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Oh, the wonders of job searching! So, this morning, my email inbox had a message from LinkedIn with the following title: “RTI International, University of Illinois at Chicago and CSSI Marketing + Culinary are looking for candidates like you.”

I get a lot of these emails, and the companies in the title are often quite puzzling. For example, one mentions Walgreens and Business Insurance. Now, while I cannot be certain of the needs and wants of these companies, I am pretty sure that they are NOT looking for somebody with a PhD in spatial ecology. Yet LinkedIn is made up of some pretty smart people, and if they say that these companies are looking for people like me, there must be something to this. I tried to figure out what sort of people are employed by the companies that, according to LinkedIn, are looking for Candidates Like Me. There are universities, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and others. The only type of people I could think of that are being hired by all of these are in HR, PR, or IT. Since I am not trained or educated in any of these, I am still confused. Perhaps they’re looking for people slightly below average height, with glasses and graying hair, living in the Chicagoland area?

Then there are the recruiters who post jobs on LinkedIn. Most of these very generously leave contact information, along with an invitation to contact them if you have any questions. I guess that they just like knowing whether people have questions, because there is a certain reluctance to actually answer any questions. Only once have I actually received a response, but it was not all that helpful, since it was a snarling email telling me that "everything you need to know is in the job ad". That email didn’t answer any questions that I may have had about the job, but it answered every question I may have had about that recruiter.

I cannot leave without writing about the LinkedIn job search function. While the layout and features are pretty good, I have yet to have any success in actually finding a job there. It also has not been very good for my self-confidence, since about 80% of my results have been some sort of job spam from places that are supposedly is matchmakers between volunteers and places that need volunteers. The results of my job searches seem to be sending me a message of “with your qualifications, nobody is really willing to pay you to work, sorry”.

My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that LinkedIn people are trying to create an easy job searching experience for job-seekers and employers. However, they seem to have assumed that people are logical, reasonable, helpful, and ethical. This is always a bad assumption to make. I do appreciate their supportive emails, though. I don’t know that I have received that many emails saying “Good Job”, "You’re On Fire”, “you’re almost there!” from anybody else, including my mother.

Gotta go now, it seems that Harvard University, Charlie Trotter’s restaurant, and AT&T are all looking for candidates like me. I finally understand these emails - they’ve figured out that I need an education, a good meal, and a phone.