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[Truean]

Please do not quote, thank you:

I have the possibility to get an actual real estate attorney job in house, which would rock. It would be the answer to my long nightmare that comes from having a conscience and ethics... and essentially turning in people for utterly atrocious behavior that got them convicted and jailed.

The problem, the HR person is a bit overzealous. I've noted privilege being a great big gag order I can't break. She doesn't seem to get it.

She doesn't seem to like that I said I've done over $100 Million in real estate transactions.... Start with the slow pitch

Look, if you sell 5 houses at $200,000 a pop, then that's $1,000,000.... Deed work, purchase agreement/land contract, easements, etc. I've done this stuff for years, and that's just single family homes. Apartment buildings easily sell for $1,000,000 (depending on number of units, occupancy etc).

Commercial buildings go for a few Million, and Industrial..... Yeah.

What I'm saying isn't hard to get really. I've probably dealt in transactions of well over that amount, if we're talking value of the property, easy.
Even if you want to talk about the amount of money I've generated in fees (sadly for my old bosses and not for myself), we're talking an absolute crapload. $100 / deed x 3,000 deeds a year was $300,000 I made him on deeds alone.... (and I got exactly nothing of that). That's just deeds, never mind the cases, or purchase contracts, or leases, or anything else. Off the deeds alone, if I made him $300,000 a year for 5 years, then that's $1.2 Million I made my boss over 5 years... just on deeds alone.

I absolutely have done everything I'm claiming to have done, but damned if I can show her proof of it, because a.) old boss has retired and everything, b.) annoying privilege (yeah, even the transfer papers for the house or building or whatever), and c.) Jesus, there's been so much of it over the years that tracking it all down and accounting for it would be a full time job right here.

What do I do with this HR woman? Do I draft up a report or something giving her generalities (because what else could I do)? Something else? I don't get her. I understand they've had some verification issues with other people in the past but really?

I just really want/need, and dare I say deserve this job.... I just can't sit there and brag about all I've done. That's kinda frowned upon.

What do I even do?

[aenri]

Truean

Well in my experience, first off - get someone who can vouch for you, then redact the contracts/deeds you have written up (i.e. purge any personal details), to show legal expertise and then show them some articles/books you have written.
Ask them to give you some kind of case study? Drafting a deed for land purchase or something like that?

If everything fails - get client permission to present your work with them to HR?

Bear in mind I only have experience with... more employer heavy recruitment for legal professions. As in written test, case study, personal meetings, psychological evaluation, foreign language test and so (my judicial examinations were fucking stressful). My CV didn't matter too much.

[Truean]

Thank you for that. I appreciate the effort.

It's just difficult to prove and I get the weirdest results/responses when I say thing that should be incredibly obvious, "Let me ask you something. How would you feel if your lawyer was showing other people your private, confidential documents about something that happened in your life that's privileged information?"

How this doesn't register is just beyond me....

[Truean]

Also as some of you have read here, I have a lovely problem with a company's employment application website.

Any help on either of these problems would be incredibly appreciated if you have any idea what to do.

Thank you

[Jopax]

Seconding the getting someone to vouch for you idea. Even if the ex-boss is retired, if you're on good terms he could be willing to write a nice reccommendation letter that confirms your skills.

[nenjin]

Have you not provided references in your resume? If she is that hung up on the absolute dollar value of your work but doesn't seem to understand privilege...she either doesn't know what she's doing or expects you to break privilege in order to secure the job. Neither of those are encouraging signs.

Give her references to call, get someone to vouch for you, and write up an outline of your work she can go over in lieu of having privileged financial statements to look at. More than that seems like you're agreeing to stuff that could later be held against you, either by older clients or by that company.

I can kinda of? understand her desire. Those are some fairly big numbers to claim. To want proven documentation of that seems reasonable, but, not in the scope of a business contract. When I claim I've contributed to over $10 million and likely more in auction sales in the last 4 years, if someone asked me for the run sheets from the ends of those auctions to prove it I'd laugh in their face.

[Truean]

Thanks, those replies make a lot of sense.

Although, actually, those numbers really aren't that big, because real estate, houses and buildings are expensive, which is what's so odd. This lady doesn't seem to want to do basic math.

Even if we're talking homes at $200,000 that's 500 of those to be $100 M.... Over how many years. We did 3000 deeds a years.... Like I said that's just single family homes. How much do you think a commercial shopping center with a big box store anchor tenant costs? (Easily a couple million).

I can tell her things generally in redacted form, but that's it, and she doesn't seem to like it. I realize the last smuck they hired looked great on paper and wasn't but come on. I can show her types of transactions and numbers, but nothing specific.

I have a sterling letter of reccomendation from old boss, who is just about 80 and has checked out from caring about just about anything. I don't know that he's even capable of doing much.

[martinuzz]

Just be honest and tell her she is asking you to purposedly break the law, and that she can be jailed for that. Who knows, perhaps it's a trick question, and that's exactly what she wants to hear.If that's not the answer she wants to hear, then you probably better walk out the door and don't look back.

I mean, I wouldn't want to get involved in any company where apparently the most important job quality would be willingness to break the law. That's called Cosa Nostra, or mob rule.

[wierd]

Modern HR is, in my experience, spoiled rotten by having an employer's market, and too much access to information with too little oversight, or legal constraint.

They think nothing is wrong with cyberstalking potential hires, for instance.

As such, they are naturally dumbfounded/angered/*emotion here* when they are presented with situations where they demand data, and do not get it.  They are used to getting what they want, and really just cannot understand why you are being so obstinate about it. They honestly think it is perfectly OK for you to tell them what they want, as long as they dont tell anyone else. ("it can be our little secret", et al)

Sadly I dont have a specific, straight to the point, magic bullet for this problem.  The REAL solution is for the US populace as a whole to demand better information security, privacy oversight, and legal limitations on what methods potential employers can use.

You might try suggesting that this HR person contact the legal counsel of the company she works for, to clarify what kinds of information are appropriate for her to request, so that you can best meet their needs.

I seriously doubt that the legal counsel of her employer would advocate having hires violate attorney-client privilege. (and if they do, you dont want to work for them.)

Hopefully their counsel will set the HR drone straight.

[Bouchart]

In my life I've never dealt with any HR drone who was particularly bright or capable, and I suspect it's no difference in real estate.  Try to go over her head and see if there's a hiring manager somewhere in the company that you can speak with directly.  Try lurking around in LinkedIn or some such.

There's also the non-trivial chance that no such job actually exists and this is just busywork for the HR drone.

[Truean]

I share your general HR evaluation. I did HR de facto back when I was saving companies and needed competent people fast or the ship would sink. HR on said sinking ship hated my guts, because I had no choice but to show them up if they didn't listen. We were going to hire Mr. So and So and Mrs Such and Such, because I know they are incredibly capable and tested them myself, conversationally and operationally, after personally conducting dozens of interviews that they refuse to do today. I said to hell with who they knew.... It hit the fan, but it worked.

Things today are quite different. I was built for a generalist's world. There was nothing I couldn't do, incredibly well. Today everything is hyper specialized and I am "overqualified."

Example, no idea what "Sigma Six, black belt" means, but if it's efficiency management then I was doing it before it was cool and well marketed.

This woman hates my guts and it's quite obvious. I don't hate her but wouldn't mind one way or the other if she happened to stop breathing, forever. It might be an icebreaker, "O did you hear Ms. HR person suffocated? Well it seems she did. How odd."

I offered to make her a redacted spreadsheet with specific identifying information blacked out, and her response was "then how could it be checked."



I then tried another tact and asked her how much of a private situation between her and some attorney she hired to solve some very important and private problem in her life she'd want spread all over town? She did not respond well.

I don't think I'm getting this position due to this. Hum.

______________________________
Any advice on possibly Cold Emailing the VP of Leasing for this developer? I fear it may come across as too forward or rude or something, but it seems these days one must be direct, because the HR drones are actually software. "Networking." Bah, such unnecessary evil socially made "necessary." [sigh].

[wierd]

I share the frustration. There is very little that I am simply incapable of learning to do, and do well-- so I have often learned to do so. I know have very good references and skills in 4 radically diverse disciplines.

This confuses the bejeebus out of modern HR. They honestly do not see the value in having a demonstrably versatile employee.

I dont know if it is systemic incompetence, or systemic laziness in modern HR that causes the lack of good interviewing and good competence evaluation, and instead focusing exclusively on how pretty the cover letter of the resume is-- but whatever is causing it, it is a pernicious and system-wide problem.

[Truean]

Yup....

They wanna know my Law School GPA....

A.) I was working two full time jobs then (including one in a lawyer's office as an apprentice).
B.) That was years ago.
C.) Law school has exactly 0 relevance to performance in the field, as they don't even teach you the actual law, but fake law ("restatements" written by stupid law professors or maybe the MPC (Model Penal Code) with is the law of NO STATE though New York's law is based upon it.).
D.) You get marked off for insanely stupid things like actually invisible typographical errors even if you're dead right.

Damn it.

[BigD145]

Modern HR often doesn't know anything about the industry they are hiring for. They have very specific wording to compare to your paperwork you submit and if you don't hit them all then you're sunk. I've seen scientific names versus common names get in the way of a job. "The posting specifically said '2 years salmon experience' and you have 5 years salmonid experience. You obviously aren't qualified for this job." The people you'd actually work with will never know. You sit down and talk with them and they'll likely hire you on the spot of they could.

[TheBiggerFish]

...
*appiles hugs, despite the irrelevance of this to the problem*