A Step Up from Lorem Ipsum

Comcast Center in Center City, Philadelphia, PA

I have a love-hate (or, more accurately, hate-love) relationship with what seems to be an infinite - and growing! - number of IT temp agencies (come on, let's call a fig a fig - most of them are nothing but temp agencies, no matter what they call themselves trying to come across as real technology companies). Their spam is distracting and irritating, but I have to admit that - in a somewhat... perverse kind of way - some of the e-mails are quite amusing. The websites of those outfits are often even more amusing (albeit, also, in a... not entirely healthy way), and today we are going to take a look at one of them.

Monstrosity, or The Irrelevance of Relevance

I know better than to create profiles on job boards. Occasionally, however, when there is an attractive gig, and the only way to get in touch with the prospective client is through a job board, I do. As expected, the job boards immediately start bombarding me with what they claim to be jobs I am likely to be interested in. Let's take a closer look at some:

Do any of the ten jobs above look like tech writing jobs to you? I especially like the "Land Combat Electronic Missile System Repairer" :-P

Yet Another Thing Your Applicant Tracking System Can't Do

Photo credit and license: Pierre-Olivier Carles; CC BY 2.0

Like it or not, e-mail marketing - also known as "bulk e-mailing", but more commonly referred to as "spam" - is a fact of life. Most of the time it's annoying, sometimes - creepy, occasionally - hilarious... The bulk-mailed message I received a few days ago from a major nationwide IT recruiting-and-staffing agency that shall remain unnamed falls under the category of... well... kind of thought-provoking. At least that's the effect it had on me. The minimally redacted (to protect the identity of the company and its client) text of the e-mail is below.

**Evening Shift Testing Opportunity! 5 positions!​!**

Recruiter Spam (and Some Labor Statistics)

There are multiple varieties of recruiter/sourcer spam, but one of my "favorite" is when the e-mail begins with "Our records indicate that you are an IT professional..." followed by a copy-pasted job description that usually is not even remotely related to what I am qualified to do. More often than not the job description is pretty skimpy and/or vague, which is even more annoying.

Being a naturally curious type, I decided to find out how many people in this country the phrase "IT professional" applies to.