of the World.
'Scenario Analysis' For a Free Consult
What we've found is that companies, unwilling to pay for an external consult, are increasingly using actual work project(s) (that they don't know how to deliver) packaged as 'scenario' or 'Case Study' in job interviews phishing for 'free' advise and insight from qualified industry veteran applicants. The hiring manager typically would ask for very specific info and/or 'work samples'. The applicants are usually only too eager to share thinking it'd mean certain advantage of landing the job.
Guess What? You Were Never Meant To Get The Job!
After spelling out how he/she delivered the exact same project described in the 'scenario' or 'case study', the applicant, in most cases, would not get the job. Why? Companies using this kind of tactic usually cannot afford or are unwilling to offer competitive compensation for top talents. The only reason these high-skilled (and most likely out of pay-range) applicants have even made it to the interview process (picked by the hiring manager) is so that the hiring manager could glean some useful knowledge from an industry veteran.
The New Breed of Hiring Managers
As we discussed before, the current prevalent push for youthification within Corporate America has created a new generation of middle management (i.e. hiring managers) with a very different set of values and ethics from the boomer generation.
With far less experience, the new breed of middle managers thus favor standardization and banding together with the like-minded in solving problems and delivering projects.
The team approach, while maybe necessary in the modern corporate environment, is very ineffective in non-routine projects and tasks requiring a high degree of judgement and creativity. That is, project or problem will not get solved without the necessary experience and knowledge in the first place no matter how many like-minded people band together.
Hiring someone more experienced (or even more talented) would certainly disturb the 'homogeneous' team. So the next best thing is to get some free consult by interviewing a highly qualified candidate with a resume and experience in delivering the project(s) that the hiring manager finds 'challenging'.
Classic Catch 22
This is a classic Catch 22 for job applicants - Damn if you do, damn if you don't. So what is a job seeker to do to protect his/her own 'intellectual property'?
- DO NOT leave behind any hard (or soft) copies of 'work sample". Let the interviewer(s) know you need the copies back and ask to review thoroughly during the allotted interview time.
- Give only the general frame work, avoid discussing the project specifics during the interview. Perhaps say something like "I will deliver a step-by-step project plan the day after I start the job."
While this kind of interview practice (or technique) is probably as old as history itself, we do find it disturbing that it seems to have become more of a standard operating procedure in the current job market and hiring process.
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This is one of the most disheartening stories I have read for a long time. I can remember how much trust I had in people and in the system when I was a young graduate looking for work. An experience like this could make you cynical and distrustful. What on earth is wrong with people and the world today?
There is a huge amount of job scamming in the IT market where the real goal is to outsource the job to India or China or to bring in Indian or Chinese H-1Bs here at about half or less the going wage level, but first there's some fake gathering of resumes and sometimes a few interviews of Americans, who never make the cut for obscure reasons or fake reasons or no reasons at all.
Compared to that, the fake-free work trick is a pimple on an elephant.
There's a couple of countries on the other side of the planet that could make good use of those skills and talent. With the USA going the way it is, it will just be a repeat of history: productive people leave. They leave a country that craps on them due to poor government leadership and lack of vision, because the talented people, being smart and creative with high self-esteem and high self-confidence, realize they don't need the country, the country needs them.
"That is, project or problem will not get solved without the necessary experience and knowledge in the first place no matter how many like-minded people band together."
Now you know why the Federal Reserve and the Banksters are so f*ck'd up. They've all been taught by same group-think professors. Lyin' and stealin' is the only thing they could succeed at, until their victims finally catch on. Of course, by then, it'll be too late.
They all have an almost pathological hatred of the free market. They believe a managed market is their reason for existence....
Microsoft did this to me in one of their b2b units.
The hiring manager told me it is their current dilemma.
I gave him my suggestion and could see the wheels spinning in his head as he dived deeper into it.
End result - no job offer, but I hate Microsoft anyway so no big loss. Only reason I interviewed was I was without a job at the time.
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THIS GIVES NEW MEANING TO THE WORD ...
PATHETIC
When your company has reached the point where you have to scam job applicants to get ideas for how to solve important problems - it's time to shut the doors and fold the company. Do you belong in the Fortune 500? HAHAHA!! You don't even belong in the Fifth Grade at Elementary School !!!
College 'projects' are just ideas trawling too.
It was so blatant when I went back to College, I had to advise the young uns to keep any good ideas they came up with, to themselves, and never put it into a project.
You should have seen the light bulbs go on in their heads. :-)
They were a great crowd.
Duh.
millenials , pfttttttttt.
...the current prevalent push for youthification within Corporate America has created a new generation of middle management (i.e. hiring managers) with a very different set of values and ethics from the boomer generation.
Sweet Jesus! It's actually getting WORSE?!
There is a level below which the decline will cease, its called extinction.
It is called the "Wrath of Abandonment"; He abandons U.S. because we first abandoned Him....here it is in plain language and it WILL get much much worse.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
God delivered them over to a depraved [Deviating from what is considered moral, right, proper or good] mind to do what is morally wrong. They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, disputes, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. Although they know full well God's just sentence-that those who practice such things deserve to die-they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them.
Funny you should mention that .. in grad school a company told our young prof .... they would send us on their dime to Eastern Europe to do a project if we could come up with a plan .. and make the contacts to industries in the US that would be able to use their technology to be passed onto Eastern Europe as it evolved into market economy ... of course after we did all the heavy lifting .. made the contacts... provided the massive hours of work .. they pulled out teh rug from under us .. our young prof who was an expert on intl economics and spent spent four years of his post doctoral in Eastern Europe was incensed... though why he should be .. my dad had warned me . saying do not put a lot of work into this project . its a scam .. a way to get people to work for free.. he was right .. lession learned.. never do anything without a contract and guarantees . .otherwise their verbal promises are not worth the paper they are not printed on.
Now my anecdotes:
Owned an IT business until a few years ago. One day I get a call to go to a printing and design firm to evaluate and be evaluated on being their IT firm. Smarmy guy and his equally smarmy son take my tech and I around. They give us what was clearly some song and dance about "trying us out."
They had a Mac server (rare then, and gone now) and about 30 Macs and PCs rudimentarily networked to it; A big mess. So we make some recommendations, especially that the server be swapped out.
I know they are planning on having the "too dumb to know he's dumb" son implement our recommendations, so I mislead them on how "easy" the change out is going to be--"Move the data, and the new Windows server will just see everything. The permissions will move easily as well." Etc.
Sure enough, I get a call from them almost a month later, "How do I...? Could you...?" Nope. LOL
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
Another firm strung us along, but paid us for rudimentary tasks. I knew they wanted us to train their guy up on switching out their point-to-point VPN between branches. Their guy called at 4 on a Friday afternoon asking that I drive 50 miles to fix the mess that the telephone installer had left, and that this guy had created. Nope, sorry, "I told you that such a project had to happen within a "plan and schedule" (step by step, with a fallback), and since I don't have a "plan and schedule," I will not come--I also don't want to possibly be held liable as well. And I'm out with my family as it is." Never heard from them again. LOL.
I don't have a wife, or kids, so I would probably have written up a quick liability waiver for them to sign, and charge them 4x hourly rate, and put in a 30 hour weekend + expenses.
Long story short, I wanted nothing to do with these people after their behavior, and since I was not dealing with a principle of the firm, there was no assurances I would get paid, or that a "waiver" would be binding.
But I did not care, as the whole thing was a mess BEFORE, which I told them, and was now a bigger mess. I had warned them of the consequences of moving ahead without the proper info and preparation--they didn't even have the password or config info for the old VPN.
They "picked" my brain, and then went ahead without me to save a buck, only to sink into the morass of their own making.
Now, I always responded to emergency calls from clients, new or otherwise, but not for shysters who were amply warned of the "gators in the water."
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
While building the business, I was fully employed by another firm. I used to get calls that required me to drive over to a Staples, or Starbucks, to WiFI and remote across the country into a client's PC/server, and fix something. Was pretty cool. The next day, I would step off the plane and drive straight to their site, and they would have no idea that I had just flown in from Omaha or something. Though I think that I almost got arrested once in Lincoln, NE, but the gun and badge thug used the opportunity for some free PC advice instead.
+1
Once those scum burned their bridge and showed their hand - the best thing to do is walk away like you did. There is no upside in dealing with vermin like that.
Those late Friday calls like that are what they make emergency rates for (2x regular with some minimum hours plus travel and expense if necessary).
We'll help you but you have to play fair. If you don't want to play fair we'll make it fair.
I never charged emergency rates, as a marketing ploy. Worked really well for word-of-mouth marketing.
Anyways I wouldn't go to the second guys site because of liability reasons, because of the way they behaved, and it really required two to three people to complete properly, as the branches were separated by 20 miles. Charging a high "emergency rate" would have pissed them off and raised the possibility of being held liable for something, and then there is actually getting paid. Plus I was out with the family for the first time after an intense two-weeks of 7 days a week work, planning and training; Another good reason I always used a "plan and schedule" for projects.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
I can't speak for the situation in TX, but in the Bakersfield area there was a hiring frenzy preceding the oil plunge late last year by SA. This continued until the prices bottomed out. From what I hear on the ground in the Kingdom a fair amount of these fellas are kickin' around doing nothing, but still drawing a salary. I think the majority of contracts were 1 or 2 year commitments. Would love to hear from heavy shale area producers if this is the case with their talent pool.
In light of this, Venezeula may not be far behind Greece from giving Beijing something to talk about.
Nothing new here, but yes, the new generation of hiring managers, both in HR and in the functional departments, are really different from the boomer traditions.
Their target is desperate, dispirited, and inexperienced millennials. If you try to show them competence, you are rejected immediately, that's not what they want, that's just what they don't want (it would be a threat to the "managers"). You are required to fake enthusiasm for the opportunity. OK that's always been the case, but it's much more so today, it used to be a dissatisfier and now it's a deal maker not a deal breaker.
It all sucks, and none of it is about to be fixed by the Fed jiggling rates.
This shit would come to a complete stop, well mostly, if a group of applicants sued a few companies, and, more importantly, the actual "interviewers," for fraud, and RICO offenses. Not that RICO is Constitutional, or that one could expect to actually win in the Zionist controlled courts, but then just grabbing them by the balls can be exhilarating, especially that "look" in their eyes.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
Today's current contracting laws are based on this. Intel was the guilty party, and would never hire contractors on as full time employees. They had contractors who had been working for them longer than the majority of their full time employees, and they treated their contractors like shit. Huge lawsuit, laws got changed.
So today, a contract position can only run for a maximum of two years, at which point you must hire the contractor on full time or let him go. Well by now you know which option the companies choose. Let the contractor go, wait the mandatory (legal) 3 months and then rehire them as a contractor...
and this way they can keep those H1-B visa holders working dirt cheap forever.
Most H-1B users should be prosecuted under RICO.
Well if you can't farm out for slave labor, just bring the slaves to your shop. H-1B workrs are merely scabs.
It seems banks use a similiar scam to hoover up data on large mineral exploration projects. (mostly gold projects) These bastards purport to have programs to provide start up funding for mines once full documentation is provided. Always a temporary assignment of the in-ground assets, proceeds to be paid from internal (FOREX/LIBOR trading). The sucker mine owners bust their asses to provide all proprietary info, which ends up cached in the Banker's servers (for after the crash), the miner ends up broke after following the bread crumb trail over the cliff to oblivian. Seen it for 25 years now.
Anyone ever have an verbal offer disappear within 24 hours (before any background check) due to some lame excuse like they hired someone internally or the position closed? I hadn't experienced it since my career beginning around '92 but it occurred twice in 2013-14 until I shut down and deleted one of my political blogs that wasn't friendly to democrats/Obama. To my surprise the next job offer stood and things were back to normal. It seemed to be more than coincicence. The blog was starting to do pretty well too, so I hated to destroy it, oh I had domain privacy on on it but that didn't appear to do much.
Maybe a coincidence.
Privacy? Internet is a nudist beach ;)
This is way to common. It has happened to me. Only once. Skills testing on a broken bolt. It does show just how inept these fools are tho. If that is the plan it cannot last. One day some guy will simply break off the easy out.
I have a new policy. Pay up first.
Valuable reminder. Thanks, ZH.
This is one of biggest NOT NEWS stories ever on ZH.
Phony interviews have ALWAYS been a part of Fortune 2000 companies for all of the reasons cited by other above and below who have experienced them.
shut up and let the folks relate their always entertaining personal experience stories...
Not what, but who you know.
That juicy salary and bullshit position is going to some higher up's son in law.
All the interviewing is kabuki theatre for the record.
Welllllllllllllllllll, o.k....
That is why you keep the Thermite handy.
Blow up their companies, their homes, and their cars.
Annihilate them.
But whatever you do follow the rules...
(First rule...Do not get caught.)
Of course you keep Thermite handy as you are a tinkering welder, a hobbyist...That is within the rules, right?
TOM.
Glue (possibly epoxy and with sand or very small ball bearings included in the mix) is the new thermite and MUCH more legal and easy to posess.
Also builders phoam.
If I gotta tell you how best to use it, you are done for anyway...
:c)
In the future a GPS jammer will be your friend. If it optionally jams other things even better.
Tom, as a bit of two cents worth advice, back it off a bit. You will be needed later.
He's even more fearless occasionally in the wee hours.
A young kid from a recruitment agency called me today claiming to get an update of my current employment status. What these skillless people want to know
- whether I am still employed
- If so, see whether my company is currently recruiting.
They have to fish information like that, it's a sign the employment market is fucking bone dry.
This happened to me when applying as an announcer at a Santa Barbara Radio station. The guy wanted me to produce a couple of commercials so I did. Then he comes back, says he likes my work, and asks me to do two more. He actually offered me a job....for $600 a month! I turned down his generous offer; never learned whether the commercials aired, but I'm sure they did.
I've experienced this many times in the past few years. It's prevalent in the marketing sector, where hiring managers try to trick you into taking a so-called "test" that often involves creating an entire ad campaign.
The problem is that the test revolves around one of their current products, and you don't get paid to take the "test."
Also, when you see the same company running the same job ad for 2 years, the job doesn't actually exist.
Tit for tat. When the con trick gets old, these asshole hiring managers will get what they deserved. Some candidates will expose the sensitive interview information online just to piss them off.
The job might exist, but the ads are for immigration compliance purposes. Between such 'fake ads', and replication of ads by 3rd party head hunters looking to score a commission, the actual number of available jobs is dramatically less than what might be implied. Additionally, many firms now advertise even positions that were destined to be internal-only, externally. Simply to gather resumes to use as negotiating leverage/benchmarking for negotiating compensation with their in-house candidate.
You make some excellent points. In some cases, companies are indeed seeking to bring in people on H1-B visas or to hire internally by shifting around employees.
When a company is legitimately looking to hire U.S. job candidates, they usually respond fairly quickly to viable resume submissions.
By and large, I've found that U.S. companies staff their marketing departments with Americans and their IT departments with foreign labor.
I prefer to work as a consultant, though, because the millenials make me nauseous.
Another slimy trick is creating an ad with absurd and nonsense requirements that cannot be filled by anyone. This allows them to hire H1-Bs.
Excellent point. I've seen some of those, too.
My favorite job ad asked for someone who was an expert at 3D animation, copywriting, Web analytics, searching engine marketing, and sales. The job title was one long hyphenated word.
Better yet, the job only paid $30K.