A long-time friend of mine alerted me to a very interesting contract job posting last night. I say “interesting” but it is unfortunately not unusual these days. Here is the URL for the posting: http://www.cjhunter.com/jobs/contract/709193-ooKTi1/email.html — I’m not going to bless these turkeys with an actual link.

Just in case this listing gets pulled down due to this exposure, here’s a partial screen shot:

For starters, the first occurrence of “Engineer” is misspelled in the header. But it gets worse…

There are some inherent contradictions in the copy. Note the requirements of a Bachelor’s with 0-3 years of experience, but at least 3-5 years of “demonstrated ability to deliver excellent products to established timelines.”

That is followed by a long list of “must haves” that would typically require a minimum of 10 years experience to acquire. Incidentally, I have nearly all of those requirements. I’m just not dumb enough to apply for this contract.

The contract is in Minnesota, in the middle of winter, with a listed duration of 0-30 days. For those folks who have not been to Minnesota, you should know that every flake of snow that lands after Thanksgiving is still on the ground until around Easter. The only way those folks have to get rid of snow is to haul it to the Mississippi River and dump it.

Oh, and the rate… is an insult. What this shop appears to be looking for is somebody who will work for less than $50/hr in the frozen north.

IMNSHO, this looks like an “H1-b qualifier.” The client already has a foreign national in the position, but needs to “prove” that a qualified citizen is not available so that they can continue to use the H1-b they already have in place. They basically used his resume to write the contract requisition. Can I prove it? Nope, but it has all of the indicators.

This is at best unethical. And the fact that a Volt recruiter would fall for this kind of deception puts Volt on my list of contract shops to avoid.