I don’t remember ever getting a job from a job board. In Britain, I remember walking up to the company directly and hand my CV to the recruiter, or, more often, filling in an application form without a CV. I would find the jobs on the websites of the particular companies or institutions. (For schools, museums and libraries, the jobs were listed with the county council. The University had an easy to find job tab. Most companies would have something in the “about us” or “corporate” section.)
However, I did get a couple of interviews with some. Most turned out to be MLMs, but anyway.
In Romania, there are plenty of job boards that often include real companies that will give interviews. The problem with the job boards here is that they are difficult to search.
Okay, let’s say you are willing to try any job that you can do. But you still have limits. The reason you’re applying to a job in Cluj is because your family is in Cluj. You do some housework here, perhaps have some other responsibilities, or hobbies here. But, when you look in the job board, a lot of jobs pop up that are for working abroad (often in Holland or in Germany, but we’ve even seen jobs that were listed as in Wisconsin that required the applicant, “must be an American citizen.”). There isn’t an option to get rid of the “relocation provided” garbage, the only real choice is for “remote” or “on site” work. And are those jobs in other countries even real, or are they scams?
(I know others complain that remote work is listed that isn’t really remote, but I won’t go into that. Many people who want to work remotely are really from outside of the country. They aren’t all North Korean spies, but unless you have a disability that prevents you from ever leaving the house, you should expect to at least occasionally present yourself to the company to prove that you are a real person and not an AI generated bot.)
Here are some suggestions for anyone creating a job board in Cluj.
1 – provide an option for entry level that doesn’t imply age. Let employers who are willing to hire career changers let them know in the search term.
2 – sort by required skills, not just by industry. I’m sorry, but many telecommunications engineers might not have the skills to sell phones.
3 – redesign the search terms based on actual job descriptions and job titles, not what some coder or junior recruiter thinks.
Okay, let’s go with the third point. I did a search for jobs in Cluj-Napoca. On “sector de activitatea” I clicked “școli de limbi străine.” Foreign language schools. Some results came up, hurrah! But none were with a language school, and none were based in Cluj. They were customer service jobs that used languages.
(Note, this search is out of date. We recently did a search for different topics, and found that most only have about a third of the jobs available as are numbered. So, if they claim there are three hundred jobs in telecoms, there are only 100 jobs at most. And they are mostly selling phones at a shop. Driving jobs are mostly driving jobs, but they might be based in Holland, and require you to speak English rather than Romanian. Good news for expat drivers who want to move to Holland! If the jobs are real. bad news for everyone else.)
“Account manager, French Market, (Relocation support available to Greece!”
What the hell is this? Why not hire someone in Greece, or in France?
But, it’s a language school, right? Not really.
“Manage a portfolio of B2B clients
Drive growth through cold calling, upselling & relationship building
Deliver exceptional customer experiences and strategic insights
Work in a hybrid setup from our modern office in Athens”
Work in a hybrid setup. That means you don’t stop work in the office, you’re expected to continue working at home. I’m sorry, unless you’re an influencer or something like Gomez Adams or Healthcliff Huxtable, real people don’t like working at home.
“French speaking customer support specialist, Sofia Bulgaria.”
At least this one doesn’t include cold calls in the description. (But who knows, maybe it’s part of the job.) And you get your birthday off! 2o days annual leave (I am sure that is provided in Bulgarian law. You probably get more under Bulgarian law.)
I might have considered applying if they were honest about which job group they listed under.
What proof do I have that they are not a language school, you ask? “Apply now and help businesses successfully adopt innovative digital solutions…” Yup, that’s what language schools do, sell software to businesses. Who told you that they teach people foreign languages? That’s under the old version of English. Here, in a world that a man can claim to be a woman and the European Union can claim to be a democracy, a software sales company can claim to be a language school.
Don’t worry about this job anyway. It has probably been replaced by AI.
“Greek speaking content mangager, Lisbon- Portugal”
I guess if I take the job in Greece, and get fluent in Greek but sick of the job, I have another job at a “language school” to try. What does it involve? Teaching students? Choosing textbooks? Marking exams? No, but close.
What You’ll Do
Review and moderate user-generated content and listings in Greek
Ensure platform content complies with community standards and policies
Identify and remove non-compliant or inappropriate content
Apply local market knowledge when making moderation decisions
Maintain accuracy and productivity while managing moderation queues
Handle high moderation volumes during promotion and peak traffic periods
Hurrah, I get to look at user-generated content and listings in Greek. I get to use my degree in Greek language, and work in Portugal as a social media censor. (Because of course, if I were reading English language job adverts in Cluj, I must be a Greek speaker who wants to live in Portugal.)
And you get to “handle high moderation volumes during promotion and peak traffice periods.” Work hard, get paid nothing, far away from home, without even speaking the same language as your neighbours. Hurrah!
But there’s a purpose, you say to my sarcasm. You help to create a “safer online environment.” Hurrah! That means you get to see all the obsene and discriminatory crap that makes people cry, and try to keep a straight face while doing it. All for less than the average rental in the area!
(According to Statistica, the average rental in Lisbon costs 1750, while this job gives you a base salary of 920 euros gross. That mean you will only have to work two other full time jobs to pay rent!)
If that job was based in Cluj, and I wouldn’t have to relocate, then it might be better than doing nothing. But yeah, if I am in Cluj then I don’t have an appartment in Portugal, and so I can’t afford to do that job.
But you say that I should have learned to code? I know how to code. Let’s see the benefits of a coding job…
Front End Developer… coding genius wanted
Coffee, Milk and Tea on the House
Fruits and Pastry every Tuesday
Unlimited Nutella Biscuits
“Pizza Friday” every 2 weeks
Remote Work from Home
Social Activites
Flexible Working Hours
Salary Increase based on Performance
Materialized Recommendation
Free Public Transport
Private Health Insurance
+1 Vacation Day every 2 Years
Annual Wellness Package
7card Sport Subscription
Wow, instead of just having a meal package, I get to eat pizza every two weeks! And have tea and coffee to keep me awake as I work overtime in a boring job! Flexible working hours, we all know what that means, you don’t get to clock out until the boss is satisfied, even if that means crazy overtime. and one extra vacation day every two years! It’s a leap year honey, we are taking Christmas off!
A fruit every Tuesday! Wow, a banana a week makes the doctor… a geek?
Seriously, the “coding genius wanted” jobs make the crap jobs look good.
But it includes a 7card sport subscription, you say. Well, I looked into that before. They have a lot of sports facilities, but their offerings in Cluj are kind of weak.
Still, 56 people have already applied. The tea and coffee in Cluj smells like garbage, so they must have very good bananas.
Or maybe they just really want the coffee. Sure, you can get a pack of cheap coffee for less than a lei at the supermarket, but if you go to a networking event that serves coffee, it costs over 200 lei.
(Perhaps the entrepreneurs who go to those expensive coffee events should pay their employees instead of paying that money to fake gurus. I’m not a coffee expert, but according to a map search, if you want to speak over a coffee that bad, Cluj has plenty of Cafes where you can get a cup for less than 20 lei.)
Conclusion
My guess is that these jobs are intentionally unattractive so that EU people don’t apply. Then they can get Visas for their colleagues from Wisconsin, people from Wisconsin are easier to exploit. You never met anyone from Wisconsin? That’s because they are locked in the basement, making cheese underneath the bowling alley.
Or, maybe they are trying to make it so unattractive that no one applies. Then they can simply replace the jobs with AI robots.
Even the worst jobs on job boards have a lot of competitors.
Legal suggestions
The law should state that a job needs to pay at least three times the average rent before importing people from outside the block. That way, if you do need talented people from outside, you can still attract them. But, if there are people willing to do that job under better conditions, you improve the working conditions.
If the employer underpays a non-EU applicant, that employer should be held liable to that non-EU employee. The non-EU employees should be entitled to the difference in wages and interest, and some other fees for any mistreatment, from the unscrupulous employers. We need more rights for foreign workers, which will also protect local workers.
Also, no visa should be tied to one job. If the skill really is lacking, then competitors should be free to hire the same employee so the employee can negotiate salary and conditions more effectively.
But yeah, I’ve had enough of the job boards. As Urgently firing recently put it, LinkedIn’s business model is to make the user experience so bad that unemployed people will pay extortionate fees for an upgrade just to make it slightly less horrible. And the others? I don’t know what they gain from having deteriorating pages, maybe they are just afraid to tell employers to write better adverts.
If you know the companies you want to work for, look on their websites. If you use social media, follow them on social media. Look for companies in your industry, and follow them on social media, mark their websites as your front page, subscribe to their employment updates.
WizzAir mainly tells you there are job fairs in London and Bucharest, but if you can visit those towns and want to work for WizzAir, it’s worth subscribing. The banks list almost all jobs on their websites, the job boards simply forward to their sites.
It will be lesser known companies, or less popular ones, who need to resort to job boards. Pharmacies might hire students through university career fairs.
But yeah, I still use the boards. I just don’t rely on it.