Decided to post my latest job opening on Indeed.com. It's pretty amazing - I posted an ad at 1:30am and when I got up at 8am there were about 100 applications waiting for me. But so far I've had nothing but the usual parade of useless Millennial time wasters: "I won't be available on Tuesday or Thursday afternoons, is that a problem? (it says mon-fri on the job posting)"...."I can start as soon as you like! Oh just one last thing...I'm moving to Florida at the end of September (it says at least 9 months to a year commitment in the ad)"...and so on. Arranged 4 interviews, 2 of them didn't show up and the other two turned out to have criminal records (possession of a knife/got into a fist fight with the mother of my child).
 
But what amazes me most of all is how many people don't keep their social media profiles private. The first thing I do when thinking about calling a candidate is look them up on Facebook. It's amazing how many people exhibit a professional butter wouldn't melt persona in their applications, then you look them up on FB and there they are, shirtless, covered in gang tattoos up to the neck and throwing gang signs. I know it's the same person from their education/current job info in their profile. At what point do you give up telling these kids that their public social media content is not doing them any favors in the job market? 

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.

Funny that because a lot of business owners I talk to are leaning towards hiring older people because of the horrible time they have with the current crop of 20-30 year olds. I'm a member of a closed forum where people in my line of work discuss the business and having a horrible time with Millennial employees seems to be one of the most common topics of conversation. Yes they're tech-savvy but they seem to have no idea what's required of them as employees and seem to flit from job to job like bees flit from flower to flower, taking a sip at each one. I think I might have told this story on here before but I once got a resume from a girl which outlined the (I think) EIGHT jobs she'd had in the past year. I asked her what she thought that looked like to me as an employer. She said, quite seriously, that she thought it showed a diversity of experience. When I told her what it said to me, that she was someone who couldn't hold down a job for more than a couple of months, she was like "HUH?" 
 
Having said that, my brief experiment with hiring a mature applicant fell flat on its face as well. I took her out for a day on the job and I led her into an client's apartment building in Hell's Kitchen. Quite a nice neighborhood and a modern luxury condo. I'm walking through the lobby and looked behind me to see her standing in the entrance looking nervous. I asked her why she wasn't coming in and she said "There's no doorman! Is it safe?" 
 
And then just before she was due to start she handed me a list of all these upcoming appointments and engagements she would be needing to take the day off for. I passed. 

I saw the movie Idiocracy with my last roommate.  At first I kept thinking "What a dumb movie!" until it hit me just how scarily accurate it may be.  I see signs of the dumbing down of people everywhere coupled with a herd mentality.  Soon there will be nothing but stupid sheep all around.

Everyone keeps telling me to watch that....

Idiocracy is turning out to be quite prophetic.
 
 

Kids today......

BobF
Idiocracy and Infinite Jest is turning out to be quite prophetic.
 
 

Doubled.

Hi,
 
I'm taking a break from job this and that, and just concentrate on my own work. 
 
It's time!

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!