I was contacted by a staffing agency -Elm Talent- for an interview about the entry-level Analyst position at AlphaSights. Naturally, I was thrilled given how bad the job market in the US was at the time. The recruiter told me upfront that the job paid 65k per year - the highest amount I'd ever interviewed for and almost double the average entry-level salary in the US. I went to the interview and had a fairly good time: the interviewer and another Analyst talked to me and it seemed smooth and simple without any problems. We laughed somewhat and shared stories; they seemed like decent, nice people. I was told a few days later that they were not interested since I "did not have enough experience."
Funny, because this was an entry-level role that didn't require experience. That was the first warning. I shrugged my shoulders and had no choice but to move on. About a week later, I notice the same job advertisement was live again. How odd... But I figured they must have not found the right person. Two weeks go by and they've posted the same job again. A month goes by and the job advertisement has been renewed on multiple websites - 3 times per week. A second warning.
Fast forward another few days, and the same thing: the job is live again every 4 days in September 2011, October, November, December, January of 2012... Because I was looking for work each day, I observed this company reposting this "job" an average of 3 times per week on Craigslist, Indeed, LinkedIn, and other websites since August of 2011 until the middle of 2013!
They usually ran the ad under the title of "Analyst for Growing Financial Knowledge Broker" or something similar on the aforementioned websites. As the months went by, I just shook my head. I finally reached out to a few other interviewees and we all came to the same conclusion based on the evidence: the job is a feeler. The company was setting up shop in NYC and was simply trolling for resumes and "feeling" the talent in the US without ever actually intending to hire someone. Heck, when they interviewed me the recruiter flat out told me they'd already seen 50 people!
Is what they did illegal? Probably not. But it's cruel, especially when people 18 - 25 have a 22.9% unemployment rate (see The Wall Street Journal article of same name). It's a sick joke to give false hope to so many people who are demoralized, discouraged, and desperately looking for a real job.