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What a whiner! Hey, Buddy...listen up! I'm not in business to provide you with a job.

No, I don't want to talk with you without checking your resume first. If I do want to talk with you, you can make an appointment on the same day I interview everybody else. No, I don't want you hanging around my office on the off chance I might spontaneously create a job opening at 2:10 p.m. Not everybody has email and HR doesn't have the time to email everybody who does. Don't answer ads that are poorly written. If the ad is poorly written, do you really think that yakking on the phone will clear things up?

This guy is unreal. He needs to get out of a field that has been overpaid and is currently overstaffed.

While I agree that a good deal of this author's points make him sound like a whiner, I will interject my last two years of experience.

I am currently employed as an independent contractor and as such have been looking for a real full time job for the two years since I got laid off. I have applied for no less than 200 jobs, all of which I was qualified to hold.

Of those 200 applications I have recieved perhaps 30 responses, and 2 interviews. One of the interviews required that I take a day off of work (lost pay), and drive 150 miles each way for a 30 minute interview. I did everything right, dressed correctly, provided a printed copy of my resume, sent a letter to the interviewer thanking him for his time, etc. Three months later I got a thanks but no thanks letter.

Now this might seem trivial to some, but the fact is that a good deal of professional courtesy has been thrown out the window. Say what you want, but taking three months to send a thanks but no thanks letter to one of three people interviewed for a postion is rude. Sending no response at all to an online application is just as rude, even if it's a cookie cutter rubber stamp form letter. I took the time to apply, you can take the time to tell me I didn't get the job.

Then there is the HR hellbot. This little gem is used to scan through resumes looking for keywords and ranks applicants accordingly. Sounds like a real timesaver to me, except there is a flaw. Say you are looking for a "Technical Sales Engineer" and the hellbot is looking for that as a key word. All well and good except my past employer called the same position "Systems Engineer". All the education and experience to do the job is there, but because a hellbot is looking through the resumes not a real live body it's the bottom of the stack for me. I could modify my resume to say what I think they are looking for, but then should they call my past employer to verify my employment history it's not going to jive with my resume. That in turn makes my resume look suspect.

Last but not least my biggest pet peeve is the opening that's posted, but already filled. If you have an internal candidate who is a shoe in for an opening then me taking the time to apply is a royal waste of time. I know there are legal reasons for doing this, but that doesn't change the fact that it's royal waste of time.

The bottom line is that looking for a job is nothing like it used to be. Not for me anyway.

Exactly. A whiner and a victim. That said, at my age, it IS difficult to get hired. My resume opens a lot of doors, but the interview goes cold the minute they assess my age. My skill set is huge, I'm bilingual, I'm educated.

So heck. I started thinking of things I WANT to do, and how I can make it happen. Yeah, I hate my current job, but it affords me the means to get more schooling, start my own business, etc. No such thing as "career" jobs anymore, anyway. Life is tough and there are no Knights in Shining Armor waiting to avenge my misfortunes. Gotta get busy...