Career Creature

I checked my email when I got into work this morning and opened up a job alert from one of the major job boards. I write about jobs, it’s research. One of the jobs that came up, custom picked for me, was a “Phlebotonist.”

I didn’t know what that was. I’m an educated guy, but this was a new one to me. Also, that job ad listed precious little more to clarify the job’s duties. To get an answer, I did what any true-hearted American would do: I typed it into Google. The first entry broke the word into its two roots. The first root was “phlebo” which means blood.

Blood? Blood what? Blood sucker? Ooh, I did once dress up as a vampire for Halloween, maybe that’s why this job board thought a guy with an English degree and years of writing experience would want to work with blood.

Okay, the second root was “tomos” which means cutting. So, going by that logic, they must be looking for a teenage kid who thinks he’s a vampire and is also a cutter. Okay…

As it turns out, my deductive reasoning was wrong. The first clue was that Google automatically corrected the word’s spelling. A “phlebotomist” is a trained laboratory technician skilled at drawing blood. This particular training I do not possess.

Now, when this company gets flooded with résumés from woefully unqualified applicants, they have no one to blame but themselves. The job ad was both poorly written and improperly posted.

To begin with, misspelling phlebotomist doesn’t inspire confidence in the establishment’s medical prowess. I certainly wouldn’t trust a lab that doesn’t even know how to properly spell the position’s title to come after me with a needle.

Second, whoever listed the job opening on the job board must have clicked a few wrong categories for it to end up in my inbox. Maybe they thought communications and medical were synonyms. It’s a reasonable assumption to reach based on their spelling skills.

Finally, not writing a full and compelling job description compounded the confusion. Remember, you’re hoping to attract top notch candidates and therefore have to sell the job to them. At the very least, if it was written correctly, teenage vampire-wannabes would not be applying for the job right now.

This company could have saved themselves a lot of extra time and effort if it had just done a little proof-reading. At the time, it may have seemed like a drain on productivity, but trust me, the avalanche of résumés they’re probably receiving right now will be a productivity vacuum. Or should I say “vampire”? Nah, that’d be a bad pun.

Career “Creature Feature” Writer