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
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facing contradictory
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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.

Universities Downplay the Need for Employment

Hot times are here at AJV!

People are getting the fear that a university education won’t provide for their needs, and they're understanding the growing possibility that vo-tech school is a superior career preparation option. This can be readily inferred from the absence of career services or post-college jobs center on or affiliated with a campus.

Call the admissions hotline at UW-Madison, (608) 262-3961, and then press “2” to get the switchboard. Ask the receptionist to please be transferred to the career services department -- and ask sincerely so that no nonverbal evidence of a “possibly insincere” or leading question is telegraphed. What will she say?

When I called on February 7, “Ally” responded, “I don’t know if we really have that at our campus.” She’s supposed to be trained in how to answer the most important questions about UW-Madison, BUT she does not know anything about the existence of career services -- let alone how to get in touch with a field-specific career counselor! How incriminating!!!

In Ally’s defense, the admissions department -- or whichever organizational unit she works in as a campus switchboard operator -- obviously neglected to train her for those types of questions. This indicates a clear chasm between the career orientation of potential students and the nonchalant attitude towards graduate employment held by campus officials.

According to UW-Madison, job placement rates by field aren't 'major dimensions' or worth reporting. UW-Madison is wrong! -1000 credibility, Madtown U.

“Whatever counts is counted,” as the program evaluator’s axiom goes, and neither UW-Madison nor most other universities care enough about employment for its graduates to bother allocating even a smidgen of its billion-dollar budget towards monitoring professional employment outcomes of recent graduates.

Remember, UW-Madison doesn’t care enough about the efficacy of its so-called “career preparation” to train its phone representatives and admissions counselors to answer the very simple question of whom to speak for career guidance let alone for job placement statistics!

“Now wait a minute, Joe -- you’re just saying this because ‘you didn’t get yours’ after you graduated!” Rest assured that I speak for many more beyond myself when I tear down the gilded curtain of the higher ed hoo-hah. The public deserves to know the hard-hitting realities of a university system it unquestioningly entrusts with their children’s future and with their own attempts at occupational rejuvenation.

The main thrust of my argument is that unrealistic expectations -- egocentric hubris on behalf of potential students and their over-reaching moral supporters -- means they over-estimate their chances of achieving professional employment after they graduate. Many of these office jobs are imaginary Internet-surfing roles based on popular fiction such as The Office -- but it is all a lie; none of the people portrayed in such a television series would ever snag a job in real life other than food service.

University involvement is therefore less likely in reality to produce a return on investment career-wise than the college-bound are conditioned to believe in the echo chamber of higher education, high school AP / IB classes, and preppy friends comparing which universities they applied for.

In fact, “college bound” is a misnomer -- you’re not the universities’ slaves! You’re bound to nothing! Who ever obligated *you* to go to college?

Why isn’t it yet fashionable for high school seniors to say they’re “trade school-bound” or “free to work full-time” when discussing their future among peers? By the time I’m done, it will be!

This insidiously ignorant assumption of financial return on higher education, or that it will somehow help the individual in ways beyond one’s intrinsic abilities, is total bunk. It is my life’s mission to debunk it!

“But think of all the good you could do for the university as a Communications Specialist or Front-End Web Developer!” The UW System had several opportunities to interview me for those positions, but now the window of opportunity has passed -- there is no expatiation shy of declining enrollment and increased hand wringing by flabbergasted administrators!

I’m dredging up the data and drilling to the core takeaways because sheer rhetoric alone won’t win the day against a billion-dollar industry of higher education hucksters.

Nonetheless, book progress is coming along nicely as I uncover more data regarding the massive investment inputs and lackluster economic outputs of university systems. The issue is so complex that I cannot presently give a publication date -- but rest assured, the anti-university crusade is what drives me to get out of bed each morning!

What HR Managers Really Want to Say

When you get a first-round interview but not a second, you know that apparent qualifications brought you to the dance. But when your partner -- the hiring manager (or group of HR personnel) -- says, "I'll call you," it stops the positive momentum and mounting synergy. They hear you call; they leave you cold.

The worst part is that phone screeners and hiring managers will refuse to give constructive feedback, let alone anything negative but actionable. The following is a list of things that might be on the tip of an authority's tongue but won't roll off until the legalistic culture is rolled back. I have summarized these ideas in a series of "unlike you" statements:

"Unlike you, he has a promising career ahead."

"Unlike you, she has a future in our industry."

"Unlike you, unacculturated immigrants are welcome in this organization."

"Unlike you, our people are first-class citizens."

"Unlike you, trash bags actually have a use in our business."

Bonus insult that almost fits the "unlike you" syntax:

"Unlike your job prospects, what's on HBO tonight is something I care about."

Now some people are just wicked for evil's sake, but I believe most apathetic human resources managers distance themselves emotionally from unsuccessful candidates and try to forget about also-ran interviewees because it would cut them too deeply to know the full consequences for the non-hired applicants. Some of my rants on this AJV blog really infuriate hiring managers for this very reason: It drags them, kicking and screaming, to the forefront of the existential train wreck to which they contributed.

And what if they eventually enjoy it? Upon realizing their satisfaction in causing human suffering, the self-aware hiring manager may realize he or she is truly evil. This precisely reflects Romans 3:10, " As it is written, there is none righteous -- no, not one."

The above "unlike you" insults are commonly thought by those in a position of judgment -- that's for certain! This would explain why a non-selected interviewee typically is not granted even an initial interview when applying for subsequent positions at the rejecting company. The "unlike you effect" of pass/fail as a worthy person has been set in stone for all eternity, at least according to organizational records.

But you know the old axiom, "Being worthless isn't so bad!" And really, you *do* have worth when you won't "shut up" despite haters wanting you to -- you have negative worth, but impact nevertheless. This also has a biblical allusion per Revelation 3:16, "So then because you are lukewarm -- and neither cold nor hot -- I will spew you out of my mouth." Take heart in the notion that you're a cool m***f*****r (mothflipper) exactly because so many people find you unpalatable! Live it as a philosophy, a credo for the misbegotten.

Do You Feel Unloved?

Three Intangibles That Determine Whether College Is Worth Anything

When I worked in Restaurant Operations (RO) at UWM July 2008 through August 2010, I also happened to be in grad school for public administration and worked as many hours as I could in the Panther Bookstore as its website administrator -- before Auxiliary Services consolidated the position under their webmaster when I graduated. My strategy was to use student loans to pay tuition and to use my wages to afford rent and groceries.

There were at least three non-student floor managers in RO at the time, and Lucy Xu was the one who micromanaged the most. The fact that micromanagers are less likely to be promoted makes it even more surprising that Lucy was promoted twice within three years: to Assistant Manager of Restaurant Operations in October 2010 and then to Assistant Manager of Retail Operations in October 2013.

So how did she stack the deck in her favor? Lucy is nothing else if not politically astute in office politics. By befriending students she favored and then placing her friends into positions of team leads and shift supervisors, Lucy leveraged her management position to flavor RO to her taste.

Now why in the world am I dragging Lucy into this narrative? Because when I asked her what I could improve to make myself a better candidate for promotion to dishroom unit lead, Lucy replied, "You lack the intangibles." I pressed for further information about these so-called "intangibles" and inquired, "How can I improve something that I can't measure? How about some useful feedback, other than saying my immutable qualities condemn me?"

It was straight out of a Greek drama in which the protagonist has a "tragic flaw" that prevents an otherwise heroic person from being ideal; and in the context of the story, this would mean a critical failure of some sort. My fatal shortcoming career-wise was my inability to be likable enough to be promoted -- and even though that was bad enough, the post-graduate world of unemployment actually made me miss working that crummy dishwasher job, where my contributions were partially valued instead of not at all!

Due to this lack of supervisory experience, my Restaurant Operations and eventual Pizza Hut jobs were discouraging employers from interviewing me for a stretch of almost a year. So with the exception of applying for government jobs, in which state or federal statute criminalizes misrepresentation of one's employment history or experience, I omitted those two palooka positions in my job applications and received literally double the interviews over the next year!

Those of you complaining about the omission -- hence revealed to illustrate a valuable point about white-collar employers exhibiting cavalier classism towards menial workers -- have nothing to balk about. You didn't hire me, so how were you harmed? I've since gone into business for myself as a writer: Co-authoring and editing Small Business Supercharged; subsequent titles are to come!

So what about manufacturing jobs? Few of those positions require the person to light up a room with interpersonal warmth. I eventually did work for an air pump assembly plant through a temp agency, but the repetition on the wrists was about twice what I anticipated -- 1500 units instead of 750 -- and I had a workers' compensation claim from tendon overuse syndrome.

The local doctor misdiagnosed this as tendonitis, when in reality it was tendonosis -- the difference being a lack of inflammation. Remember this if you ever visit a doctor for tendon-related pain! Understanding the addictive qualities of Big Pharma products, I refused prescription pain relievers; the constant pain had subsided into momentary discomfort when flexing at certain angles.

I could go on about all that I learned about the workers' compensation process, but this article is winding all over the place as it is. You can tell that I use this blog to organize my thinking at least as often I use it to promote an agenda. If I somehow misplace notes on my computer, then I can usually find one of my earlier blog posts to remind me I was working on some facet of a topic and have something similar in my follow-up bucket list.

AlterNet stalwart Leo Gerard wrote an article (rightfully) decrying the loss of manufacturing jobs via NAFTA policies that favor U.S. importation of goods over exportation. However, Gerard finished by repeating the misguided line touted by higher education hucksters: More university students, more university funding.

I have a newsflash for anyone who gives a blanket endorsement to charming as many high school graduates as possible into the various university systems: Universities guarantee only what you'll give, not what you'll get.

Now that I've been leading you along through this article, where are the "intangibles" mentioned in the article title? I mentioned Xu of Restaurant Ops to establish a context: She hinted at the importance of impression management in everything one does but declined to give specifics. Only after three years of arduous trial, error, and meticulous notes did I arrive at the Holy Grail of interpersonal mediation.

A liberal arts college degree doesn't mean access to a non-minimum wage job these days. It potentially could for someone who has ALL the intangibles of:

1) Charisma by which to build relevant social capital / make and maintain the "right" connections;

2) A mind that rapidly assimilates new concepts so you can cut down study time -- to network and to get much-needed rest -- without sacrificing knowledge retention; and

3) A life of low-enough stress where one can think clearly, as opposed to being a zombie from working all day, completing three-hour evening lectures, and squeezing in time to make progress on five assignment papers of about 10 pages each -- practically every week.

That's a lot of work just to get nothing in terms of occupational advancement. I've since given purpose to my "meaningless sacrifice" -- I now drag universities through the mud and promote trade school whenever I can. The pay is crap, but the satisfaction is gold!

While I still struggle with being assertive without being overbearing, I have pinpointed the most important areas of impression management. And frankly, these will no longer be an issue once I can rely on my writing and the power of ideas to generate revenue instead of having to woo petty people and coddle their fragile feelings.

Have you noticed how some people tend to imagine offense at the most innocuous things? Few have thick skin these days. To win the career war, you need to be aggressively likable while somehow seeming to not be trying; people generally disrespect someone who appears to be undergoing emotional labor.

In summary, most college-bound people believe they posses the above three characteristics to sufficient extent, when in fact they do not and therefore graduate without professional employment or the means to gain the same. Vo-tech school is the most reliable means of gaining a job that isn't typically dominated by minors.

Many are paid to ignore this conditional caveat because it is counter to their livelihoods as educators and other college staff. Voices such as mine are the unfunded contrarians running up against the billion-dollar machine.

Small Business Supercharged