Real Staffing Group

In July 2014 I applied for a designer/art director position listed with this agency in New York, thinking that maybe I'd have better luck with a recruitment agency that is beyond the New England area. I was wrong. On July 8 I spoke with the recruiter (surprise! it was once again an inept inexperienced young girl) who explained this was with Evoke Health, a marketing agency in NJ who serves the healthcare industry. She asked if I had experience working in healthcare. What a stupid question. Is this really the new face of employment in America, where you can only perform your job across identical industries? So, an accountant who worked in a hospital can never ever be qualified to perform accounting in a bank? Or, a plumber is not "qualified" to install toilets in south-facing houses because he mostly installed toilets in west-facing houses? I explained my history of working in a design agency for many years where one learns to work with a diverse line of clients, including, yes, healthcare and pharma clients. I then tried my best to explain that as a freelance/independent designer I must be able to adapt to every industry out there (I have a physician as one of my freelance clients), and that company industry is in fact completely irrelevant as no designer is going to last very long if they cannot design across more than one or two areas. She had the nerve to ask if she could speak to my references. I said NO, you can speak to my references when you are ready to offer me a job. After the call we exchanged a few emails, the last one was her saying “the hiring manager is back in the office tomorrow so I will speak about your profile and see if it would be a good fit.” Well, gee, if it’s her decision and not yours, shouldn’t they have been the one to talk to me today? Whatever. Two weeks went by and I heard nothing back, so I assumed either I didn’t “qualify” (whatever that means) or they submitted me to Evoke who rejected me for the usual reasons (usual reason being age).

On July 22, I received the following email: “I wanted to follow up and see if you wouldn’t mind sending me a few bullet points highlighting your experience within the pharmaceutical/healthcare space. I know you said you had a lot of pharma clients at X so I wanted to glean a little more from that before speaking to Evoke Health about an open Art Director role!” Once again, I find myself saying WTF? I already explained my background to you. And, just what the hell have you been doing for the past two weeks with my application?

My response, where it’s pretty clear I’ve given up on this person:  “I’m afraid I can’t offer anything here as that was quite some time ago. The only company name I recall was X, and I don’t have the samples anymore. The bullets would read as any of my experienced areas, creative conceptual design of artwork for presentations, white papers and web, being able to communicate with the client in a professional manner and adhering to budget/time.”

Her silly response: “Ok, gotcha, but that is still a space you feel comfortable in?”

Oh, for the love of dog. The stupid just keeps coming and coming. Let me see if I can hammer this point into this brain one last time.

“Absolutely. My freelance/contract status requires that I be able to adapt to *any* setting, be it pharma, financial, IT, manufacturing or medical (this is what 17 years of work experience gives you!).” NO response received. Never heard back.

Fast forward to October 1, when I get the following email: “How was your summer? I know we have been pursuing full-time opportunities, but I was wondering if you were available for a 4-6 week contract in New York City. The company that reached out to me is looking for an excellent JavaScript front end developer with great HTML and CSS skills who have worked in ad agency, advertising, pharma marketing, or web publishing. Agency experience would be best. And if you have significant experience with coding animation of user experience page elements using Jquery .animate(), Velocity.js, or other JavaScript animation library and/or css3 transforms, transitions, animations and filters, that's a huge bonus! Let me know if this is of interest!”

JavaScript front end developer? Where the hell does she see this title or any of these skills on my resume? My curt response was, “this job is not in my field (I do not know JavaScript, it's not even on my resume).”

Two months later in December another recruiter from this firm contacted me via phone. During the call I told her that I never received proper follow-up from the other recruiter. She apologized and said that person is no longer with the company (which is a lie, her name still appears as a contact on jobs they have posted). She asked me to send her an updated resume, one that shows what I’ve been doing since October 2013 (the last role on my resume), and I confessed my sin that I have been unemployed since then, so the resume she had is indeed “current.” After the call she emailed me, “It was great talking to you today, I'm looking forward to working together. Would you be able to send me the updated resume we discussed?” SMH. And *that* was the *last* time I heard from this dumb company.