Things may not be what they seem

Read that situations vacant ad carefully - it may intend to mislead, reports ANGELA McCARTHY.

How do you know if a job advertisement is for real? An ad seeking help in a warehouse "flooded with orders" attracted a young man looking for a store worker position.

He got it - but ended up walking the streets doing sales cold calls. Needless to say, it didn't fit.

Despite his best intentions, he lasted only a few days - and made nothing.

Advertisements bearing the words "warehouse flooded with orders" are by far the most common misleading wording in job advertisements, says Takapuna Career Services consultant Wilma Ham.

Another common trap is jobs that sound like call centre positions, but are really cold calling telemarketing.

As for the jobs promising opportunities to earn "huge amounts of money" or "easy money from home?"

"Get real. If it was that easy and good, they wouldn't be needing to advertise," says Ham.

Hints on the type of person wanted can be subtle. A "young and zany company" means older people need not apply.

Such are the traps to avoid when job-hunting. While Ham says the number of misleading adverts are small, they do occur.

"There is a huge turnover in those kind of jobs, which has a negative impact on people, who feel sucked in and failures. This is a particularly bad problem for immigrants."

According to Manukau Career Services manager Mary Kayes, the reading of job advertisements can cause problems too.

"Sometimes people are misled by their reading of an ad. For example, if an advertisement talks of youth rates, it means the pay will be poor for adults.

"If experience in a field is requested, then it is wanted. Look for the key words. Read the whole advertisement and think about it."

This is important advice when considering organisations with policies to advertise all jobs, even those to be filled internally.

But this should be clearly stated. For example, the teaching profession always includes "no actual vacancy" or "regraded position" within job advertisements which are technically filled. If this isn't done, the ad is misleading.

Career Dynamics consultant Lee Brodie says recruitment agencies sometimes go on "fishing trips".

"Some jobs don't exist. They are put there for a variety of reasons such as a [recruitment] agency looking for candidates for future vacancies, to test the marketplace, or build up databases."

She says these can be very demoralising: "A poor, unsuspecting candidate applies for the job and wonders why nothing happens.

"So we advocate very clearly, no matter where in the job market, that it is naive to expect to get a new job just through answering newspaper ads."

Westaff NZ Ltd general manager Christine Rosser says Westaff is a member of Recruitment and Consulting Services Association (RCSA), a New Zealand and Australia body with a strict code of ethics.

These ethics include that temporary work can be advertised without a specific job in mind, but phrases such as "temporary assignments" or "have need for people for temporary roles" must be used.

"You sometimes find consultancies advertising roles where jobs don't exist, in hope of getting good candidates lined up for the future. But it isn't common practice here," she says.

David Doyle, who manages executive recruitment at TMPWorldwide, says it is typically new agencies that go fishing to build their database.

"Established agencies don't need to do it, and don't want to do it."

He points out the jobs will probably be real - no one wants a database of names for jobs that don't exist - but no particular client will have sanctioned the advertisement, and a specific job won't be waiting.

"What you can do is advertise saying 'we are always looking for' but you can't say 'we want a copywriter' when you don't have a specific job for one," he says.

Judgment calls may be required when making contact with some recruiters. If they are evasive, want to know everything about you but don't offer any specific information about the job - particularly the name of the company - then chances are they are trying to mislead, says Doyle.

The Commerce Commission's fair trading branch director Deborah Battell, whose department is responsible for enforcing the Fair Trading Act, says deception in job advertisements is illegal.

The commission will consider complaints, but must assess the complaint against criteria such as whether the advertisement is causing large-scale financial harm or is detrimental to others in that field, or to a large group of people.

"If we suspect a bigger problem in the industry, we follow it up. The more we know about these things, the more likely we are to take up cases, but we tend to need more than one person involved," says Battell.

While her branch doesn't get many complaints about job ads, the ones that do turn up usually promise huge amounts of money, or advertise positions that don't exist.

However, people should try many avenues for job hunting and not just rely on newspaper vacancies, says Brodie.

"People have an expectation that they will find their perfect job in the newspaper, yet only about 30 per cent of all jobs are advertised," she says.