Brave new world of job hunting

I have a job agent on Monster.com, that is a program that looks for job postings in my field (accounting and clerical) and sends me a daily email containing a summary of the postings. On July 19, I clicked on one posting and found this description:

Immediate need for accounting clerk seeking professional environment, company invested in your success and convenient downtown location. Detail oriented, dependable and good organizational skills will be keys to success in this well known organization. Will be responsible for credit and collections, accurate data entry and maintenance of accounts for finance company. Great benefits. Apply for this great position as a accounting clerk today!

Job Experience:

call for details

I believed that the posting was a match, except that the level of experience was left in doubt. So I called the number given, primed to tout how my background matched their needs and to find out how much experience was required. Now I an not new to job hunting, unfortunately, and I knew from the name given for employer that I was calling an agency not an actual employer, but I was a little taken aback at what transpired.

The receptionist was not interested in listening to my qualifications, she just wanted to set up an appointment for a registration interview. I can just see the scene ahead when I come in for the interview. I will fill out the application forms and take a battery of tests. The job I think that I am applying for may be vaguely mentioned, but an interview with the hiring manager will not be set up. I will be given the time card and the employee manual. Then I will be told to go home and wait for them to call. Then no call. I have gone through this routine many times before.

What strikes me about this is if a job is posted on a job board shouldn’t the posting organization be authentically interviewing for that job, instead of using the posting as a come on? The job boards, at least in my field, are dominated by postings by agencies like this. So the job boards cannot be unaware that this is going on. Is it really honest for this to happen? It seems to me that these agencies are using the postings as worms on a hook to lure potential employees and then looking for only exact matches.

I have education in my desired field and similar skills developed in related fields, but no exact experience in the desired field. I am male and 60 years old seeking work in a field dominated by young females (I hate to carp on that again), so I feel that I have two or even three strikes against me. But age discrimination is against the law and I hate to throw away an education that I paid for out of my own pocket and am still paying the student loan bills for. So I go on.

Update 7/27/07

I went for my interview today with recruiting agency X. Things did go about as I expected. They asked me some superficial questions about my two prior jobs and I did get a chance to describe my good progress in the tax preparation field. I took three tests on general accounting, MS-Word and Excel and did satisfactorily on those. I do have to email my resume to my "account executive." And then she says that it will be submitted to the prospective employer and to other possible employers. The young women there were pleasant to me. I only hope that they are as honest and reliable as they were pleasant