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Received an e-mail at work the other day, inviting me to complete a "Staffing Specialist Survey". Not again, I thought. Is there no place to hide from the ubiquitous Web Survey these days? Apparently not - even the workplace is not safe.

However, feeling a sense of obligation toward the staffing specialist who, in some very slight degree, worked with me in obtaining this job, I began the survey. One problem: the only clue which position was being surveyed was a long 10 digit position number; which is not much help. So just to be sure, I found the original posting for my position: it was different. This survey was for something else.

The staffing specialists didn't really want my opinion for the other positions I applied for. Theirs was not the most stellar performance in my experience. But they asked...

The most amusing part were several questions regarding communications I had received from the staffing specialist. At what point did I receive communications? Of what quality were the communications? How satisfied was I with the communications? Reading between the lines, the bank apparently assumed communications were taking place.

This was a bad assumption, at least in my case. Quite simply there were no communications. I never received any feedback, acknowledgment or even answers to direct questions from our team of crack staffing specialists.

Still, in retrospect, I do owe my current position to the staffing specialists. Thanks to their communication expertise, they never bothered to inform my current manager that the posting had expired. So she assumed the posting was out there, but no one had applied. Fortunately for me, no one had applied because the posting had been unposted. By the time all this got cleared up, I was alerted to the position, applied and got it.

Perhaps my survey ratings should have been a tad higher. After all, I never could have done it without their help.

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