Tuesday job scowl

I am not a digital guru. I refuse to apply for jobs that specifically ask for a guru of any sort. Do they even know what guru means? Would they ask for a digital spiritual leader? I don’t care if they think it is a short cut to asking for help with new media – it just means they are the sort of company that rely on buzz words and business speak to cover up ineptitude. Confucius says no.

I’ve noticed there is a worrying trend to obviously save money in my profession by way of lumping together very different roles. See – it’s all New Mee-dee-arr and therefore designers should be developers and do marketing and editing and content creating and picture researching as it’s all on the web, innit? And the folk they find should be happy to work for a minimal salary and a biscuit, in fact they should be darn well ecstatic to have landed a job at all. Sneaky little employers… I think I might stick with freelancing. Not that those jobs are thick on the ground, but at least there are interesting opportunities…Like my last assignment was writing about puppets on television (Basil Brush, Thunderbirds, the terrifying Emu). Bliss!

Another annoying thing is that you’ll see a job that sounds interesting listed through an agency, but on applying the agency will announce in funeral tones that the job in question has since departed, and then try and get you on their books. (And once you agree they try and send you to Slough. I have had two agencies so far try to tempt me to Slough – I keep telling them the round four hour or more commute would kill me, but so far they are ignoring this small trifle. I feel the need to go around to their office and mark out on a map exactly where I live.).

The job scowl this week has turned up a few possibilities, although I’m not totally convinced in them. Let’s see, what sort of things we have here…

Work with ill folk! Ill folk are really ill, but they love using the web anyway! This is an opportunity to make illness fun for ill folk!

o0o

This is a grand opportunity to be the assistant of an assistant to an assistant of a really busy person! You’ll be the dogsbody, but it will be artistic, it’s a gallery! Apply now!

o0o

We’re dynamic! We’re so dynamic we had to tell you twice in twenty words! Work for us and be dynamic too!

o0o

Even if they are not written with exclamation marks everywhere, I tend to read all job adverts as if they are being recited by a breathy over-excited twenty year old. I really have to stop being so cynical.