I’ve cut down on my blog writing (and reading), cut down on my game playing, cut down on nearly everything. I’m extremely uncomfortable, it seems, with doing anything but looking for work.

My days are spent working on job skills (I have tried out some new development environments and today am looking at the Lua scripting language), posting my resume places, following up on anyone who shows interest.

It’s really hard to send a resume to a specific company. Or to even know when you are sending your resume to a real company. Jobs these days are like… real estate listings, passed along from one headhunter to another, from a website to another… Are these real jobs? Or are they fake jobs, nothing more than profiles of a potential job-seeker who might fit a potential contract?

That’s my fear. I find an interesting position on Dice.com, say. I follow up to the company that posted it, and… it’s another web-based recruitment place. So that’s another hour posting my employment history there, another place I have to look each day, and still no idea if there was a real job in there anywhere. Busy work. I am not actually applying for jobs, I am just improving the value of web-based employment firms by giving them my resume to add to their pool.

Phantom jobs are pretty fun. Job scams, even more fun.

I’ve gotten two of these already. I’m sure there are others. Here’s a sample mail from USAVoice.org.

Our tech department involves working as a team to constantly maintain and upgrade our website. The majority of our programmers/developers work from home maintaining contact by telephone, e-mail, and instant messaging.

We offer our Developers the following:

Highly competitive salary

Bonus plan that can add 25% or more to Base Salary

Medical, Dental, and Vision plan

Expense Account

Paid Vacation

Tuition Reimbursement

Rapid Fast Track Advancement Program

And another from TooSpoiled.com:

Our tech department involves working as a team to constantly maintain and upgrade our website. The majority of our programmers/developers work from home maintaining contact by telephone, e-mail, and instant messaging.

We offer our Developers the following:

  • Highly competitive salary
  • Bonus plan that can add 25% or more to Base Salary
  • Medical, Dental, and Vision plan
  • Expense Account
  • Paid Vacation
  • Tuition Reimbursement
  • Rapid Fast Track Advancement Program

Sounds good, too good. Work at home? With web development? Earn lots of money, get promoted, get bonuses, full benefits… and…. hey, what’s that saying about when you find something too good to be true?

What are these “jobs”… really? I did some poking around on Google.com… and all I found for either are 1) pages from people wondering if these companies were scams, and 2) sites by these companies saying “we are not a scam, and people who call us scammers are twisted, warped people even kittens despise”.

It’s very hard to find out what they need web developers to do. However, it’s clear that both share common business models, similar to multi-level marketing schemes.

TooSpoiled.com recruits “scouts” who find people to post their information to their website. These scouts are recruited by managers whose job is recruiting more scouts. Those scout managers are recruited by others , and so on, and they all get paid a flat fee. If, during a reporting period, they don’t recruit enough people (or TooSpoiled.com doesn’t make sufficient money from selling advertising on those pages, I imagine), they get canned.

USAVoice.org recruits “reporters” who post news stories to their website. These reporters are recruited by managers, who are recruited by other managers, and so on. Same deal. If you don’t recruit enough active “reporters”, or USAVoice.org doesn’t make enough money from advertising on those “stories”, they get canned.

So, what do they need web developers for? They both have very professional sites, but those are not the sites you need hundreds of independent developers to do. Those are professional, slick sites, and they undoubtedly have people to do the main site.

I suspect they need hundreds of “web developers” to take those stories or model/actress data and enter them into the web page.

Envelope stuffing for the 21st century.

Job search continues! Today I applied for unemployment. It’s all online these days. Very slick.