Tired of Foreign Workers Getting Your Jobs? Then Comment via the Regulations Portal!

To practice what I believe my job would be like if the federal government hired me for one of the regulatory specialist jobs for which I applied, I perused the Federal Register website. I browsed the Antitrust Division notices in particular because these could potentially be useful to mention in a cover letter to an involved firm.

Announcing its first change of membership since October 1998, the technological development consortium The Open Group, LCC submitted a notice that was published in the Federal Register on May 31. In the far-right column of page 3, the notice lists UW-Madison from Wisconsin and Van Haren Publishing from the Netherlands. Here's an annotated screen capture:

A search on the UW-Madison website returned professorial papers on UNIX-related computing such as “X server code” and “zone-based data striping.” The absence of minutes, agendas, or other reports on the UW website suggests The Open Group is more like memoranda of agreement among the participating organizations than an actual governing body. And since January 2014, Van Haren Publishing and I have been mutual followers on Twitter -- thereby giving me two ties to The Open Group.

Returning to the main page of the Federal Register website, I moved onto the list of proposed rules for which the public comment period is open. It bears mention that each web page containing proposed rule text has a comment button in the upper-right corner.

Clicking the “submit a comment” button redirects you to the appropriate rule-specific page on the Regulations.gov website, the only collective portal for any online comments to public agencies regarding their rulemaking. Otherwise, you would need to visit each agency website and submit comments through their specific channels.

Before you comment -- or technically speaking, “send a public submission” -- to any federal agency, download and read the official guidelines for creating influential comments. I especially appreciate how the document says not once, but twice, that a thousand duplicate comments or “form letters” are wasted effort unless each contributor adds his or her own experience and supporting facts to the public submission.

Remember that you are competing with think tanks and lobbying groups that have retained some of the sharpest minds -- though not all -- and therefore need to do more than act like a parrot reiterate some publicist's message on the matter!

I’ll add some helpful hints the official guidelines omitted:

1) Don’t threaten any government employee -- that would be a terroristic threat -- or anyone at all in your comment to the agency. Some issues can be highly emotional, but the last thing you need is for the agency to sic the FBI on you over a perceived threat! So play it cool; use professional language.

2) Although the guidelines state, “There is no minimum or maximum length,” the online comment submission form has a maximum length of 5,000 characters. The quickest way to check this in Microsoft Word is to highlight your comment; next, click the “Review” tab; and then, click the “Word Count” button.

If it pains you to trim part of your over-long comment, then save your omitted text for another commenting opportunity. With approximately 430 interdependent agencies proposing at least a few rules each quarter, there are many occasions for you to be heard!

My comments tend to speak generally about policy through repeated interrelated themes, each of which pertains at least tangentially to broad set of rules, so as to maximize exposure in the public record to ideas that I support.

This allows many opportunities for contacting a wide variety of agencies regarding their proposed rules and creates a megaphone effect while diversifying the commentary to suit the particular agency-promulgated rules under question.

3) If a proposed regulation hurts your personal job prospects in any way, then let the agency know your specific story. The human element is underrated in the regulatory winnowing process. Segueing from the third point, I commented on three proposals that caught my attention in terms of being relevant to me and well enough within my grasp of policy to comment both intellectually and practically. From briefest comment to longest:

The Pipe and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is renewing oil pipeline inspection regulations, including requiring every sub-national government (regional compact, state government, municipalities, etc.) that desires to regulate intrastate oil pipelines must first be certified by PHMSA.

Here’s my comment, Tracking Number 1yj-8cff-5teo, on another facet of the regulations:

“I’m surprised an energy lobbyist hasn’t commented on these proposed rules. As an everyday citizen, I appreciate PHMSA’s requirement that operators of underwater oil pipelines must periodically inspect for any protrusion to the surface. The corrosive potential of a marine environment cannot be understated, so thank you for helping to prevent corrosion-related leakage.”

I also commented on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulation that would expand, by 24 acres, the designated critical habitat of the Vandenberg Monkeyflower. I feel sorry for whoever owns those 24 acres, as now the land cannot be developed in the foreseeable future.

If you comment by 4:59 p.m. EST on June 5, then your message will be viewable by the FWS! Here’s mine, Tracking Number 1jy-8cfv-t3dp:

“As an unemployed manual laborer and 2010 master’s graduate of the public administration program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I’d say the job prospects of college graduates are about as endangered as the Vandenberg Monkeyflower.

Just as the FWS socks away critical habitat for endangered species, we should -- as a national grant-making policy -- partition more of the existing university system budgets to provide exclusively for internships and on-the-job training rather than for class assignments or wasteful programs such as mandatory “literary” and “inequality” studies that only serve to alternately distract and divide our potential workforce.”

My third submitted comment regards a rule proposed by Citizen and Immigration Services that would authorize 4-H nonimmigrants to apply for work visas. Part of the policymakers’ argument is that H-1B workers are more likely to remain in the U.S. and become citizens if their spouses are allowed to work here.

But why the need for so many skilled worker visas? Do our universities suck or something? *Nodding in the audience* Okay -- but the quality of our graduates reflect the universities, so university officials ought to be embarrassed at the scores of H-1B visas issued.

Thousands of positions filled by workers on visa could be filled at comparable expense by those who are already loyal to the United States; a little more training, but less INS/CIS paperwork and a generally reduced security risk. Why invite industrial espionage from those who grew up with sympathies towards a different country?

(NOTE: Liberal arts universities are doing their best to make America seem like not such a great place, though! That’s why traitors born here, such as “Fast” Eddy Snowden and Brad “Call me Chelsea” Manning, have seemed more prevalent in recent years.)

To answering the above questions: It’s because the universities refuse to more intimately involve corporations in establishing curricula, thereby limiting the labor market utility of any hands-on experience gained through a university. I’m sure at least a few eggheads understand that, but their self-interest in so-called “academic freedom” creates market inefficiencies when it comes to training the workforce, thereby exacerbating functional employment!

For my own sake, I commented at length against the proposed H-4 work authorization and advised H-1B visas be contracted by 10 percent. Once the CEOs are done whining to the editors of Fortune magazine, they’d get cracking at training local talent to replace their precious foreign talent. Without further preliminaries, the Tracking Number for the following comment is 1jy-8cfw-gjx1.

“I don’t feel sorry at all for employers who suffer “detriment” because they are unable to hire foreign talent! Why? Because they are causing me and millions of fellow able-bodied, able-minded under- and unemployed workers to experience the same economic loss those organizations claim, if not greater, by refusing to hire us!

I earned a degree in public administration to get a government job, but that apparently does not count towards any substantive expertise or qualification. I received no interviews for over a year after graduating before deciding to undertake my own policy analysis in my spare time at my blog, JoeOhlerJr.WordPress.com.

My landmark policy to date is proposing university student workers be allowed to finally earn unemployment insurance -- after years of state-by-state legislative prohibition -- and estimating the fiscal impact of the same to be over $2 million economic growth in each state, on average.

I’ve yet to break through into the second round of interviews, so my dream of a white-collar job is unlikely to ever come true, despite my efforts. That is why I went to college in the first place, but those eight years and $50,000 are now in a figurative black hole.

I’ve also applied for a bunch of private sector jobs. Three years after graduating, I finally received a four-day tryout at a pump assembly plant for $10 hourly. My job was to unpackage 1500 tightly packed units, movable only with sustained force through both hands over the length of each box, during a 10-hour shift: 7:30 a.m. through 5:30 p.m.

I developed tendonosis, filed a workers’ compensation claim, and was blacklisted at area temp agencies for over a year. Then, I received an interview at a grant-subsidized temp agency. They had advertised a permanent position but proposed I start as an LTE at the minimum wage, to which I expressed enthusiasm.

But a week later, the receptionist informed me that I was not selected and that there were already too many experienced people in the area to be hired. Given the general preference for previously fired, but experienced, workers over the worker without prior experience, it is doubtful I’ll ever work again -- not because I lack ambition or an education, but because employers are hiring foreign workers instead of locally.

A pressing question for the public is: When will employers stop being skinflints and start training local, born-in-the-USA citizens who want to work -- and perhaps already have a few degrees -- but still don’t have the specific training sought by that employer?

Some manual labor and office jobs I seek are filled by foreign workers, with the office work at starting salaries exceeding thirty thousand dollars -- wages substantially greater compensation than for what I would ask in exchange for the privilege of office work. Cue the red-faced CEO screaming, “WE DON’T HAVE QUALIFIED TALENT LOCALLY!”

And instead of yelling back, I disabuse him of executive ignorance by proposing a native-friendly solution that should be obvious to someone of his qualification but is most evident to the common worker: If the universities aren’t providing enough of the training you demand from new hires, then train the semi-skilled but inexperienced job seekers yourself!

CEOs should reallocate some of their distant underlings’ compensation to instead purchase valuable training time. HR should reduce the starting compensation of entry-level professional employees, hire more people without significant prior experience, and train them to eventually earn a higher compensation. A Department of Labor rule to this effect would restore America’s former economic glory and global influence.

Those universities that consistently fail to produce employ-able graduates actually hired by global firms should be shuttered, for they are a waste of public taxpayer money and therefore a misuse of corporate money -- funds that would be better spent directly training inexperienced employees rather than subsidizing $6 billion degree farms.

I hereby oppose extending employment authorization to spouses of those in the U.S. on H-1B visas or otherwise here on H-4 nonimmigrant status. I would also reduce the number of H-1B visas by 10 percent, by attrition.

The Department of Health and Human Services would thereby force the hand of corporations, and thereby necessitate greater investment in the U.S. workforce already here, by refusing additional 4-H work authorizations. When federal agencies companies to do so, they will hire local talent despite HR’s irrational fear, uncertainty, and doubt caused by their inaccurately low perception of my value as a potential employee.

Don't sell our American workforce down the river. Hire local; hire from within the U.S.! And if your locals don’t have the skills, then stop being a cheapskate -- and start training them the way you want; universities will never do this.”

If you agree with me, then let the agencies know! You can even comment confidentiality, if you like. I commented under my real name to draw attention to myself as a means of reflecting some of that mindshare towards fairly obscure issues such as unemployment compensation for student workers. The worst that can happen is you end up in the national spotlight!

Cover Letter for Unemployment Insurance Fraud Investigator

---

Role: Unemployment Insurance Fraud Investigator
Agency: Workforce Development, Department of
Job Announcement Code: 1401699
County(ies): Dane
Classification Title(s)/JAC: Unemployment Insurance Fraud Investigator - Project Employment
Job Working Title(s): REGULATORY SPECIALIST - 1401699
Type of Employment: Full Time (40 hrs/week)
Salary: Starting salary is between $17.072/hr. and $27.00/hr., plus benefits. Project employment does provide benefits, but does not provide for any rights to a permanent civil service position and does not lead to permanent status in class.
Contact: Chris Goslawski, HR Specialist, 608-266-8332, CMGJobs@dwd.wisconsin.gov
Bargaining Unit: Non-Represented
Area of Competition: Open
Deadline to Apply: 4/28/2014

There are currently 4 vacancies. These positions are responsible for investigating and resolving non-complex and complex level fraud cases, including known imposter investigations, employers or others aiding and abetting claimants in committing fraud, fictitious employers and identity theft investigations. This position requires specialized knowledge of, and experience with, criminal investigation and prosecution, particularly of financial crimes. These positions are located at 201 E. Washington Ave. in downtown Madison.

Job Duties: Investigate allegations of UI fraud based on referrals from employers, the general public, and others. Conduct investigations, including identity theft investigations, by applying sound fact-finding principles to secure all pertinent information. Collect and review investigation reports, determine what violations occurred, if any, review with Benefit Control Supervisor, and recommend conclusion of the investigation.

Establish facts by interviewing, observing suspects and witnesses and analyzing records such as business, personal, or public records and documents. Collect, protect, and preserve physical evidence and ensure the integrity of the chain of custody. Verify information obtained to establish accuracy and authenticity of facts, data and evidence. Prepare written determinations that are accurate, complete, informative, and concise. Evaluate the appropriateness of referring a case for prosecution.

Develop and maintain healthy and productive relationships with the District Attorneys/Department of Justice personnel. Sign criminal complaints and provide restitution information to prosecutors. Appear as a witness for the prosecution and testify at hearings.

Analyze fraud trends, schemes and threats to UI. Network with other UI staff, partner agencies, and law enforcement on methods to prevent and detect the trends, schemes and threats to UI. Provide technical assistance to UI Management on investigative policy, techniques and procedures, and preparation for prosecution.

Special Notes: Because of the nature of the job duties performed by these positions, criminal background and other background checks will be conducted on final candidates prior to selection for the position.

Job Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
• Extensive knowledge of criminal investigation and fact finding techniques, especially as related to criminal fraud investigations
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Knowledge of judicial processes
• Knowledge of criminal investigation and prosecution processes
• Skill to conduct confrontational interviews
• Ability to review processes and procedures related to fraud prevention and detection
• Ability to apply investigative methods and procedures to investigations
• Ability to read, interpret, and apply complex laws, rules, policies and
procedures • Good analytical skills
• Ability to work with diverse populations
• Ability to work flexible hours
• Ability to travel for work

How To Apply: Apply with a resume and cover letter. Your resume and cover letter should describe your experience as it relates to the job duties, and knowledge, skills and abilities listed in the job announcement; should include the name of your employer(s), your role and specific responsibilities, and your level of independence in decision making; and should address each of the following three key areas:

1) Investigation and enforcement. Include: purpose for the investigation; your role (i.e., lead investigator, sole investigator; working under the direction of another, etc.); experience collecting/protecting evidence and verifying authenticity of facts, etc.; the outcome of the investigation; other pertinent information.

2) Activities related to prosecution. Include: your role in evaluating appropriateness of referral of cases for prosecution; types of cases involved; tracking the case through the system; signing criminal complaints; representing the prosecuting party/testifying in hearings and trials; other pertinent information.

3) Fraud Detection. Include: experience recognizing and detecting threats related to fraudulent activities, the type of crime, and your role; methods you used; the outcome; other pertinent information.

Submit application materials to Alexandra Camarao; DWD/HRS; 201 East Washington Avenue; P.O. Box 7946; Madison, WI 53707-7946 or e-mail ACCJobs@dwd.wi.gov. Completed application materials must be received by 11:59 PM on the deadline date to ensure consideration. Application materials will be evaluated and the most qualified applicants will be invited to participate in the next step of the selection process.

---

I applied hours before the cut-off time on the deadline, as the now-or-never scenario brings out my most descriptive ideas through the primal, senses-sharpening adrenaline rush of urgency. Although experienced municipal detectives seeking to receive state benefits assuredly applied, I put myself up for consideration to gauge how far I’d go in the selection process.

In sharp contrast to most early-career, permanent state positions, I was not granted so much as a first interview for this entry-level, limited-term employment (LTE) gig. It appears the silence resulting from my statement, “Here’s my pitch for UI fraud investigator,” evinces greater latitude in short-listing applicants during the initial round of vetting, relative to the standard Wisconsin government approach of, “Let’s interview 10, 15 people for one position.”

I have better luck getting first-round interviews for positions that either require a civil service exam – the first step in applying for most permanent positions at state agencies -- or university services program associate (USPA) at whichever university departments happen to advertise at the time; the latter jobs typically require a cover letter, but I’m good enough at writing USPA cover letters to qualify for interviews more often than not.

But those never pan out into second-round interviews either, so the most I take away is occasional mirth. Time-wasting job interviewee wastes everyone’s time, no? Read my cover letter for unemployment compensation fraud investigator. It just might make you feel better about yourself -- perhaps inspired enough to apply for the position yourself when it is next advertised! (These LTE positions are advertised maybe once a year, at most.)

NOTE: I knew “Chris” was a woman because I called a day before to hear her voicemail greeting. To demonstrate my preparation, I addressed her as “Christine” in my statement of intent.

April 28, 2014

Christine and colleagues:

I espied the four project-term fraud investigator positions shown within the Division of Unemployment Insurance during a routine patrol of the Workforce Development online premises. Upon identifying knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that matched the description of Mr. Joseph Ohler, Jr.’s experience and expertise, I established reasonable cause that that he would be an ideal incumbent in such a capacity.

The discrete KSAs that particularly align with Mr. Ohler’s are as follows: identify, rectify, and prevent fraud; conduct fact-finding interviews; understand and apply Wis. Stat. Ch. 108; stop and report fraudulent payments and stolen identity. Mr. Ohler’s work history has, in fact, spanned all such duties throughout the half dozen jobs held during his blossoming career. So well, in fact, that it should be a crime!

Given the prima facie evidence, I enjoin you to schedule a charge hearing so the suspected four offending jobs may enter a plea as defendants and decide whether to stand trial against the allegations that they violated Section JPO of the Professional Job Code: “No white-collar job vacancy may lawfully match the KSAs and work history of the man Joseph Ohler, Jr.”

Please accept my résumé as an affidavit to supplement this job offender report you are presently reading. I am eager to undergo a cross examination so that we may throw the book at these delinquent job vacancies known as “project-term fraud investigator positions” and thereby prevent further loss of morality and decency within the Professional Job Community.

The very notion that Mr. Ohler may land into a white-collar job is unthinkable and outrageous. We must prevent such a scenario at all costs by making a public example of these Ohler-compatible employment listings. The alternative is loss of credibility throughout the Professional Job Community -- so let us close the book on this open-and-shut case.

I’ve taken the first step by writing you today; cross examination at your East Washington Street office is the next step in a successful prosecution!

Sincerely,

Joseph Ohler, Jr.
Fraud Investigator At-Large

Generation Jobless: A Rap

05-08-2014 Update: UW-Milwaukee has unveiled its winning crop of graduates this May 2014. How many do you think are profiled? Only five! And that's out of a graduating cohort of over 5,000 students.

Two of those publicized grads had already earned a bachelor's before their second degree, meaning they wasted 4 years on a stillborn career only to try again. The other three were winning all sorts of non-UWM awards from their freshmen year onward -- so although they hit pay dirt on their first degree, they in no way resemble anything the typical student or graduate will experience career-wise.

And yes, UWM has feel-good awards such as the CVSL Volunteer of the Year, STAR Awards, and Student Senate blandishments -- but they are all for naught, neither valued nor taken seriously in the real world of work. This is true not only for UWM but also for every university where every other person ISN'T an Elon Musk clone in terms of intelligence and social capital.

The MPA grad in the group, Aaron Lipski, had been a firefighter prior to earning his degree, thereby continuing the trend of a public administration degree being worthless unless you already work for the city. That man graduated from UWM way back in 2001 with a lousy communications degree, and only now is anyone profiling him because he finally achieved his goal of preparing budget documents for the Milwaukee Common Council. It only took him until age 50 or so to get there!

And really, Lipski's role as firefighter enabled him to gain the trust of the internship gatekeepers. That man would have never been hired if not for his vo-tech work experience; the degree was incidental and arguably inconsequential to Aaron's success.

The only reason I mention Lipski by name is because his example -- although seemingly pro-UWM on its face -- actually underscores how little UWM had to do with any of his job prospects. Aaron made his career by training as a firefighter and then using that position to transition into budget preparation.

Dennis Hatch and henchmen had nothing to do with Lipski working for the Milwaukee Common Council, so visitors to the UWM news page should not be fooled. And if anyone connected to Aaron is reading this, I'm not insulting Lipski but am saying universities tend to take much more credit than they are due.

Take back your lives from the higher education hucksters. Boycott all universities, not just UWM!

05-01-2014 Original:

Another May, another wave of graduates -- and for what? Out of thousands of graduates per institution, a few dozen will have white-collar jobs when they graduate and be featured in the “graduate profile” graduation promotion consisting of a photo and brief story of each “success story” grad.

The remainder will compete for professional vacancies, with no more than 500 of the 2,000 or so graduates entering those positions by the following May’s batch of grads. The remainder are either unemployed or working multiple unskilled, part-time jobs.

And while data specific to graduates are more widely publicized in the United Kingdom, America is heading towards the same slump due to misdirecting youth into accredited tertiary education they neither need nor benefit from.

When only a fourth of graduates secure white-collar jobs a year after earning their degree and in most cases, I really mean EARNING it the notion of a university as “professional career preparation” is obviously an odious lie meant to deceive through vague but legally permissible connotations of greener-than-reality pastures on the far side of the university journey. So bring shame to the higher education hucksters by refusing to enroll at their universities!

For the remainder of graduates constituting our surplus educated labor force, the clock is ticking until the next gaggle of grads will steal the jobs that prior graduates had been waiting and pushing for their turn in the queue. The December graduates cap off their formal credential in time for the January hiring spurt; and any summer students who technically graduate in August are considered in the job market more or less along the same set of May graduates while finishing their final three or so credits.

This presents a double whammy to the graduate who has been unable to persuade someone to employ him or her professionally by next academic year’s end: Even if building their skills through dumb trial and error in mock, unpaid-at-home run-throughs of what they think their desired jobs will be like, occupationally stagnant graduates are facing competitors who are at least a year longer, less depreciated in the labor market, and possessing fewer memories of failure in the rat race.

As Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute reports, “...There are still more than 20 percent more unemployed workers than job openings...(and) between 1.2 and 7.6 times as many unemployed workers as job openings in every industry.”

And that's not even segmenting ratios of jobseekers to job vacancies by years of experience in their respective industries, degree holder status or non-degreed person, etc. One may infer the job prospects follow an upright bell curve for years of experience -- with those trying to enter the field and those close to retirement with the worst chances -- and that degree vs. non-degree flattening out over the years due to experience holding a greater premium than on-paper credentials that have ceased to be an economic differentiator, no longer a Veblen good.

After so many years of this nonsense, it begs the question: Why don’t universities let local firms determine a greater portion of the curriculum so more of their program graduates can actually get jobs? So-called “academic freedom” aside, university staff have no incentive to care about better employment prospects for their pupils.

But now, scores of graduates are telling aspiring students about how many of their contemporaries have fallen short in the labor market despite possessing the once-ballyhooed powers of the college degree. Don’t think that an advanced degree will cure your situation! Is anyone hiring you to work as a graduate assistant in a research or teaching capacity? If the answer is “no,” then no one will care about your hard-earned graduate degree, and it will be like Groundhog Day when you again graduate without a job.

Can it be that such degree-affiliated value is entirely imaginary, like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? It certainly seems to be so when you examine the unemployed and under-employed graduates working unskilled jobs in your neighborhood! “There is no evidence of this,” claim university spokespeople -- but that is only because they do not monitor such data! WILLFUL IGNORANCE is the entire defense of university career centers!

It is time to expose them. Merely spreading word of mouth isn’t enough. I have therefore composed, performed, and mixed the following song:

Generation Jobless: A Rap - Lyrics

They call you tops; that's for real /
When you graduate, whose job you'll steal? /
Higher ed hucksters, turnin' green /
When students protest, the jobless scene /
Career Centers don't care, a bunch of bricks /
Neither do advisors; deceptive tricks /
What work you'll do, whatever the pay /
Years beyond graduation day?

Song download: Play this everywhere, all the time.
Generation Jobless: A Rap [0:20 | 784 KB]

Samples: Use these in your own raps to spread the vibe.
Generation Jobless Acapella [0:19 | 464 KB]
Generation Jobless Beatbox [0:20 | 488 KB]

Staffing Talk: P*ss and Moan Fest for Sociopathic Staffers

I occasionally read Staffing Talk to be entertained. Between the wishful thinking of disgruntled HR recruiters in finding those elusive "perfect" candidates and the advertorials regurgitating talking points of staffing firm press releases, Staffing Talkers are humorists at heart.

Could they write for Cracked? Not necessarily -- they would need to find five or more observations -- and a factual twist for each that unites them into a thematic list of contradiction along a common factor, for a total of at least ten facts per article -- all within a 2,200-word limit. That is more difficult than it sounds!

08-09-2014 Edit: Some of the Staffing Talk articles have been more creative lately and have moved beyond regurgitating press releases, especially with the longer articles by Scott Morefield. I have been enjoying your work lately, Scott!

The general trend nonetheless remains for temps to be seen as expendable in the sense that, just like the under-employed college graduate (who might also be a blue-collar temp alongside fresh high school grads), you'll either find permanent work in a year or else "get what you deserve." America deserves better than over-education and being stuck in crappy jobs! Is the USA entitled? Damned straight we are -- because we expect to NOT fall back a socioeconomic class! Now, back to the original article:

But Staffing Talk is less educational than Cracked articles due to ST being a glorified soapbox high on opinion and low on facts. Staffing Talk is very much in the format of this very Absurd Job Vacancies blog -- but with less self-aware irony, due to their writers taking themselves way too seriously in light of their content.

When one considers the ridiculousness of ST's think-tank ideas and the relative lack of talent required to regurgitate press releases, it becomes clear how Staffing Talkers are yapping and yawing their way into ironic parodies of an entire industry. Today I critique two Staffing Talk articles in one fell swoop!

Here's my critique of the aforementioned HR-turned-PR article by Kinzy and Krew®. She and a ghost writer pretty much copied and pasted lines from an ODesk press release, but it's not exactly plagiarism because she cited her source and paraphrased for about half the article. In other words, Janssen pretty much did the equivalent of an eighth-grade short story article, kind of like a news-and-views report that only gives one side of the story: that of the staffers.

I maintain this blog to present a job seeker's view, the piercing perspective of a “staffee.” My voice is sometimes proactive -- proposing new rules of thumb such as whether college would be worth a red cent for the employment pursuer -- and at other times reactive, such as when taking sadistic staffers to task for poor policy.

Either way, my goal is to innovate competing narratives by which to challenge the traditional position of supremacy held by human resources personnel in the job seeker - job creator dialectic. Unions don't really help when you're trying to get the job or to create vacancies, so it's up to bloggers such as me to win the Mind War in the various public debates of staffing policy.

“So what's sociopathic about recycling press releases?” Almost nothing, except for the presentation of content as original. Like most marketing, ST articles are partially lies by omission; they do not add anything substantial to the press release content such as a poll of staffer's opinions or -- HR forbid -- the opinions of job seekers.

“Those job seekers are lucky we don't ship them to concentration camps for being unqualified wastes of our time!” Many who gladhand you think in such wicked terms about you!

In a test of whether Staffing Talk had any original information on the matter or was merely copy-raiding, I raised the question as to what percentage of Kelly Services workers were simultaneously considered for ODesk jobs. None dared volunteer a response!

Lest Staffing Talkers be accused as “Staffing Liars,” Janssen sat out that question. By contrast, I deduced an answer above and beyond anything ST personnel could have conjured. Behold my rationale:

Based on 1 million users at the end of 2011; an assumption of exponential talent pool population growth; and a population-blunting concentration of 90% of earnings in the top 25% (due to ODesk's 2013 revelation about 4 skills dominating those earnings):

I hereby estimate ODesk's active labor pool to be around 1.7 million. This is roughly three times the size of Kelly Services’ labor pool at a given time (between 340,000 -- as stated on the Kelly “About Us” web page -- and 360,000, as stated in recent press releases).

Because K. Svc. does not publicly disclose which percentages of its workforce belong to which industries or functional silos, it is a matter of segmenting the Kelly labor force by functional specialty proportionate to that of the broader temporary worker economy.

After applying that assumption, one finds IT workers are about a fifth of overall temp talent. One may subsequently presume that no more than a fifth of IT opportunities offered through staffing agencies in general are ODesk-compatible via telecommuting.

This produces the following math: (560,000 K. Svc. total * .2 IT classified) * .2 ODesk-eligible = 112,000 * .2 = 22,400, or about 4% of all Kelly Services' talent are also candidates for ODesk gigs.

I answered the question that none dare answer! A small but growing 4 percent of those seeking work through the multi-specialty staffing firm Kelly Services are automatically considered for remote work opportunities via ODesk.

If this relationship were to be viewed the other way, then the percentage of ODesk workers from the Kelly pool would be about a third of that 22,400 -- or 7,467 -- due to the aforementioned triplicate size of the ODesk roster vis-à-vis K Svc. But that last part is a fun bit of trivia because the referral relationship is Kelly-to-ODesk, neither vice-versa nor both.

The relationship cardinality in each staffing pool is one-to-many for jobs considered; one-to-one for jobs accepted; and many-to-none for those who find no employment.

Moving on from one-upping the less competent pundit to addressing the more gravely wrong-headed wonk, I now take to task one particular Staffing Talker who was evidently having a bad day when he cranked out a manifesto of how to screen out workers prone to injury -- acknowledging the illegality thereof in the preface.

My response was twofold: drawing attention to the very real fact that the tables could turn against him; and explaining short-sighted thinking such as his proposal is partially responsible for the national labor force participation rate remaining below 66.5 percent for more than a decade.

I won't repeat that godawful article, except to criticize a particularly insidious passage: “We’d love to peek into a crystal ball and find out about that previous back injury our workers’ compensation policy is getting ready to ‘buy’...”

I won't stereotype all HR professionals based on that one guy's cynicism. After all, Scotty Morefield and fellow pissants colleagues cannot be all that busy as recruiters if they have enough time to polish their brainfarts into almost-daily articles (as each writer contributes twice weekly, more or less).

But the latest paean to sending temporarily disabled workers into the land of permanent unemployment deserves a most definite rebuke, hereby revealed in cataclysmic fury:

So what if you, dear staffer, develop a disability during your working life? A car crash severs nerves; a tick bite gives you Lyme disease; you develop fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s, or other chronic, predominantly genetically predispositioned disease. Who will hire you under these conditions if every staffer followed your policy of (paraphrased), “If prior injury, then not hired?”

And although mental-emotional disabilities are more difficult to acquire permanently, the right mix of socioeconomic factors -- such as your fair-weather friends abandoning you during a crisis -- could change your personality into something less employable. You never know!

I take personal issue with your policy because being both mindful of safety issues (your first proposed question) and willing to go above and beyond (your first proposed question) may, at times, be diametrically opposed. For example, my first placement through QualiTemps, Inc. was four days as a temp at Hankscraft. (A note to AJV readers: This was a substantial commute from my home near Portage.)

The first day was fine because I was assembling, testing, and taping up battery packs -- a duty which used a variety of hand movements to minimize cramps. But on the second and third days, there were no battery packs to assemble, so my new duty was to open incoming boxes, remove the tightly packed air pump components, and flip the unit.

This involved an immense amount of cumulative strain on the wrists such that I was sore at the start of the third day and positively unable rotate my wrists by the end of that work shift -- all because I was doing as instructed and keeping pace with the 1500-units-a-day production line!

I told my supervisor that my wrists were getting very cramped and sore; I also requested a different production job for that very reason. Hankscraft supervisor John (last name unknown to me) denied this completely reasonable request and said, “You’re welcome to walk off the job if you can’t do this job.”

In case you need it spelled out, I was bringing attention to a safety issue but was instructed keep doing what was endangering me. The alternative was to be marked as walking off the job.

I chose the “tough guy” route of going above and beyond -- via adrenaline rush that temporarily dulled sensation -- the point at which it perhaps would have been better to “walk off” mid-day and let Hankscraft hang.

Seeing how QualiTemps ended up paying workers’ compensation anyway, I instead could have filed an injury report right then and there to get workers’ compensation in exchange for less pain and suffering.

It remains for debate whether working through the pain to shift’s end to prevent short staffing was an ultimately pointless sacrifice out of some delusion of future inroads with Hankscraft or some non-reciprocal loyalty to fellow stranger temps whom I would never see again.

I toughed it out but was numb in my wrists at shift’s end. I then reported this repetitive stress injury to John and another supervisor and filed for workers’ compensation through QualiTemps. That staffing firm investigated, paid my initial and follow-up clinic visits, and put me on light duty at a thrift store for the two weeks it took me for my tendonosis (misdiagnosed by the local doctor as tendonitis) to heal.

Although stopping immediately to file a claim -- before the repetitive strain injury became more obviously distinct from mere soreness -- would have shortchanged the other workers, they weren't the most welcoming to start with. And seeing how I didn't receive any "get well" cards, as anyone could have easily given to the temp agency office to be forwarded to me, I must clarify: I didn't do this for you people! I persevered for myself!

I just wanted to keep working to prove myself, a living Canto de Persistence -- but my tendons weren't on the same song sheet. But if anyone harps on me about "work ethic," then I tell them my tale until their eyes glaze over.

I never received an assignment after that, neither from QualiTemps nor from the other staffing agencies with whom I had signed. The agency had paid my workers’ compensation and is therefore immune to liability; they handled it to my satisfaction, except for the lack of future placements.

Whatever badmouthing Hankscraft did about me cannot be punished -- for lack of documentation and because QualiTemps was my employer -- but Hankscraft deserves a mention for how they denied my request for a different production job for the reasons I clearly explained and documented.

The bottom line is that I’ve done hundreds of repetitions of wrist exercises to become a stronger, more durable worker -- but thanks to staffers following your oppressive policies such as “no second chance after a disability,” thereby harming the public’s ability to live independently, national labor force participation has not exceeded 66.5 percent in over a decade.

Imagine Scott Morefield, Gregg Dourgarian, Kinzy Janssen or some other Staffing Talker in the same position. Can any of them really say with authority they would not develop tendonosis?

I can hear critics say, “Get a college education!” I already did that -- and am competing, at the ripe age of 29 years, with 18- and 19-year-olds for basic jobs such as light production (apparently no longer an option due to being blacklisted) and food service. How would any Staffing Talker tolerate such a situation if s/he were to lose everything? Who would support such a plundered pundit?

Some HR people have no shame because they have theirs! It is important for them to enjoy while they can, for no one knows what will be demanded of him or her. The haughty shall be humbled in due time!

Psychology of the Combative Job Applicant

Iconoclasts and admirers of deviance alike shall enjoy today's post! In my transgressive crusade to expose the declining returns of a university education, I came across a staffer bemoaning how increasingly common it is for a non-placed job applicant to snap at the third-party staffer -- either as a proxy for or in addition to the client company who hired someone else, for whom one might anticipate anger to be directed towards.

And would you know it? Many of those being told to "not call us" staffers are, in fact, college-educated and losing their ability to be polite following a harrowing rejection streak. There's only so much deflation of one's self-esteem one can take before thinking of ways to inflict emotional abuse on the rejecting parties!

The psychology of job applicants -- even interviewees -- who say offensive things to and/or about recruiters and interviewers goes something like this:

1) "I'm applying for a job as a form of ritual psychodrama, to say that I never give up (even if not currently receiving unemployment benefits);"

2) "But I understand from many prior negative outcomes when I had been polite that today's job application or interview will be no different;"

3) "Ergo, I will purposefully offend those who view my application and/or interview me so that I may offend them before they offend me through inevitable rejection. I'll no longer be exclusively a victim but also a victimizer!"

This phenomenon is understandable to those who have been implied over and over -- even told outright -- that they are worthless. Being generally successful people, scads of human resources personnel cannot decipher why an employment applicant would lash out against those who nominally hold the keys to his or her economic prosperity.

As I had told Staffing Talk, chronically unchosen job applicants no longer see themselves as credible candidates for employment; they are merely following a social script to position themselves into a line of communication by which they direct verbal -- and occasionally violent, overtly criminal -- abuse at anyone and everyone in HR to share the misery.

Staffing Talk readers did not take this revelation very well. In fact, those who didn't bury their heads in the sand took a second to downvote me, as shown in the screen capture below. I feel honored to have ruffled their feathers by breaking their echo chamber!

It is for this reason that interviewers are loathe to produce business cards during first-round interviews: Angry also-rans would have a direct line to air their grievances -- if not to the interviewer, then to his or her jaded receptionist, who more than likely has learned to be a virtual roadblock for pesky callers by directing to voice mail or by purportedly "taking a message."

Staffers are especially prone to Parthian shots from jilted jobbers. Being one of the few regular HR-related contacts the job seeker has, a candidate facing a continued crush of unemployment may believe the recruiter and/or staffing agency are purposely not recommending him or her to suitable positions!

Next thing you know, the exasperated employment searcher is asking the recruiter how s/he -- the presently under-served labor consumer -- may someday acquire the staffer's very job! Or more than likely, the question is how to best qualify to work in another instantiation of the recruiter's; but most people asked by an unemployed person how to get into their line of work are viewed very suspiciously as potential backstabbers who'll do anything to get ahead.

I know the staffing recruiters I've worked with -- QTI, QPS, and especially the self-important egomaniacs at the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation -- have reacted rather defensively when I inquired about which jobs comprised their career path up through their present position. One DVR agent said, "Oh, so you think you can do my job?" I replied, "With enough training? Yes!"

That was after they had failed to place me during all my college years and for over a year thereafter, so I had nothing to lose by springing that tactless question upon them. That person in particular was far more upset than I had imagined, so I was satisfied to know that if I ever wanted to burn someone in human resources, then all I need is to ask just how they qualified into their position!

As a final scratch at DVR, I quit their program to forcibly close my case file just weeks before Pizza Hut hired me. It was my outside initiative which earned me the job, so I made damned sure DVR wasn't going to steal credit! They had nothing to do with my applications to fast food restaurants; they had discouraged me from trying those places; and no one from DVR had contacted Pizza Hut. The victory was all mine!

My time at Pizza Hut is enough for a lifetime of tales, critical analysis, and subversive entertainment! That job was the worst I ever had, but that's another anthology of stories altogether.

Self-important
Staffing Talk
readership a
non-receptive
audience when
facing contradictory
information

Deconstructing UITS

And more specifically, dissecting its use of student labor. But first -- some institutional context!

The history and culture of an information technology (IT) organization are just as important as its current vision: These collectively provide the vantage point of first-hand experiences, lessons learned, and biases from which future decisions -- including personnel selection -- are made. I recently visited the present UITS homepage for an understanding of how it currently operates its student wing. The student workforce has grown from a modest 120 into "over 300" -- none of the current UITS pages disclose a number of employees, student or otherwise. But extrapolating from prior growth, I'd say UITS has around 600 student workers as of 2013-2014.

While the student workgroup cuts across functional units, all are housed within the silo of Client Services. This departmental structure has remained more or less the same since the founding of the organization that would become UITS. We'll perhaps see a few more project managers by year's end.

So what do I care?

Though never employed by UITS, I exploited its resources intensely and interacted with senior staff as members of the Educational Technology Fee Committee. I observed many people -- students and permanent staff -- who worked at UITS and even befriended a few. So although I never made it, perchance you will.

Just in time for the March 14, 2014 deadline for student applicants to be considered for summer positions, I hereby present my experience and insights pertaining to the job application process and culture at UITS; these should help the reader form realistic expectations about trying to join.

I had applied for Help Desk and lab attendant when University and Information Technology Services (UITS) at UWM was known as Information and Media Technology (IMT) at UWM. Housed within IMT was Student Technology Services (STS), essentially a workgroup distributed among six or so functional silos and comprised of students.

Besides cosmetics and some names, little has changed between the current UITS student jobs directory and the erstwhile STS subdomain. This is a testament to the leadership of Bruce Maas, who was Interim CIO at UWM from August 2004 through May 2007 and then Official CIO at UWM from June 2007 through July 2011. He kept directors accountable for staying within budget and advised committees on IT policy but had no voice in which student employees were selected.

Hired to be then-CIO Joe Douglas’ “Assistant to the Director”in early 2000, Beth Schaefer served in that role for a year before advancing program manager for an equally brief period before settling in as Client Services Director for over a decade. Her responsibility as CSD included overseeing half a dozen supervisors, each of which kept tabs on non-supervisory technicians and other support staff.

Another long-timer, Ann Nehring had worked in the IMT data center and became supervisor for the Help Desk / Campus Computer Lab (CCL) functional unit, which included the bulk of STS employees and is where I had applied. Both she and Schaefer debuted in STS just after Douglas and team deployed PantherMail campus-wide.

Schaefer and Nehring implemented many changes to the STS Handbook, of which a more exhaustive treatment is reserved for later. But one of the most relevant changes is the elimination of a right to merit increases, recognition for work well done, and professional development in general.

Understand that both remain in charge -- of Client Services and Help Desk, respectively -- as the relevance of UITS student career preparation dwindles. Where's my evidence? Right here: There is presently no professional development listed for students at UITS! And in case UITS uploads a Potemkin page with some training modules, then here's a screen capture:

The entire 2003 roster of UITS student supervisors has all but disappeared. This trend of unaccounted-for student UITS alumni has remained intact for subsequent cohorts, averaging 43 student leaders graduating every four to five years -- where are they professionally?

This is notwithstanding the 2004-2005 student leads, two of whom re-joined IMT/UITS as permanent staff. Compare the immediately preceding STS lead chart to the present UITS organizational chart: Can you find the two from 2004-2005 who were hired full-time as functional supervisors? This is really an excuse to hide a clue in a hyperlink title!

Much-needed levity aside: The fact that most of these 600+ former UITS student supervisors don't turn up in a LinkedIn search is an eerie omen; most tech professionals maintain at least a minimal representation on LinkedIn for the purposes of bragging and finding clients. Or perhaps they are very private, thereby reflecting the clannishness of UITS and university employees generally.

IMT/UITS has complained for quite a while how difficult it is to find job applicants with technical support experience for PeopleSoft and other human resources information systems (HRIS) are scarce -- so why aren't staff training student workers in those skills? Add that to the otherwise blank listing of UITS professional development courses available to students.

Take a gander at these 110 UITS employees who pretty much have a job for life! Which of them are responsible for PeopleSoft support? They're all responsible for the low turnover among full-time employees -- a phenomenon that prevents student workers from apprenticing into those positions!

I imagine their collective rebuttal, “Hey, we earn our paycheck! And if you want an apprenticeship, then go to trade school!” If only the higher education hucksters would admit that to get where they are -- in gainful employment as non-academic or "classified" staff -- completing highly specialized training in a vo-tech program is a superior alternative to the university career non-preparation.

When you have six full-time staff to a single function as UITS does, the workload balances out to two FT per shift. Compare this to most other university departments, where each function has only one director and an assistant director -- not to mention at least five entry-level staff, as in the case of “journey accountants.”

So what about my tips for applying? Those are on the drawing board, as I’m still piecing together what I could have possibly done differently in my responses to interview questions. Here’s an over-simplified summary of what I’ve learned over the years about student employment in UITS:

Things I did to get an interview with UITS (formerly STS)

1) Say you're available for third shift.

2) Include Help Desk as your primary area of interest.

3) If you're on the cusp of being [X year], then say you're [(X-1) year] credit-wise. Examples:
  If sophomore, then say "freshman;"
  If junior, then say "sophomore;"
  If senior, then say "junior;"
And if graduate student, then say you "will pursue a PhD at UWM" (even if not, and you shouldn't be in grad school anyway unless someone has paid you stipend or reimbursement to be there).

I'm so busy that I cannot say whether there will be adequate time for me to post my interview introspection before UITS begins student interviews later this semester. In 2007, the lag time between entering the waiting list and being interviewed was between four and six weeks; it might be less now due to more staff.

As a reward for reading, I'll let you in a chilling secret -- one that STS tried to cover up by setting its robots.txt file to "no index" in September 2005 for internal STS pages that had been indexed since inception. The restriction has been released as summer 2007. So why the move to prevent indexing for almost two years?

I've linked to the one instance of the 2005-2007 internal STS portal that had been crawled. Look at the graphics -- how creepy! What were they thinking?

Yes, part of the rationale for re-branding IMT into UITS was that too many people began to think STS meant "Student Technology Satanists!" With the Goat of Mendes as your mascot and Futharthic Runes underlying your department name, who wouldn't get an impression of occult shenanigans at play in STS?

For closer comparison, here is a closeup of the 2005-2007 STS mascot alongside a revelatory photo-illustration:

Unaltered

With overlay

If the questionable long-term professional outcomes for student workers and the sketchy flirtation with the sinister symbolism don't dissuade, then go ahead -- exercise your tuition-bought right to apply at UITS! "Good luck."

How Useful Is LinkedIn's New Profile View Tracker?

LinkedIn recently updated its interface for monitoring who has viewed your profile. The most useful change has been to include a segmentation of views by the top four sources on each job-related characteristic of users. Hovering over the "other" segment of each pie chart reveals the next four following the top four, as well as the number of visitors who concealed their information for that metric. "Unknowns" are not counted in the top eight but are pre-pended to the top of the list that shows ranks five through eight under "other."

Those who want further percentages may divide the categorical subtotals by the dimensional totals to calculate relative frequencies for all segments shown. However, I give the top two most-frequent occurrences by industry and general occupation.

The plurality of visitors to my LinkedIn profile hide their industry of employment or leave it blank (17.5 percent). The plurality of visitors who make known their employing industry known are within the nebulous field of education management (19.9 percent), which includes such widely differing roles as chancellor, financial aid specialist, school board president, and freelance tutor.

The plurality of visitors to my LinkedIn profile hide their job title or leave it blank (18.4 percent). The plurality of visitors who make known their job title are members of one or more nonprofit boards (6.6 percent). As you might infer from the plurality and near-plurality having such small percentages, I attract profile views from many different industries and job roles.

And while I dislike using the term multiple times within a paragraph, there really is no technically accurate equivalent for the term "plurality" -- "majority" and "most" speak in comparison to the entire sample, when in fact a coalition of categories is necessary to achieve a share greater than half the entire sample size.

That phenomenon is why third-party candidates can swing an election for or against one of several more popular candidates: the unpopular candidate may leach away less dedicated fans of a candidate who would otherwise lead in the polls if not for this electoral distraction by the oddball candidate. For a job seeker -- whether you're marginally attached to the workforce or firmly established as a world beater -- knowing your profile visitor's livelihoods in the aggregate reveals the types of occupations where people are most interested in you.

The dispersion of views among sectors is not necessarily a benefit: Those who are seeking to advance within an industry should have the greatest concentration of profile views from that industry, or else you're some person who has professional identity issues. And even if you have plenty of online observers, viewership information alone does not disclose the proportions of gawkers to admirers.

Impression quantity and impression quality are components of impression management: LinkedIn profile views give you a ballpark figure of your reach but nothing in terms of how many leave your profile with a favorable, unfavorable, or undecided impression. Perhaps adding a thumbs-up / thumbs-down mechanism to LinkedIn profiles would facilitate a quality-of-impression metric -- but as with any popularity contest, that feature would be prone to gaming. Then again, it would reflect the reality of office politics and would therefore have some convergent validity with the work world.

I'd say that before LinkedIn bothers with that, it should streamline its skill keywords to more systemically parse into clearly defined, exclusive XML tree branches such as that different capitalizations and punctuations of a skill would all parse into the same skill tag; they currently do not.