I've reluctantly come to believe that the reason it is so hard to get past the automated responses is that most of the actual humans on the first line of a company are drooling incompetents who cannot process logic, have an attention span of about three-tenths of a second, and who prioritize whatever was last presented to them, even if it is utterly unimportant and not urgent.
I have found this to be the case in banks, the corporate sector and bureaucracies with such depressing regularity as to consider it to be the norm.
There may perhaps be someone higher up the line of authority who has some grasp on what is going on, and the challenge is to find a strategy to get past the customer-facing imbecile to a manager, at least.
Wow. What a bunch of assholes. Why would they jerk people around like that? If they want a pool of applicants for later, why can't they just tell people that when they solicit resumes? Say it's for future consideration and not an actively open position. Why be lying jerks right out of the gate?
For a lot of reasons I'm extremely glad to be retired. When I was working, applying for an airline job was a straight-forward process--unless you were applying to American Airlines. Their application form was so stupid and intrusive that I never did complete it. Their initial application form asked for information about my *grandparents.* You guys sure you don't want to know about my third grade teacher, Mrs. Rabbitt? Anyway, one of the reasons I picked aviation was because it was an easy sell on my part: "I can fly your plane. Do you want me to do that, or not?" You didn't have to blow sunshine up anyone about being a "results-oriented supervisor enhancing customer results across various customer-service industries" when what you really meant was "filled in for the assistant third-shift manager at McDonald's that one time."
I've reluctantly come to believe that the reason it is so hard to get past the automated responses is that most of the actual humans on the first line of a company are drooling incompetents who cannot process logic, have an attention span of about three-tenths of a second, and who prioritize whatever was last presented to them, even if it is utterly unimportant and not urgent.
I have found this to be the case in banks, the corporate sector and bureaucracies with such depressing regularity as to consider it to be the norm.
There may perhaps be someone higher up the line of authority who has some grasp on what is going on, and the challenge is to find a strategy to get past the customer-facing imbecile to a manager, at least.
Wow. What a bunch of assholes. Why would they jerk people around like that? If they want a pool of applicants for later, why can't they just tell people that when they solicit resumes? Say it's for future consideration and not an actively open position. Why be lying jerks right out of the gate?
For a lot of reasons I'm extremely glad to be retired. When I was working, applying for an airline job was a straight-forward process--unless you were applying to American Airlines. Their application form was so stupid and intrusive that I never did complete it. Their initial application form asked for information about my *grandparents.* You guys sure you don't want to know about my third grade teacher, Mrs. Rabbitt? Anyway, one of the reasons I picked aviation was because it was an easy sell on my part: "I can fly your plane. Do you want me to do that, or not?" You didn't have to blow sunshine up anyone about being a "results-oriented supervisor enhancing customer results across various customer-service industries" when what you really meant was "filled in for the assistant third-shift manager at McDonald's that one time."