Tell me you're a capitalist without telling me

I recently was interviewed by a recruiter. (Whom I may name here at some point later.)

Asked about why did I leave job X after 2.5 years, job Y after 1.5, job Z after 2, etc.

First, as I noted, every move but one of mine in the last 15 years has been related to the turmoil in my industry. Guess I should be putting that more up-front on the resume, but, nonetheless, I have no problem explaining it.

Second, I not only kept my head above water but in general (in nominal dollars, at least) moved forward financially.

And, said recruiter said she had decades in this profession before setting up shop as a recruitment and placement company for various companies. They mentioned a few of those companies. Medium-small to large; names didn't impress me.

The recruiter next hit the spiel that "companies don't want to pay to relocate you" etc. if they think you'll leave in a couple of years. 

Rather than asking right away if these changes were because of industry turmoil and decimation.

Oh, I understand. 

That said, if the job is good enough, I'll be staying. And, by that, I mean not only pay, but in general.

Part of me looks at companies in this industry phoning shit in and says "Peter Principle."

I did learn some resume tweak ideas, even if the recruiter didn't email me the ideas in detail because they wrote me off. But, what makes a "good" resume seems to change every five years. Isn't that itself part of capitalism? Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to make you stumble into the furniture?

Finally? This is also a reminder that recruiters ALWAYS work for employers first, employees second.

If insurance sales jobs are so damned great …

Then why do I get spammed with so many insurance sales job interview offers every time I join a new online job hunting service?

Business-world Orwell-speak — Temps are ‘contingent workers’

And, you’re about to be 10 percent of the U.S. workforce.

This is ridiculous. Is it any wonder that more and more solidly middle-class Americans are following the lower middle class into giving up hopes for even tattered remnants of “the American dream”?

That said, the American dream always was fantasy to some degree. And now, a trifecta of things not involving corporate plutocracy are tattering it more.

That’s the trio, oft-blogged here, of:
• Peak Oil
• Global warming
• The real estate crisis

The suburban sprawl of post-World War II America simply will not be sustainable once world oil supply peaks. I expect that in no more than a decade from now.

Especially since our one reliable export, agricultural products, no longer is so (the U.S. became a net food importer in 2005), to the degree global warming hits marginal U.S. agriculture hard (the irrigated High Plains and desert Southwest) our trade deficit will worsen.

And, the troubles of the real estate market and its bursting bubble mean less spending in a hyper-consumerist economy; given that real-estate driving hyper-consumerism rescued us from the previous, dot.com bubble, a recession is going to hit. Ignore the Dow at 13,000; the spending is irrational, including financial analysts touting subprime mortgage brokers up to the day of their crash and burn.

Employment agencies: Trying to let the Net do their work for them?

Based on some recent use, I get the distinct impression that today’s “employment” agency is becoming less and less of a “placement agency” and more and more of “let’s e-mail this job seeker a corporate website link agency.”

Lazy bastards.