I'm job hunting right now. I want to give whoever comes up with job advertisement text the finger.
Here's text from one I saw recently: "Are you a visionary creative leader with a passion for social media and an eye for aesthetics?" Can you go fuck yourselves? I have a passion for doing my job properly and getting paid for it.
That's great! We offer competitive rates for your time, for instance, our Platinum plan can offer you up to 34% of what your time is actually worth on the open market, but due to your weak resume with gaps in employment history and the fact that you don't have a doctorate for this entry level position, I'm afraid that the most we can offer you is a Silver plan, at 18% of your market value.
That is of course before you factor in the mandatory taxes and assays affording to relevant state laws and.. how does federally required minimum wage sound?
This is a question for skilled workers with multiple offers when there are more candidates than positions, so it's pretty stupid when managers at McDonald's ask it during an interview. I suppose they can use the given answers to determine if someone is assigned to the cash register or the frier. Even McDonald's requires a certain level of bullshit tolerance and people skills at the front of the house.
For low level jobs, I see the interview as more of a test of "can this candidate handle basic communication, avoid acting in a way that will alarm others, handle a bit of pressure, and generally behave in a way that I don't see us regretting hiring this person for at least as long as it takes to have an interview?"
For those interviews, there aren't so much right answers as there are wrong answers.
Going in to interviews with the subtle art of not giving a fuck mindset transforms their nature entirely. While I don't enjoy being in a position where I need to go do interviews, the interviews themselves aren't that bad, they can even be enjoyable if you tune your dgaf properly.
Though it's important to understand that the not giving a fuck mindset isn't a "I don't care what you think" kind of energy, it's "whatever happens here, I'll be fine". Reach for what you want and give it your honest best shot, but leave any desperation at home. Even if you might not be fine, cross that bridge later.
It's interesting that when I finally made it to the level where that kind of question is appropriate, they stopped asking. They know why you want to work at a company with an amazing reputation for taking care of employees, and use their time to ask more important questions. I've asked it only twice now that I interview people, and it was when the candidate pool was narrowed down to two amazingly qualified and intelligent people, and I needed some sort of tie breaker. It's not a great tie breaker, but I was out of ideas. That's more of a deficiency with my interview prep than a reflection of the company though.
"The position offers monetary compensation in exchange for the adequate performance of tasks. I require monetary compensation and will therefore perform said tasks adequately."
That said, LinkedIn offers this easy apply thing where you just send them your CV and maybe answer a very quick question or two (i.e. "are you authorized to work in this country?") and they don't even give you the opportunity for a cover letter. I don't know if it will get me a job, but it's quite nice compared to all the other job sites.
View from the other side. We recently advertised for an Electronics Technician. Our primary posting was on the Gov of Canada jobbank. We linked to it from LinkedIn trying to drive people to the posting that had actual instructions.
What LinkedIn did instead was start accepting applications on our behalf entirely without prompting. Furthermore, we weren't aware we were getting applications there until we got a message from LinkedIn telling us that we had reached our cap and would have to pay some premium to allow more applicants. The hell...
Also, other sites like indeed.com and such harvested it and were accepting applications, even though we don't have accounts there and cannot receive the applications.
What do you think this looks like as a job seeker? You just get silence on these applications and think you're doing everything right, but really the websites are just trying to hold your eyeballs there and don't actually care if you get a job at all.
Unless the job says something like "we are only accepting applicants via LinkedIn", assume that your resume is going to a black hole there.
Anyway, we just sent an offer to someone who applied using the instructions we gave on our initial posting on the job bank.
It's a given you want money. The question is why this job vs another? If you don't stand out from the 100 other applicants then they'll take whoever will accept the lowest pay or whoever has the most charm.
If you come off as desperate then they might try to lowball you
Sure, but depending on the field, there is no difference from one job to another. I can do data analysis on your engine, your electrical grid, your stupid app. It's all numbers to me. Going through the motions of pretending I was called by destiny for your company is insulting to both of us. Same category as a damned cover letter. I had ChatGPT write whatever I thought would get me in the door and you honestly shouldn't trust a single one ever.
If you can find that special someone that really does have a thing for your company, neat. Otherwise, maybe don't use this question because you're probably just going to learn how well the applicant can brown nose. There are plenty of interview questions to choose from that might yield useful data.
"Otherwise, maybe don't use this question because you're probably just going to learn how well the applicant can brown nose. There are plenty of interview questions to choose from that might yield useful data."
The comic is about this specific question, so all else being equal, if I have to choose between someone that responds like you did and someone with any hint of friendliness, then I know who I would rather work with...
The title means that businesses know exactly how to pay their vendors and all the bills
they must pay but when it comes time to pay for the service of an employee's labor they
suddenly think the employee should want to do the job for free, or for little money, or for personal enjoyment.
They treat the job as gift that they will bestow upon a deserving person and they don't see your labor
as any other good/service which they must pay for when running a business.
While I fully agree with the sentiment here, getting all that from the title and the comic is a bit of a stretch. We don't all live inside your head, dude.