Career Corner - Scam Bait [Job Scam Bait] Vol. 2

By Glenn 

[Remember last time? This is a different job offer!]

Hello ,

I am glad to hear from you as regards the Personal Assistant position. I would love to meet up with you to talk about this job but I am currently away on a business trip but there is a test which i will like you to go through because i need a capable Personal Assistant.I am in Ireland so there will be no interview except for the form attached you will have to fill.

I will prepay you in advance to do my shopping. I will also have my mails and packages forwarded to your address. If you will be unable to stay at your house to get my mails, I can have it shipped to a post office near you and then you can pick it up at your convenience.When you get my mails/packages; you are required to mail them to where I want them mailed to.You don't have to put money out of you pocket, all you have to do is have packages shipped to your house and do my shopping.

You are allowed to open the packages to reveal its content. The content of the packages are computer and electronics, clothing's business and personal letters. All expenses and taxes will be covered by me. You will work between 15 and 20 hrs a week. I will pay $350 per week.I need your service because I am constantly out of town on business as I own a electronics and clothing store in Ireland but want to open another store in US.I will return to USA in November 2010 so this process will be on going till then. If you don't mind, I will meet up with you when I return and then we can talk about the possibility of making this long term. Well, let me know if you are able to handle the position.

I will email you the list and pictures of what to shop for when I am ready. No heavy packages are involved! You can do the shopping at any nearest stores. You will be shopping for Electronics and clothing's. I will provide you my personal UPS account number for Shipping. All you have to do is provide my account number to UPS and shipping charges will be applied into the account. I will provide clear set of instructions for each task I need done as well the funds to cover them.Kindly get back to me with the complete form if you are interested in working with me.


Regards,

Nicolai Koncheski.....
+44 702 401 5946
Compustore co ltd.

Mr. Koncheski,

Greetings! Thank you so much for responding to me in such a comprehensive manner. On the internet, you never know what kind of people you are dealing with but I feel reassured after your email.

Are you in Ireland for business? An ex-girlfriend of mine moved there a few years ago to work with homeless people. Reading your email further I see that you do have an Electronics and clothing's store there so I assume it is on business. Has Ireland been hurt by the worldwide recession the way the United States have? I suppose we can talk about that later.

I think I am very qualified for the position, and in fact was offered a similar one a few weeks ago. The employer never responded after I wrote him to confirm my possible employment. I would been thrilled to accept your mails and packages - though less so if "mails" is indeed supposed to be mail and not a common misspelling of "males."

There would be no issue with me staying at home to receive your packages. In fact, I have been under house arrest for the last two weeks and should be until well into the next year. Do not let this present me as a criminal though - I was only sentenced to this fate after protesting outside of the North Irish embassy in New York. It was a politically motivated arrest.

In case you are worried that I will not be able to shop for Electronics and clothing's, I actually know several former members of the Irish Republican Army who are living underground here and I'm sure would be able to shop for me, and by extension you. The only catch is that since I will have to split the income with them, $350 a week will not be suitable for my needs. Instead I would ask for a modest increase to $3500 a week. This number may seem large, but it is an easier price to pay than your own life - as my Irish compatriots know many people in the homeland who could make a visit to your Electronics and clothing's store.

You say that you will return to the US in November 2010, no doubt after the President is forced to imprison several Republican members of Congress after disappointing midterm election results. Please be sure that you indicate yourself as a Democrat or Democratic Socialist upon entering the country. I would hate to see you rounded up in the modern purge of 2010-2011.

Thank you so much for your consideration. I hope to hear from you soon!

Sincerely,
Glenn

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Career Corner - Scam Bait [Job Scam Bait]

By Glenn 

There are many things I cannot do as well as Bub and writing scam bait columns is one of them. However, in the course of pathetically applying for administrative assistant jobs on the New York City Craiglist, I come across responses that should be shared with the larger community. Consider this a career corner advice article on how to deal with overseas recruiters that want you to shop for things.

from mbn vnnb
subject EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for responding to my advert. & sorry it took so long to reply you back, i have a bad signal that was why I would love to meet up with you
to talk about this job but I am currently away on business. I am in
Estonia so there will be no interview. I will prepay you in advance to
do my shopping. I will also have my mails and packages forwarded to
your address. If you will be unable to stay at your house to get my
mails, I can have it shipped to a post office near you and then you
can pick it up at your convenience. When you get my mails/packages;
you are required to mail them to where I want them mailed to. You
don't have to put money out of your pocket, all you have to do is
have packages shipped to your house and do my shopping. You are
allowed to open the packages to reveal its content. The content of
the packages are computer and electronics, clothing business and
personal letters. All expenses and taxes will be covered by me. You
will work between 15 and 20hrs a month.. How much will you charge per
month? I will pay you $400 weekly. That is not a bad offer is it? I
need your service because I am constantly out of town. I am Self
Employed and I own a Artworks store here in Estonia. I will return to
United States by End of July so this process will be on going
till then. If you don't mind, I will meet up with you when I return
and then we can talk about the possibility of making this long term.
Well let me know if you are able to handle the position.

I will email you the list and pictures of what to shop for me when I
am ready. No heavy packages is involved! You can do the shopping at
Sears, Walmart, and other stores... You will be shopping for
Electronics and clothing. I will provide you my UPS account number
for Shipping. All you have to do is to provide you my UPS Account
Number and bill the shipping charges on it. I will provide clear set
of instructions for each task I need done as well the funds to cover
them. If I were to mail you money to do my shopping plus upfront
payment for your service, where would you want it mailed to? How
should your name appear on the money? so if you still have interest
reply me back with all this following details.


Full Name :
Address (Include Apt Number if Available):
City:
State:
Zip Code:
Residential Phone Number:
Mobile:
Age:

Sincerely,

NB: The Payment Will Be In Money Order,and if you are interested kindly Email Back... on this new email that i do normally check most of the time which is (jameslkennedy@hotmail.com)

Best Regards

James Kennedy
Address: Lauteri 32
City: Tallinn , 10114
Country: Estonia
Tel: +372 110 1320

James,

Thanks for responding to my application. & sorry it took so long to write you back. I have also been experiencing serious, debilitating problems with my signal, which is like yours based in Estonia. I appreciate your disappointment in not being able to meet with me and it appears we will just be missing each other. You state that you will be returning to United States at the end of July, but I will be traveling to Tallinn in August for the 70th anniversary of their annexation by the Soviet Union. I have two connecting flights - in Greenland and Tripoli. Perhaps we could arrange a meeting at one of the two. Please reply to let me know your availability.

I am a little surprised that this administrative assistant position seems more like a personal shopper, but I am still very interested. I already do a lot of shopping at Sears and Walmart, so I should have no problem picking up computer and electronics for you, not to mention clothing business. I do not know how familiar you are with American department and chain stores, but there are a few others that might be useful for these shopping projects. I am able, through my connections in politics, to find great deals on both used tires and materials you would need to illegally wiretap someone's telephone system.

Unfortunately, we need to discuss the financial terms of this arrangement. I am sure that from the perspective of an Artworks store owner in Estonia, $400 per week for 15-20 hours of work seems like a reasonable rate. However in New York City, there is a 50% excise tax on all incoming postage and the nearest post office is in Trenton, New Jersey. This will require me to drive a car through multiple toll roads and fill the gas tank with Premium or Ultimate gas (whichever is more expensive). For these reasons I am asking that the rate be appended to $400 per day. This may seem like a much higher rate, but I am willing to also work 15-20 hours a day for one month, in order to compulsively find the best deals on computers and electronics and personal letters.

I will wait twenty-four hours for your reply, and then I will call you collect at your Estonian telephone number provided. I am not sure of the time difference between United States and Estonia, so I will wait 48 hours here in the hopes that will be 24 hours from this email receipt for you.

Thank you so much for this offer and I look forward to speaking to you over email, telephone or personal letter very soon.

Sincerely,
Glenn

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Career Corner: Dressing for Success with Elle and Glenn

By Glenn and Elle 

You may remember us from the last edition of Career Corner where we gave you tips on how to write a cover letter. That letter, along with the temporary jobs created by the US Census, have brought our country's unemployment rate back from the abyss. But before we gaze long into that abyss and George Bush looks back at us, let's take another visit to the Career Corner and discuss dressing for success.

[Note: many of our dress tips will apply only to people who identify as men or women.]

Like it or not, people judge you by your appearance, especially your outfits. They're like a tip sheet for your coworkers, who must decide within mere seconds whether to hate you, pity you, or try to sleep with you. Each of these reactions has its pros and cons. People fear and respect those they hate, but they never invite the hated to lunch. People love to hang out with people they pity, because it's a self-esteem boost, but pitied people never get promoted. And if people want to sleep with you, you will benefit from quick promotion, mentorship, inside jokes, but you'll also eventually screw it up and get fired.

From the moment you walk into the office, construction site or nuclear power plant for the first interview, you need to radiate the right image for the job. I have experience on the hiring side and on the applying side. Once I was horribly embarrassed after walking into an interview wearing a black shirt, brown pants and gray shoes. This was a fashion faux pas of the color sort and my interviewer, a woman, let me know it. Later in life I was on the hiring side of things and had people display different religious imagery. One applicant wore a cross necklace, another wore a Church of Satan t-shirt and another was of Arab descent. I ended up hiring the Muslim applicant for obvious reasons - it was a campaign to clean up Times Square in New York City - but in general you do not want to display your religious cards before you find out the religion of your interviewer.

At the same time, don't be too cautious. A lot of professional advice-givers will tell you to dress "conservatively" without saying what it means. Should I wear a cowboy hat with tea bags coming off of it? Klan robes? Or a boring suit with an American flag lapel pin? With any of these you're going to alienate the liberal half of the voting population immediately. In the same vein, we recommended doing some outrageous things in a cover letter, and you should feel comfortable to include a few elements in your dress that reveal your true character without offending Democrats or Republicans. You might try a bow-tie if you're a man or a bright-colored scarf if you're a woman. These let you stand out without forcing anyone to question his/her sexuality.

Once you get past the interview to the working world, it's clear the most successful people share a secret: no shame. People are always telling young women not to dress too sexy for the office. The people who say this are always old women who've already slept their way to the top and fear the competition. Hillary Clinton did it. So did Princess Diana. What's there to lose? Chances are, in this job market, you've already lost your dignity. The only thing holding you back is your prudery. That sting? It's shame, fucking with you. Fuck shame! Shame only hurts, it never helps.

This may not work for those of you who don't have, and thus cannot flaunt, "it." We don't all work with the same natural (and unnatural) gifts, so often times you will need to dress in a way that makes people think twice about your character. As a woman, there is nothing more powerful you can wear than a power suit. That's because you don't have a penis or broad shoulders; padding can camouflage that. Men can afford to be more subtle. The key can often be your tie or, as the case may be, tie-dye bandanna. I personally personally prefer skinny solid color ties because they are the most phallic. They exude confidence. Be sure that ties are the only thing sending that message though - taking special care to conceal the most phallic item of all: your penis. Besides the stench of death, nothing will make your co-workers more uncomfortable than seeing the outline of your genitals through too tight / too thin dress slacks.

Note from Elle: Speaking of genitals. When I was about 8 years old, I remember watching Dateline or 20/20 or something, and there was a story about sexual harassment at a big corporation. A female executive was suing the company because the top bosses allowed other executives to blatantly harass her. The only anecdote I remember is that one of the men walked around the office with some kind of fake penis on his shoulder. I don't know how much of this is true, because I was too young to have much of a concept of what offices and sex toys were. And I don't have the time, energy or skill to look this up now. But the lessons I learned then still hold true: Adults are insane. Offices are no place for penises.

Pants are a real sleeper when it comes to work-wardrobe crises. Most people think about their shirts, jackets, etc., because those things are closer to your face. But your future employers can't possibly be expected to look at your face all day. It's time to inject some hand-wringing into your trouser-related decisions. Most crucial: leggings as pants. Most of the people who rail against leggings-as-pants have larger-sized girls in mind. This is because these critics worry they themselves will gain weight someday, rendering them completely worthless to society, and that fear causes them to lash out at symbols of their future. Personally, the leggings-as-pants wearers I find most objectionable are the older ladies who diet themselves down to sizes that would fit right in at Dachau. (This is because I am afraid more of death than jelly rolls.) The other day an older lady came into the office wearing a green blouse and black leggings. I could see both her panty line and her tween-Benjamin Button-esque ass. It was hard not to stare, and impossible to concentrate. Your best bet is to wear looser slacks with a low-cut top. Cleavage is universal. You want people to think of Victoria's Secret, not the Holocaust - even though sometimes it's hard to remember which one Kathleen Parker finds more offensive.

These tips will help you whether you're picking an outfit for a first interview or want be noticed for a promotion. Fashion - not to mention its pesky class signifiers - makes everyone uncomfortable, but we have to use every tool available, including clothes, to advance our careers. If you actually work in the fashion industry, this article is completely irrelevant and probably borderline offensive to you. For that, we apologize and would like free samples of new clothes if at all possible.

Thanks for reading this edition of Career Corner. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for future topics.

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Career Corner: Cover Letter Tips with Elle and Glenn

By Elle and Glenn 

As America's unemployment rate reaches triple digits, many of us in the white collar world are looking to find steady employment and leave unpaid internships and factory work to the recently amnestied immigrants. Applying for these jobs is a long, degrading process that makes working in a Tyson plant seem like dressing up as the Statue of Liberty for Liberty Tax Service. Nothing is more arduous in this process than writing a cover letter. Meant to showcase an applicant's familiarity with the company/organization and sell him/herself as the best candidate for the job, these letters take weeks to write and are never read - just like the "lost" Salinger novels. Here are some tips for those of you currently on the employment prowl.

TIP #1: GRAB THEIR ATTENTION

By the time you finish reading this cover letter, I'll be dead.

By the time you finish reading this cover letter, you'll be dead.

What's a better attention-getter, threatening your life or your potential boss's? It's a judgment call, and your decision should be based on your knowledge of the company. Applying to the Florida Republican Party? Go with suicide. Looking to work for Goldman Sachs? Pick murder.


TIP #2: GET META

The problem with cover letters is that they require the applicant to demonstrate the very qualities that would make her an insufferable employee: arrogance, boastfulness, credit-taking, bad writing. I promise, I am not a jerk. I tell jokes and remember birthdays.

I started a couple cover letters like that. Well, either I did, or I pasted that to several friends over gchat before deciding the whole thing was pointless, someone else had already been hired for the spot, and I probably didn't even want that job anyway. (It is too embarrassing to re-read old cover letters to find out the truth.) Point is, bosses are looking for employees who are fun and clever! Who think outside the box! By writing to them about the art of writing to them, you are letting HR know that you will both agonize over every task you're assigned and never take your work -- or yourself -- seriously.


TIP #3: USE SELECTIVE TYPOS

No employer wants someone who is "perfect." As the Bible and Thomas Hobbes said, people are flawed. If you present a cover letter with no mistakes you will come across as artificial, with your best quality being the ability to use Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar check. I always try to misspell a few of the "harder" words I might use, such as entrepreneurial, fastidious or methamphetamine. I've even gone as far sometimes to misspell my own name, which has the added benefit of making me seem like there are a million things racing around in my mind. Truthfully I often do, but most of them are mnemonic devices to remember how to spell my own name. The point is that you're letting your potential employer see the human side of you to the extent you have a "human side" left.


TIP #4: TALK ABOUT ALL THE OFFICE DRAMA YOU DEFINITELY DON'T CAUSE

The point of interviews is to basically make sure the potential hire is not a psycho. Score points by showing upfront that all that weird office politics is totally not your fault. Write about the time you helped bring two factions together under the warm glow of fluorescent lights. For example, one of my coworkers could talk about the time she stopped someone from writing semi-offensive things on the chalkboard wall by the snacks (we are a fun office). Someone kept writing, "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels," and someone else kept erasing it, because what if a third party has an eating disorder? "Nothing..." appeared and disappeared several times before my coworker took charge and wrote an inspirational quote from Eleanor Roosevelt by the snacks. That's team building.


TIP #5: USE FOOTNOTES

"I strode blithely across the green, Hume[2] in hand, purposefully unaware of the petty politics that interested my classmates."

"2. [Something about Hume]"

One time my co-worker, in charge of hiring people to replace me, got a two-page cover letter with three footnotes. This young fellow told us the story of why transformation from a too-good-for-politics English major into an aspiring political columnist. This bit about Hume was from his pre-makeover days. And did he ever get the office's attention. We took turns reading it in high-pitched funny voices. I'll never forget that young man. I think his name was Robert.


TIP #6: LIST YOUR HOBBIES

Remember when your high school guidance counselor gave that career-building seminar, and she said you should list your hobbies so the boss knows you're a really well-rounded person? That was great advice. Of course your employer needs to know what you do when you are not in the office, particularly if it is an obnoxious hobby, like harassing your friends to buy your hideous crafts on Etsy. Taking a paragraph or two to discuss your recent success at a squash tournament shows you aren't all business - you like to have fun too! Make sure your hobbies come across as well-rounded and if you lie, make it one so outrageous no one can call you on it. Spelunking or calligraphy are two great examples of interests so obscure and useless that your interviewer is incredibly unlikely to know anything about the subject.


TIP #7: USE CLIP-ART

One of the most forgotten aspects of word processing is clip-art. If a potential employer opens up a cover letter in Preview and sees text only, the page might as well be blank. Clip-art helps your cover letter to stand out and captures emotions you cannot express with words.


For example, this picture shows you have religious tolerance. If one of your co-workers starts citing the Dead Sea Scrolls during a meeting, you'll take it in stride and be able to pivot back to the matter at hand.


This picture should be inserted at whatever point in the cover letter you start a sentence saying "Trust me." Personally I close most of mine with "Trust me, the only reference you can truly rely on is Christ."


Finally, this works great for most of the left-leaning jobs I apply for because it shows your support of collecting taxes. Make sure you point out that you have a lower body though so the potential employer does not think it can get disabled tax credits from hiring you.

TIP #8: EMPLOY A NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

A cover letter is one of those writing experiences that belie the "less is more" concept. Here, more is more. What better way to show attention to detail than going into the full details about how you came across the job listing?

Waking up next to someone I had never met, I immediately rolled out of bed and took my computer to the bathroom. I locked the door and loaded Monster.com. When I saw your job listing on the screen I began to weep for the first time since since the Columbia space shuttle exploded. I immediately called the police on the unwelcome guest in my bedroom before relaxing into a bath and beginning to type this letter. The hopes and fears of someone on the first day of a new job hit me like a cold shower (which I had accidentally turned on instead of a bath). Writing this cover letter, I believe, will end up being the most important decision of my life.

---

Career Corner is a new feature at One Year in Texas, helping all of us to deal with the shame of job searching. If you have a particular area of concern, please leave it in the comments section and we will tackle it once we've found high paying, successful jobs in the defense industry.

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