"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Newton's third law. It ain't necessarily so.

Newton's third law is one of the immutable laws of physics (if I remember my Physics "O" level course well enough).
It states that: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

I say: do HR departments and recruitment agencies know this?

I have been studying many advertisements for jobs recently. Call me Sherlock Holmes. These range from the super jobs on the first page of the jobs sections of the "heavy" newspapers to the mid-range jobs further on in the pecking order of jobs. I have deselected myself from the '£100,000 per week, plus bonus, plus company helicopter, divorce lawyer, free photographs of your children updated monthly otherwise you will forget what they look like, must sign Faustian contract" job adverts and not yet looked at those jobs in the classified ads that read "Sls mgr req, mst be able to txt, gr8 opps, £OTE 46p daily. Sth coast." Not yet anyway.

Jobs adverts, as you will have noticed, are written in a code. Some are easy to understand, others are impenetrable. The more more obscure job codes remind me about the messages the BBC broadcast on the wireless during the war (I want to point out that I read about this, I am not that old) to our agents in occupied Europe. They went something like this; 'Elephants like dandelion and burdock. Play mouse catch", "Lemons are walking, tie the lace" and "Attack the sub pens at St Nazaire tonight at 8pm".

This is why Newton's third law may not apply to HR departments and recruitment agencies. If they want a reaction then they have to give you, the job seeker, a way to react. Many ads seem to be designed precisely to stop you responding to the advert as you can't decode them in the first place. Some examples therefore. Have a look at "Marketing" - in the jobs section huge one page adverts are taken out by recruitment agencies advertising multiple jobs, perhaps 10 to 15 per page. But they do not; tell you the name of the client, the salary (it's always £competitive), where the job is (the hemisphere would be a start), what the job involves (other than you have to be a team player, GSOH, like working in a mad environment, work all hours, have no other benefits, no life whatsoever outside work). How do you respond to an advert like that? Easy, you don't.

Another two examples. I have signed up to several on-line recruitment web sites like "Monster", "Wrong jobs", "Cannot send you jobs that in any way match your criteria that you set out in your profile" and so on. One actually sent me a job that matched my profile (fell off seat) BUT did not tell you the salary or the location. Email for more information it said. I did asking "is it commutable from where I live?", not an unreasonable question I feel. Two weeks later and I'm still waiting. Another one gave no indication of the size or type of company although it did actually locate the general area to a land mass in the Northern Hemisphere. All it talked about was the functional requirement of the post."Pretty please tell me about the company, size and scale." Silence.

I have therefore developed a law of job adverts called the Eyes on the Prize law (TM).
The law states that the "likelihood of getting a quality response from the organisation or recruitment agency is in inverse proportion to the amount of decoding necessary to find out what the hell sort of person they want to recruit in the first place." Now, as I want to be rich and famous and be invited to speak about my new law at prestigious venues around the world,

I have produced a model to describe my law.


It is a standard 4 box array based on two axis, X and Y. You can see my theory in all it's glory at above. Here goes - the law.

The X axis depicts the Quality of the advert (decoding necessary to respond to it) running from poor quality at the bottom (i.e. impenetrable and thus rubbish) to high at the top (i.e. you know the client, the salary, the location and what the job entails).
The Y axis depicts the Quality of response from the recruiter. At the far left it is Poor (Silence, poorly written rejection email, ask for SAE for response) . At the far right the Quality of response is High (they write back, they let you know the format for interviews, you get polite rejection letters) .

If you are still with me then you can now plot the Eyes on the Prize law based on the advert and response. But we need more.
We need to now have a descriptor for each of the four boxes.
I have based my descriptor on the quality of alcohol bought as a student at University - I am forever mentally scarred by the low standards of beer based on a restricted student income.

Descriptors.
In the bottom left hand corner: low response and low quality advert - we call this Watney's Red Barrel. You had to have run out of your grant and be desperate to buy this rubbish - looks like cold tea, tastes of yeast.

Top left quadrant: High quality of advert but low quality of response- we call this Hirondelle red wine. Shows a naive sophistication at the moment but has promise.

In the bottom right hand quadrant: low quality advert but higher quality response - we call this Mateus Rose. A small step up from Hirondelle and also made a great candle holder and light stand as well in thousands of student bedsits.

Finally top right hand quadrant: high response and high quality advert - we call this New Zealand sparkling wine, method champenoise.

So you can now plot Quality of Advert by Response, categorise them and have useful descriptors as well. And, just like my student days, most of mine seem to be Watney's Red Barrel. Still you could always buy a Watney's Party 7 - 7 pints in one tin. Yum.