Going through a list of job applicants....sheesh

And, out here, I'd be the perfect employee (albeit overqualified for much of what I'm currently applying for), but it's next to impossible to even get an interview!  Out of probably 100+ applications, I've only had four contacts and two interviews (which, I apparently nailed according to the person I interviewed with, but then I get some form email from their HR department saying sorry - even the interviewers were puzzled).  Age discrimination is illegal, but definitely still performed covertly.

Idiocracy is turning out to be quite prophetic.
 
 

The saga continues. I swear to God 97% of people these days are just complete and utter time wasters. Since posting this I deleted my original job posting and posted a new one with a more detailed job description and list of requirements/deal breakers. All pretty standard stuff - you must be reliable, able to work unsupervised, good with animals, you must not have any prior commitments which interfere with the hours cited, you must be looking to work for at least 9 months etc. And then I quite clearly stated that all applications MUST include a cover letter stating why they want the job and what they feel they could bring to it, and that any applications that don't include a cover letter would be ignored. So in the morning I woke up to 137 applications and started going through them one by one. At the end of it all, there were a grand total of SIX that included a cover letter. That's 6 people out of 137 who actually read the job posting and were smart enough to follow the instructions. 
 
Of those six, two spent 30mins+ with me on the phone talking themselves up before casually informing me that they were starting college in a month and would be limited in their availability (despite what I said in the posting), two didn't answer their phones or reply to voice mails and one was incredibly surly and non-cooperative when I called her (answering "mm-hmm" in a sarcastic tone to every question I asked her). Only one stood out with a good keen attitude and ticked all of my boxes. She was supposed to meet me at 11am this morning to come out on the job for an hour for a trial run. I said to myself "there will be some reason why she can't show up," being the eternal pessimist, lol. But then I think "no, you have to think positively. Of course she's going to show." 
 
Woke up this morning to a text. "Due to a family emergency I can't make today. Can we do this some other time?" 
 
I swear, the number of people who have a sudden "family emergency" which stops them coming in for an interview is uncanny. Of course I'm willing to admit that she really had a family emergency. But going by how many times I hear that excuse, the picture in my head is of her getting high with her friends at 5am and one of them saying "You ain't makin' that interview, better send him a text." 
 
For crying out loud, this is a really cool job for someone starting out. $450-$500 a week for a 5 hour day, working outside with dogs, with the potential to increase the hours and pay substantially. 
 
On top of that, because this is a so-called "progressive" city, I am now prohibited by law from asking people if they have a criminal record. I'm only allowed to carry out a background check after I've offered them the position, and even then I'm only permitted to pass on an applicant if they have a criminal history that's directly related to the job. So for instance, since my employees are going to be in possession of clients' apartment keys, I could pass if they have a conviction for burglary. But if they have a conviction for manslaughter or wife beating or possession of a flick knife, legally I have to hire them. It's absurd, the people who write these laws have clearly never run so much as a lemonade stand. Rant!

thedukewestern
I have hired the occasional engineer to cover for me when I have to miss a weekend at the church - one time - someone who seemed to be decent, was a complete moron, and... called at 815am on a sunday saying he was "sick"... more like still wasted and afraid of a dwi.
 
When you DO finally find people that are congruent - treat them very well!  Its a blessing!

True! I always tell prospective employees, if you make a good first impression with me I will hire you like a shot! But we have descended into a society of slack jawed, slack brained time wasters for whom unreliability is a byword. I hate to say it but the current young generation is a disgrace when compared to older generations.

People bandy about all sorts of ideas and reasons as to why the economy is in such a dire state but nobody talks about bad employees and a crappy work ethic and the cost to the economy.

jamesg1213
That sounds like an ideal job for an older (maybe retired) person who wants to keep fit or maybe a parent with kids in school. Did you get any mature applicants?
 

Not a lot unfortunately. And oftentimes those who do apply turn out to have a lot of commitments (family, health etc) through the day which means they'll be asking for time off quite frequently. I'm always willing to take a shot at a mature applicant though.

I've also noticed a trend where most jobs are all sinking to around minimum wage.  I remember when a checker at a supermarket was one of the highest paid employees there (and decently paid compared to other jobs too).  I just talked with one who's trying to find better employment and I asked him why since I thought being a checker was still a really good position. His reply is "Oh, I love my job here, but you just can't live on $9 / hour...".
 
Wow.
 

Hmm...  Ironically, your first paragraph makes me want to invent an automated bartender! 

Damn.  Always a few steps behind!  (Though I think it could be done better.)

Its not just the manual labor jobs under threat, a lot of legal/accounting/engineering types of jobs are also being replaced for the more repetitive types of tasks.  I was recently reading online about a successful divorce system somewhere in Europe, although for the more complex cases they still use real people to mediate, most of it was automated.  In the legal profession, most of the searches are being automated also.  In engineering there are programs that do the modelling and more.
 
I also remember reading about research being done on music, to see how it affects mood etc, with the aim of automating song writing.
 
I was recently at a funeral, was talking to someone who works in mental health, and they were complaining about the lack of freedom in assessment methods decision making, they told me if you dont follow a step by step procedure you get fired and get replaced by someone who will do what they are told, so even psychological support jobs are becoming automated, though they still have a real person as a contact point.
 
Met one of my old school friends, downtown, a few months ago, he is joiner/cabinetmaker, where he works, all they do now is draw a design in a computer, and hire other people to monitor the machines, its all cut by robots so it just basically slots together like an IKEA product.   He was going nuts with boredom, but is not qualified to do anything else, and is now stuck on a low wage working long hours to pay for house and children.
 
I go to see the doctor, they ask me what the symptoms are, then key them in, the database then spits out some questions, they ask them, or do there observations, and the computer comes back with the diagnosis/recommendations for treatment.  I leave the doctors room wondering why I could not have done this over the internet, and saved myself a 1 hour wait in the waiting room etc.
 
I go to the chemist (drugstore in american speak), take in a prescription (doctors drug order) for medication, they enter it into the computer, a robot the size of a small bedroom processes it, prints a label, sticks a label with persons name and directions onto the required drug box, and it drops it out like airport snack vending machine.  There is no part of that process that requires a pharmacist attendant other than to refill the machine and pass me the end product.  I really do not know why the doctor does not email the request to a distribution center for either pickup or to be mailed to my home address.
 
Geez, even contacting most large companies by phone to either pay a bill to make an inquiry takes you through 15 minutes of automated questions, and a further option of completing a automated satisfaction survey at the end.  Its actually quite difficult to get to speak a person at some Institutions, and others impossible.
 
Automation is changing the world, doing what computers did to typewriters and draftsmen in the 90's, and there are very few jobs that are anywhere near safe.  That includes most of the thinking type ones, the only real brake on progress is peoples fear of machines, ie, wanting a real person to talk too.
 
As for people not looking or wanting work, I just finished watching the local news here, and were two main relevant issues to this article, problems with increasing numbers of homeless people in the city of Melbourne's streets and a survey showing more and more people are having to travel up to 4 hours to get to work, as where the jobs are the housing is so expensive that they cannot afford to buy in or rent.  Melbourne is supposedly one of the most liveable cities in the world if you believe Wikipedia and the agency that rate that sort of thing.
 
As someone else mentioned earlier, people are becoming sheep, and last time I checked, sheep are not getting paid to think!

sharke

thedukewestern
I have hired the occasional engineer to cover for me when I have to miss a weekend at the church - one time - someone who seemed to be decent, was a complete moron, and... called at 815am on a sunday saying he was "sick"... more like still wasted and afraid of a dwi.
 
When you DO finally find people that are congruent - treat them very well!  Its a blessing!

True! I always tell prospective employees, if you make a good first impression with me I will hire you like a shot! But we have descended into a society of slack jawed, slack brained time wasters for whom unreliability is a byword. I hate to say it but the current young generation is a disgrace when compared to older generations.

People bandy about all sorts of ideas and reasons as to why the economy is in such a dire state but nobody talks about bad employees and a crappy work ethic and the cost to the economy.

Sadly, I must agree.

sharke
 
On top of that, because this is a so-called "progressive" city, I am now prohibited by law from asking people if they have a criminal record. I'm only allowed to carry out a background check after I've offered them the position, and even then I'm only permitted to pass on an applicant if they have a criminal history that's directly related to the job. So for instance, since my employees are going to be in possession of clients' apartment keys, I could pass if they have a conviction for burglary. But if they have a conviction for manslaughter or wife beating or possession of a flick knife, legally I have to hire them. It's absurd, the people who write these laws have clearly never run so much as a lemonade stand. Rant!

that's just asinine!!  what good does it do an employer to run a background check AFTER they've offered someone a position????

There are also practicalities, how many billions of background checks would be need to be done part of the job screening process.  Even the OP here has had hundreds of applicants, and I know for some jobs I have applied for in the past there have been 1000's.
 
 
 

 
 
What sort of dog owners actually pay for a service like this? I wouldn't even consider owning a pooch if I wasn't prepared to exercise it, or if it meant leaving it home alone for hours on end. Fair enough I suppose if the owner is physically disabled, but if the excuse is that the owner is too 'busy', I wouldn't consider them to be good candidates to own a mutt anyway.
 
I find it all quite absurd that such a service is booming, more so that dog owners are prepared to hand over enough cash to allow James to pay someone $20-ish an hour and still cream off enough to make a profit.
 
Still, good on you mate for filling that niche!