They advertised a design job directly on LinkedIn on January 5, 2016,receiving 132 applicants. I foolishly applied and was promptly and efficiently ignored.
The same job was advertised again – as a new job – on February 11, when it received 114 applicants (no, I didn’t bother applying). That makes 246 total applicants at this point.
And here it is again on May 9, with 108 applicants.
After the 02/11 appearance, I decided to send them an old-fashioned complaint letter via their Facebook page. I came right out and asked just what kind of game are they playing here, listing all the links and offering a few choice words, “Is your ‘Recruiting Coordinator,’ Banesa Vasquez, so incompetent that out of 246 applicants she couldn’t find even one qualified designer in all this time, particularly in a city where designers are a dime a dozen? Word of advice: People are starting to take notice of companies posting fake jobs, like this one. I strongly suggest you get your act together. Not only do you look very bad here, but you make America look bad.”
No response received.
After the 05/09 appearance, I sent an email to both of their "public relations" contacts (found on their website). I repeated the details from the Facebook message, pointed out how disingenuous they appear here, and, “Do you keep re-advertising it because you get a federal tax break for being a 'job creator' (despite the job being fake)? Or, are you just trying to fool your competitors into thinking you're expanding? Or, are you soliciting applicants' personal information via their resumes for ulterior motives -- for example, using the company names obtained from their work histories as a source of potential sales leads? Or, is this just an astonishing case of incompetence?” I ended it with suggesting that they apologize to all 437 applicants who were duped into thinking they were applying for a real job.
No response received.
Finally, I wrote a letter to the CEO, Barry Gosin, via snail mail with signature confirmation:
After being ignored by your recruiting representative, your Facebook administrator, and your public relations team, it is clear that your company simply does not respond to any digital communication, hence I am sending this letter via USPS. I have attached a copy of the email I sent to your public relations team in regards to the graphic designer job that you have been advertising ad nauseam on LinkedIn since January. I questioned why you continue to post this job even after you amassed several hundred applicants. I also pointed out that I send a similar message to your Facebook administrators and I received NO response. Not surprisingly, I received no response from your public relations team. You are quite obviously a company with no ethics. I am sending a copy of this letter along with the enclosures to the US Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Branch in the hopes they will investigate this matter, as I am convinced you are harvesting applicants’ personal information for ulterior motives.
About a week after sending this, I received a phone call from some girl who could barely speak coherently. She said that they found an internal candidate for that job -- surprise! the job was COMPLETELY FAKE FROM THE START! -- and the only other design job they currently have open is in their New York office and would I be interested in hearing more about it. I told them I have no desire to do business with them. She said "well, whenever you see another job on our website you're more than happy to apply." More than happy to apply. Yep, that's what she said...unbelievable that they would put such an inexperienced kid in charge of damage control here. Good grief. I hung up the phone and sincerely hoped that this would put an end to the fake job postings (because I really do feel sorry for people who just aren't as aware as I am of what's going on).
Boy, was I wrong. Almost immediately there was a virtual explosion of design/creative jobs with this shady company on StinkedIn (screenshot taken on 08/16/16), including one in Boston, *sigh*:
They sure showed me! "Nobody's gonna tell us we can't advertise fake jobs!" (As of June 2017, they continue to flood the job boards with these fake design jobs...)
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