Asking for a friend who is an IT-professional based in Germany, who just finished his vocational training/apprenticeship 6 months ago.
My friend has been receiving job offerings via XING and LinkedIn for over a year, however during his apprenticeship he was not interested in switching to a new company. Now he is looking for “new opportunities” and took a deeper look into the latest companies that contacted him. Many of the offerings were pretty vague and seemed to be just copy-pasted-messages the companies seemed to send out to a broad spectrum of possible candidates. Most of them also included the URL leading to their company website. However in many cases the websites where just as vague, as the messages, describing the offered services in a very broad manner, using mainly what felt like catchphrases and buzzwords.
My friend was primarily interested in two things:
- Where is the jobsite located
- What kind technologies are used
None of this could be found on the company websites and there where also no open positions listed on them.
He often got back to the companies via e-mail, said he was interested in their company, but was unable to find any helpful information regarding the mentioned position and asked where the position would be based and what kind of technologies would be relevant. In pretty much all cases, he received a standard e-mail back, not containing any new information, instead asking him to schedule an interview or at least a phone call.
What is the best way to judge the reliability of these offerings? Is it worth following through with a phone interview? I initially would have advised him to just stay away from those kinds of companies, since the lack of relevant information already would raise a big red flag in my book. However, I am pretty old-school when it comes to business and have been working in a very old school field (petrol) for over a decade.