Cylance of Irvine, CA

Poor, poor Cylance. They just can’t find a senior designer anywhere on this planet.

I first saw this so-called job advertised back in September 2015. Recall, this was immediately after I had completed that six-month gig within Fidelity’s cybersecurity division…

I thought, wow, how perfect of a match can you get here? Not only do I have the recent cybersecurity gig (NIST framework, anyone?) but I’ve got the "above and beyond" experience with Cinema 4D. Logic would dictate that they’d be overjoyed to receive my application.

Ah, but this job is in California, the state that has made age discrimination hip, cool and legal.

Not only did I NOT hear from them, but nobody from any IP address in Irvine even viewed my website/portfolio. One day, I decided to dig a little deeper inside their shiny little website. Here’s what I saw on the “Company” page…

Oh, dear.

Should I just assume they programmed their Workable ATS to ignore every applicant with a female name?

Since then, they were able to add a token woman to this page, later replacing that token woman with a token woman of color. Score one for diversity, fellas!

I dismissed this place and forgot about them. Then the same “job” reappeared in February 2016. I decided to have a little fun with them courtesy of their “Contact Us” page. I sent them a nice little note egged on by some friends I was with who agreed this whole thing was BS…unfortunately I did this using my cell phone so I don’t have a copy of that note, hence I am reconstructing it from memory here. I began with “I applied for your Senior Designer position back in September. My background seemed to be a perfect match; not only do I have Cinema 4D and motion graphics experience, but my last contract was working in the cybersecurity division at a Fortune 500 company. Yet, I did not even earn a telephone screening from you. How bizarre! Even more bizarre, this position is STILL being advertised on your website. Either your recruitment department is incompetent, you are guilty of age discrimination (I am over 30 which is "old" by California standards) or this job is completely FAKE (posted in exchange for local tax credits or to boost your stock price).” I believe I concluded it with a promise to complain to the FTC about them and was ready to again dismiss them when, lo and behold, my website received not one but five viewers in Irvine:

A cross-check with my other visitor stats program confirmed the IP addresses. To add to the hilarity, several of these idiots snooped on my LinkedIn profile. Now, why snoop on my LinkedIn profile? The time for looking at my LinkedIn profile (which has some very nice written reviews…too bad that means nothing to employers like this one!) was back in September 2015 when I first applied for the job. This should have been an early step in reviewing my candidacy. Of course, as we all now know, they didn’t review me at all in September.

Anyways, here’s the email I received from them in response to my note:

Thank you for your interest in Cylance and for recently contacting us. On behalf of the recruiting team, we apologize for the delay in response to your application with us as we haven’t had much movement in terms of hiring for the Senior Designer in recent months; this explains the lack of contact.

 After reviewing your application, we regret to inform you that it has not been selected for further consideration. Again, thank you for your interest in Cylance and your recent note via our Contract Request Form. We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

 “…haven’t had much movement…” What does that even mean? Sorry, but that hardly “explains the lack of contact” (and even that phrase doesn’t make any sense). And, "...we regret to inform you that it has not been selected for further consideration." Well, D'UH!

Clearly, we are not dealing with decent people here. Again, I decided it was best to dismiss them and move on. But it’s so hard to do so when this damned "job" keeps reappearing, as it did again this past September, one full year since this nonsense began. A screenshot from Monster confirms the February job posting date along with the latest one in September 2016:

So, what are we dealing with here? Is it age discrimination? They've got this lovely little banner image montage on their careers page which seems to be devoid of anyone over the age of 30…

Or is the job just fake like most others out there, posted so they can harvest applicants’ personal data which they then sell to the highest bidder?

Or are they just incompetent?

Whether it’s a lack of ethics or a lack of intelligence, the greater question is, who on earth would trust their cybersecurity to a company like this?