As I’ve mentioned before, the regular e-mails I get from all the job-vacancy alerts I’ve signed up for over the past year are an endless source of amusement.

The funniest thing about it — or perhaps it’s the saddest thing — is that so many prospective employers actually are depending upon related software to do their initial screening for them. And when they’re relying upon software of a sophistication level that daily informs me whether it has found any “West Columbia Vice President/Editorial Page Editor Jobs” (none so far, by the way, but they keep running that ol’ algorithm for me, just in case), you’ll have to agree with me that they are relying on something that is woefully inadequate.

I wrote about the frustrations of trying to get past these HAL-9000-type guardians in a previous post. Today, I’ll just share with you the choicest jobs that I was notified of today:

• “Bankruptcy analyst” — this is from a service that’s programmed to tell me about “public sector job openings” that it believes fit my resume. Folks, making me your bankruptcy analyst is probably the surest way to make sure your business goes bankrupt. I am not qualified for it, to say the very least. That I know without even glancing at the qualifications. And yet, this service singled out that ONE job to tell ME about, out of all public sector jobs available. It pays between $62,467 to $136,771 (you know, if you’re going to give me a range, why not round the numbers, OK?), but even though I have applied for some jobs that are pretty far afield, I’m not going to waste time on this one.
• “Supervisory polygraph specialist.” This is with a secretive government intelligence-gathering agency (less well-known than the CIA) that you would probably be surprised to learn has a presence in Columbia. I’m not going to tell you the name of the agency, because I’m worried that I might then have to kill all of y’all, and that would not only be unpleasant, but highly inconvenient — you know, tracking down those of you who use pseudonyms and such; just headaches galore. Good news: It pays between $113,735 and $147,857, which I could definitely go for. Unfortunately, they want you to have actual experience and expertise with the polygraph. And I’m betting they wouldn’t just take my word for it if I said I was qualified. In fact, they’d probably put me on the polygraph to check. And I’ve always been convinced that I’d fail a polygraph test whether I was telling the truth or not. It measures stress indicators, right? And I can hardly imagine anything more stressful than being put on a polygraph machine, guilty or innocent …
• Assistant manager at Captain D’s — Again, I have to wonder what it was in my resume that caused Career Builder to think this was up my alley. I worked once in the food service industry — I washed dishes at an NCO club in Hawaii when I was 17 — but I quit after two weeks, and did not distinguish myself in that capacity. One good thing; I think I meet the physical requirements: “Continuously utilizes speech, hearing, near vision, eye/hand coordination, color definition, manual/bi-manual dexterity.  Frequently stands, walks, reaches above shoulders, bends, lift and/or carries up to 25 lbs., works closely with others.  May require difficult work positions.  Occasionally utilizes sense of taste and smell, far vision, step stool, works around chemicals/cleaners, walks on uneven surfaces, lifts and/or carries up to 50 lbs., operates vehicle.” I could definitely handle all that, especially the “continually utilizes speech” part. The bad news is that salary range is not mentioned, and I have a feeling that’s because it doesn’t pay as well as the polygraph job. I’m going to pass. I decided some time back that if I go into the food-service industry it will be at Starbucks, because the benefits are good (including, I believe, free coffee).

That’s it for today. Golly, what an age we live in, huh?