Entropy Reducers Amalgamated

As a follow-on to my most recent rant:
Don't People Read Any More

Craigslist has really fallen.

So far I’ve received a handful of responses to my advertisement, which asked people to write a cover letter and send their CV in a particular format. The position was for on-site work.

I received four responses that met this minimum requirement, all of which contained canned cover letters. The ad asked for specific, enumerated skills; no one directly spoke to any of them.

Of course, I received a paltry 10-12 other responses; it seems that the only PHP programmers in the area are either all gainfully employed or aren’t willing to work on-site. Or they're in India, which of course is not in the area. (There seems to be plenty in India, though...)

Posted by Jerry B. Altzman at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Update on last night’s posting:
As of this morning, I’ve received:

• One person who followed instructions and sent in a (good looking) CV in the proper format.
• One clown from netzero.net who sent in an MS word document
• One clown from India responding as an outsourced PHP programmer—I did say “on-site”, did I not?
• One clown from India hawking website and graphic design services.
• One clown offering his outsourced-to-India “audited by KPMG to be CMMi Level 5” solution
• One clown who writes, twice, in part:

  I thank you for the opportunity given to quote for the above and take pleasures in forwarding our resume in simple.

  Why am I ready for this project?

  I am a Service Exporter. I must export service.I do Export My ability.I do it really happily. I am enjoying working with php. I am a Lecturer for php in local computer institute.

Note that I do not poke fun of people for their English writing (in general, although the snippet above is quite amusing), but I do fault people for spamming and blast-responding to every post in Craigslist, and, of course, for not reading. It is one of the things that strongly reduces the value of a posting there—although for $50 for a month, it’s not bad. I suppose I should try Joel Spolsky’s site now.

Posted by Jerry B. Altzman at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I made another posting for a job opening at 3 Phase tonight (link will only be good for 30 days), this time for a part-time PHP programmer.

The posting went up at 2312 EST tonight. The posting said “send résumé in HTML or plain text” and it also said “must be able to read and follow directions”.

Email at 2355 LCL came in with a Word document attached.

43 minutes from FIRST POST to first clown. I beat my previous record.

Sigh. C’est la guerre.

Posted by Jerry B. Altzman at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)