Outsourcing the Quality Department…You’ve Gotta Be Jerking My Chain!

Apparently, outsourced employee providers are starting to offer quality review from overseas.  Now this just seems to be incredibly stupid to me.  These people have a hard enough time taking regular customer service calls, but how are they supposed to understand the byplay between a customer service representative and a customer and give an effective review and grade of that interaction?

A customer service call is supposed to contain certain elements.  I don’t care who you work for, your quality department drone showed up at some time during your training and told you what was required to get an acceptable grade when your calls are evaluated.  (That percentage varies by employer).  You have to find out who you are talking with, verify their personal information and right to access the account in many cases, establish a rapport, discover what they need, find a solution, upsell where necessary and leave them happy and satisfied both with the company and the level of service the customer service representative (CSR) provided in that call.

Now, imagine someone in another country, for whom English is not a first language (and just making sure that the csr can also speak English doesn’t count, boys and girls. People tend to think in their native language, even while speaking in another), trying to understand a conversation, understand American idioms (common American phrases that might mean one thing in America and another in the country of the person grading that phone call), etc.  Will they understand what is being said?

And in the regularly English-speaking world, there are also idioms that have wildly different definitions.  For example, while “knock you up” means one thing in England, in America, “knock you up” means something else entirely.  In England, the meaning is innocent.  In the United States, that meaning can be insulting.

American companies need to be employing American workers, not cheap workers in other countries.  Americans need to support those companies who hire American workers.

It only makes sense.

Dumbing Down Your Resume: Dampening Your Accomplishments to Appear More Tasty to an Employer

There has been word out on the job search market that dumbing down your accomplishments on your resume can actually help you get a job.  Sounds completely stupid and particularly counterintuitive, but that seems to be the case at this time.

Now before you get your panties in a wad that you won’t be able to flaunt your Masters in Cellular Biology (with that Minor in Medieval Literature) when you apply for that job at Burger Princess because you just plain need the bucks, remember that that employer is going to hire the kid who has little to no education, versus the guy who’s going to see how long that burger has roasted under the lights and figure out how many deadly microbes have spawned in the last five minutes.  The kid’ll eat that burger twenty minutes later when he goes on break.  You’d demand rubber gloves, tongs and a disinfecting shower when the time came to trash the thing. 

The kid’s happy to have a job and won’t balk at less than ten bucks an hour.  You, on the other hand, are still paying off your student loans and need more than that just to make ends meet.  If a better paying job suddenly appears on the horizon, you’re going to quit flipping burgers as fast as you can.  You may deny that this would happen, but be real now.  You’d be a fool to turn down a better job.

The folks at Burger Princess know this and don’t want to feed the revolving employee door. 

Seriously, though…

Consider taking a little of the shine off your resume.  Tell them you have a Bachelor’s in something if you have it and that’s what the job application requires, but leave off even higher education if it’s not germane to the position.  Edit your duties on your resume from your previous jobs to make yourself seem less like Supergal.  While you may have had a high average good thing of whatever it was that you did at your previous job(s), don’t bring that up.

And finally, unless specifically requested to do so in the job posting, leave off your salary history and don’t give salary expectations.  Those can frighten off a prospective employer faster than a speeding cockroach.

UPDATE 4-20-2009 3:30PM PDT:  Dumbed down my resume and got two job interviews scheduled shortly after submitting it.

How Many Resumes Have YOU Sent Out? (aka: This Is Getting OLD!)

I find that no matter how many resumes (several dozen by now, I’m sure) that I’ve sent out, I’m not getting any bites from prospective employers.  I’m beginning to think it’s that classic “overqualified” situation that’s biting me in the ass.  Of course, a lot of that has to do with the fact that employers are offering lower wages for the few jobs that are available at this time. 

They know that potential employees are hungry for work and will take oatmeal instead of bacon and eggs, wage-wise.  That’s why you’ll see jobs that in the past would offer wages of $15 an hour or more being offered for $10 to $12 an hour, instead, and those positions will have double or triple the job description they might have had, once upon a time.  Employers are looking to have fewer employees complete the same, if not more, tasks than might have been the case in previous years.

A friend of mine who has been unemployed since last August (and is sending out resumes all over the place) was just told by the State of California that she gets too much money on Unemployment to qualify for food stamps.  She lives in a rent controlled West Hollywood apartment, and has lived in the same place for over fifteen years now.  Rent control is the only thing that keeps her rent below the amount she’s getting from Unemployment.  She’s got excellent job skills and would be an asset to anyone who hired her – but she’s considered to be “overqualified”, so prospective employers aren’t touching her.  

And as a sour flavoring in the mixture of all this stupidity, employers are sending a lot of jobs overseas, where they can get work done even more cheaply and not have to worry about U.S. employment laws and regulations.  So there go even more American jobs.  Some companies (can you say “IBM”?) even have the balls to fire American workers, hire foreigners for the same jobs overseas, and then apply for bailout funds from the Federal government.

Once upon a time, America was the “Land of Opportunity”, where people came to find work and make something of themselves.  Sadly, that’s no longer the case.