26 December 2007

Employment Spam

One aspect of seeking gainful employment, in this day and age, is the searching through and logging into job websites such as CareerBuilder. This being the twenty-first century, many companies are doing recruiting and hiring almost exclusively online, so putting one's resume up is de rigueur and presumably useful. In my case, of course, it has gotten me nothing but spam, the majority of which is poorly written and moderately incomprehensible.

I don't really understand why anyone would generate spam with fake offers of employment. What is the payoff in that? I suppose they're just hoping that you'll follow their links, and either get some sort of virus or Trojan horse, or give them your e-mail address and more information about yourself. In any case, I just delete the spam, which is easy to spot anyway because (as I stated above) it is usually unfortunate and nonsensical.

On occasion, however, I have to stop and wonder at WHY people bother to send me certain "employment offers", because they are so outlandish and fake that it is obvious that the spambot neglected to actually troll my resume before generating the message.
For example, the other day, I received a message that included this:
"While looking through online resumes, yours caught my eye and I believe your background is what my client needs. X Gym is currently seeking a Personal Trainer, and I would like to invite you to apply for the position."
My readers who know me even a little bit will be very aware that my resume has NO MENTION of anything related to personal training or a gym. And I cannot believe that anyone with my background is what X Gym really needs. Unless X Gym has a business model centered around hiring personal trainers who are pudgy, lazy pregnant women who hate to exercise. In which case, X Gym is a lousy gym anyway, and not one with which I'd like to be associated at all.

2 comments:

Willow said...

Laughter is good for the soul and the body, I've heard (or is that medically incorrect also?) so I'm in good shape this morning. Laughing while eating a maple oat scone for breakfast. Laugh=good. Carbs=good.

And my word verification is
xehnosa

Melissa P. said...

I'm betting the troll caught the word "training" off your resume. Maybe?