Ever wonder why companies take forever to make a hiring decision? You send in your resume, have an interview (or several), they tell you they like you, promise to get back to you in a few days… and a month later they still haven’t made a decision. Travelodge seems to have come up with the [...]

INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW, n., (1) a stupid job-hunting trick; (2) an embarrassing demonstration of ignorance by a job hunter; (3) a transparent waste of management time; (4) the preferred substitute for legitimate job-hunting assistance developed by career experts to distract their clients and justify their fees. Heather Hamilton’s take on informational interviews provides a good perspective [...]

Having covered the information technology and electronics industries for a long time, I’m very sensitive to the H-1B visa controversy. This is the government program whereby foreign nationals can be hired by U.S. employers under a special visa. H-1B exists because industry claims there’s a labor shortage in the world of technology. On April 1, the [...]

It’s always interesting when someone comes up with a new approach to recruiting. Imagine getting paid to go on a job interview. Clever, eh? CIO magazine reports that a Recruiting Firm Pays Candidates for Job Interviews. Help me work through the logic. Notchup.com suggests that the best people are busy at their jobs, and they probably don’t search for [...]

If you’re going to mail out hundreds of resumes to people you don’t know, or post your credentials on some web site, you might as well stand on a busy street corner and just hand out your resume to random passersby. You’re just as likely to find a job either way. That’s what I tell [...]

I used to do a blog for InfoWorld. When it ended, my last posting was up only very briefly, and I’ve been asked to reprise it here for those who missed it. It was a two-minute version of the Dutch uncle routine, for those who enjoy the Ask The Headhunter approach to job hunting, hiring, [...]

I’ve written a lot about about the various rackets in the career industry that prey on desperate people looking for work, but I always use the term “racket” loosely. Last week I got a query from a news reporter that forced me to create a new category in this blog. We all need a (nervous) laugh: [...]