A cautionary tale.

[Paul Moloney <paulmoloney -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Permit me to rant a few moments. I know
Andrew Plato says you shouldn't rant,
and I appreciate his opinion, but if I don't
do it I'll just have to break my keyboard
instead. So I'll won't reveal any names,
in order to protect the guilty and stupid.
 
Last year I went through a period of a
few months of gainful unemployment.
During that time I was approached
by one agency who said that a certain
Dublin financial software firm were
looking for someone to come in and
either revamp, or in fact totally do from
scratch, their documentation. (Despite 
the fact they were a fairly established 
company with the number employees 
in 3 figures, there were looking for 
someone with only 2 years' experience, 
which led me to suspect they didn't really 
know  what they were looking for, but 
as long as the person was cheap they 
didn't mind).
 
Before any interview, the agency contact 
said that people at the firm wanted to see 
a portfolio. Normally this would happen at 
an interview, I would have thought, and I 
only had two copies of a portfolio, so I 
was loathe to just send one off. I've rarely 
worked for companies where the documentation 
was printed, and so only had 2 professionally-
bound manuals to show off. Against my better 
judgement, I mailed off a copy to them.
 
Anyway, after a few weeks, I heard 
nothing. Eventually I got more interviews, 
and then my current job. I decided to follow
up on the agency to find out what happened 
to my portfolio. After ringing twice, the agency 
guy there admitted he had been unable to get it
back, and gave me a number for the human
resource manager at the company itself. He
also mentioned that the firm had eventually
decided not to fill the position.
 
After several attempts, I finally got through
to the HR person; she admited that it seems the
portfolio had been thrown out when people had 
been moving offices! I was absolutely livid, but 
at the end of the day, there wasn't much I 
could do about it.  I'm still angry that a company
could ask for my portfolio when it seemed
they weren't really serious about filling a position,
and hadn't even the sense to be careful with
that portfolio. Apart from writing a stern letter
to the actual person who lost my portfolio 
(not the HR person herself, but I gave her
a piece of my lip anyway), I have no comeback.
 
Bah.
 
P.
 

=====
--
we live. we dance. we die           paul moloney
                                 dublin, ireland          
=-=-==-=-=-=-www.paulmoloney.org-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
#12794891 @ ICQ       paulmoloney @ Yahoo! Pager

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