NetCracker

Of all the rejections I’ve received these past few years (1,000+), this one hurt the most. In August 2013 I applied for a designer job and was contacted by their hiring rep. The call seemed to go well, although one of the things that I felt I needed to bring up was the fact that I am not a programmer, as the job description said "must have good understanding of current web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)." I said, "I can do HTML/CSS just fine, but not the more advanced JavaScript/JQuery/PHP..." He said that’s not a problem because this is not a programming job. I was scheduled for an interview with the woman in charge of hiring for the job, and I thought the one-hour meeting went flawlessly. She asked me for my opinion of their website; I cautiously gave my thoughts (remember, you're not supposed to say anything negative during an interview), and she enthusiastically exclaimed YES to everything I pointed out as needing improvement. As I left the building, I foolishly thought for a brief second that maybe this is the company I’ve been waiting for. Imagine my shock and disappointment when I received the rejection email from the hiring rep one week later. It wasn’t so much the rejection per se, but what they used to disqualify me – “we have decided to pursue someone with more technical skills, like HTML/CSS…” Um, did this guy just not listen to what I had said in our call – that I can do HTML/CSS just fine and that it was the more advanced JavaScript that I don’t have??? Or did he just make that up for lack of better imagination?

When that rejection email came through, my mom was staying with me (she had sold our old house in Pittsburgh and moved up here to be near me, neither of us knowing what was eventually going to happen). I had to quietly sneak outside onto my deck where I broke down and cried. 

This job showed up again in June 2014 (with no modification to the description)...and again two months later...meaning the job was completely fake from the start. And that makes me sad.

EDIT, 04/07/17: I continue to see this job appear every six months or so. Here it is again, just posted today...*sigh*