Best Fit

Image: Perplexity

I had to check to see if Monster.ca was still a thing.

There was another popular job-search site that I had used, back in 2002-2003, when I was laid off from Corel, but I had forgotten the name until I asked ChatGPT to jog my memory. That other company was Workopolis.

I have learned that Workopolis was acquired by a company called Indeed, which is a site I accessed to apply for a couple of jobs (one of those jobs got filled, while I have been given an interview date for another). And I'm pretty sure I'm still in Monster's database, though I'll be damned if I could ever remember my access credentials.

One thing that always reminds me that I'm in job-search databases is when a head hunter reaches out to me about a job. Over the 19 years that I worked for Motorola Solutions (we were bought by MSI in 2018 and had several name changes before then), I would often receive an e-mail about a job opportunity, even though I wasn't actively seeking. Those notifications would pop up a couple of times a month, though over the years they dwindled to one every few months, to one or two a year.

In fact, I got my job with Motorola from such a head hunter when I was at my previous job. The timing was perfect because I had asked for a raise and was denied one. The next day, someone reached out to me about a job and I was intrigued.

That head hunter and I spoke on the phone, and when he said he would set up an interview with the manager, he mentioned that manager's name: he was the person who had hired me at Corel and we periodically kept in touch.

I told the head hunter to say hi for me when he contacted the manager. Five minutes later, the head hunter called me back to say that the manager had essentially hired me, subject to me wanting to work with him again—if I thought the job would be the best fit for me.

Last week, I was contacted by another head hunter about a job opportunity. I'm not sure how he found me, whether through LinkedIn or through one of these old job-search sites. But he gave me a vague description for the role of communicator/writer with a private company. If I was interested, I was asked to reach out and to provide my CV.

I did reach out and asked him to provide me the name of the company and more details about the job, including the qualifications they were seeking. The next day, the head hunter responded and essentially repeated his first message, adding only that it was a renewable one-year contract.

I think what some head hunters fail to recognize is that when someone applies to a job, that person needs to determine if the position and company is as much a good fit for the applicant as the applicant is for the company and position. I wanted to know who I was applying to and what exactly they expected of me.

Because the head hunter didn't provide me helpful information—in fact, I wondered if it was just an AI bot that I was communicating with—I ignored his last e-mail message. For me, it wasn't much of a response.

Yesterday, the head hunter reached out again to see if I was interested in applying. He repeated the vague job description—without a company name—and again asked me to send him my CV.

This time, I replied that I was reluctant to supply my CV until I knew more about the company and the position, and that his messages weren't clear. Who, at the very least, was the company that was looking for a writer?

He came back immediately with the company name, but no further details.

I was done with this person. If he couldn't respond to a simple inquiry, how easily would it be to deal with him going forward? I was familiar with the company but still wanted to know the roles and responsibilities, and I was getting no help.

Even though I wasn't interested in working with this person, I put out one more message to ask what sort of experience the company was looking for and what tasks the position entailed. My response was curt, without any 'please' or 'thank you.'

Within a minute, I received a reply: "I don’t think this one will be a good fit."

I couldn't agree more. If the job posting can't even tell me what skills the company is looking for nor can describe exactly what it is they expect the candidate to do, it's not a place where I'd care to work.

It was not the best fit for me because I was denied the opportunity to decide if I was the best fit for it.

And I doubt I'll hear from that head hunter again or would even want to. He's not a good fit, either.