“Oh, No, Google, Don’t Pull a Hiring Bait & Switch!”

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Despite the wording of the above tweet @GoogleLocalNYC is not really hiring, and it’s very unfortunate they’re making this claim anywhere, particularly in social media. Having been selected as a Google NYC Neighbor last spring, and after hearing a lot about community managers the past few days during NYC’s annual Social Media Week, it struck me this could be a position I’d be good at, so I clicked on their link, only to discover that while there are indeed positions to be filled, Google isn’t really doing the hiring. This is the first thing to be read when you visit the site with hiring info.

Important Notes:
Most positions are Temporary, Contract roles ( ~6 months to begin), hired via 3rd-Party staffing agency (i.e., not working directly for Google). We cannot make any guarantees about full-time Google employment opportunities at the conclusion of the Temporary contract, however the Local CM team is a great way to grow your career.

I find this a classic bait & switch, HR-style, contrasted with the literal message of the tweet. I note also that their final sentence, extolling the virtues of this experience for prospects,even though you may not end up working full-time at Google, is the arrogance that many hiring mangers display nowadays. The implicit message is

“Just remember–you’re lucky to have any work at all.”

I know it’s a hirer’s market, with job-seekers lacking leverage, but is it too much to expect that dishonesty–or at best, or carelessness–be banished from corporate hiring practices? The whole thing is unworthy of Google. I hope they take note of my reply, delete their original tweet, and revise any similar messaging they’re putting out. I’ll note it here if they do, and whether I get any kind of reply.

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#FridayReads, Feb. 22–“Siege 13,” Stories by Tamas Dobozy

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siege13-web#FridayReads, Feb. 22–Siege 13: Stories by Tamas Dobozy, an innovative collection of short fiction that oscillates between the Nazi siege of Budapest in 1944 and the present day. I’ve just begun digging in to the book, but find I’m already astonished by the fluency of the writing, and the way the stories pull me right in. I don’t have too much to say about it yet, so I’ll note here the review of it that ran in Quill & Quire, the magazine of the Canadian book industry (Siege 13 was published simultaneously in the US and Canada). The reviewer is writer Robert Wiersema:

The stories are varied in tone: some emphasize the horrors of war, while others–like “The Society of Friends,” about two men in love with the same woman – are darkly humorous. Gripping realism is comfortably juxtaposed with fantasy in stories like “The Ghosts of Budapest and Toronto.” The pieces in Siege 13 are also unified by Dobozy’s skill as a writer. Carefully crafted, but executed with seeming effortlessness, every sentence in this collection, every paragraph, is a thing of beauty, and the stories themselves are without flaws. That said, the combination of the author’s abilities and the book’s subject matter means Siege 13 should come with a warning: take it slow. These are stories that should not be rushed through.

I will definitely take my time. Meantime, if you’d like to know more about the writer, here’s the web page for the book from its US publisher, Milkweed Editions. They sent me a review copy some months ago, I’m glad I’m finally getting to the book. The striking cover was designed by Michel Vrana, a friend who I met at the first Book Camp, an unconference about publishing.

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