Let me start off by stating I’m a big fan of IT recruiters in general. My first gig with Microsoft was because a recruiter found me, I have several personal friends who are recruiters and many colleagues that are top notch recruiters. They are an essential part of the job hunting process.
Having said that, there is a rising trend with the latest batch of recruiters that is driving me up the friggin’ wall. When dealing with the technologies of modern day systems it is like a language of its own, which is why many IT people find it so hard to explain things to the average laymen. If you’ve ever heard a couple of techies go “full nerd” then you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Now imagine your job is to find these folks work. Certain specialists are walking amalgamations of acronyms, certifications and obscure tech know-how (vampire taps anyone?), so placing them can be interesting to say the least. In the last couple of months I’ve been dealing with a metric assload of recruiters from all over the United States. What constantly rubbed me the wrong way was how few of them knew anything about IT. I’m not expecting nerd-like levels of knowledge, but for christ’s sake do a little research. It felt like their job matching process amounted to “do the funny letters on his resume match the funny letters on the job posting”?
Some of the questions I received were so asinine it took all my strength not to shout “you’re fucking kidding me” into the phone. Here’s an example of one exchange I had that nearly made me hang up on the person (translated into normal terms to highlight the absurdity).
RECRUITER
How long have you been a mechanic working on cars?
ME
10 years.
RECRUITER
Did you ever work on engines during that time?
ME
*blink* *blink*
RECRUITER
How about tires? Have you dealt with them?
If I was a mechanic for 10 years what the hell was I doing other than working with engines and tires? Was I just hanging out in coveralls slathered with grease for shits and giggles? When people say things like that it shows a FUNDAMENTAL lack of understanding, yet for many roles these are the gatekeepers between you and the hiring managers. Can you see why it drives me nuts?
I understand that not all workers are created equally and that some people are better at their jobs than others, but there should be some minimum requirement before being slapped with a recruiter title. It just feels like the bar has been lowered so far that “opposable thumbs” has become a job qualification.
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Twitter: retrohack
January 22, 2010 at 10:59 am
Every, single, WORD of this post resonates perfectly, but I have to share my own pet peeves. Yes, there are recruiters that are excellent, understand what they do, and are not afraid to ask when they don’t. Some are phenomenal at following up and through. Others…not so much. Here’s what sets me right off.
1) Talk to you like a hire decision is being made that week, and you are PERFECT for the role, and they need you to drop EVERYTHING and answer their ten page questionnaire immediately so they can present you to the client, and then you never hear back from them again. I know they are busy, but a little common courtesy is NOT too much to ask.
2) Ask you to modify your resume to highlight a specific product, as if the hiring manager is too stupid to understand that firewalls are firewalls, and it is a hell of a lot harder to understand concepts, than to learn one brand’s interface. Case in point…I have ten years of infosec experience, and have used more vulnerability assessment tools than I will ever remember. A recruiter wanted me to list every single one of them, so as to impress the hiring manager. If a list of programs impresses the hiring manager…I sure as hell don’t want to work for him.
3) Basic English language skills! I’m sorry, I know as I am typing this that it comes off sounding wrong. I have many friends in a number of countries I would love to work with again, and I have no problem communicating with them. But I have also had recruiters call up that I could not understand. I don’t mean they had an accent, I mean they were impossible for me to communicate with verbally. I dodged every follow up call from one so that he would have to leave me a voicemail, because Google Voice’s eldritch magick could transcribe him better than I could understand him directly! Note, this particular gentlemen is a native born American, he just speaks ‘murikan’ with such a twang and at hypersonic speeds that my head asplodes listening to him. I don’t want to be represented by someone like that, as I doubt any hiring manager would understand them either.
4) Basic geography fail. I live in the Charlotte region. I get calls probably three times a week on average about jobs in the Raleigh region….THREE FREAKING HOURS AWAY!!!! I know they’re both in North Carolina, but puh-lease….look at a damn map. All the job boards do geographic preferences, zip code and area code searchs, and have you list maximum commutes…why don’t recruiters use them? And no, I am NOT interested in relocating for a six month contract!
5) Asking for NPI (like social security numbers) and physical signatures to be sent over to them , and then not being able to deal with digital signatures, scan and email, or understanding why you are not willing to email them your SSN after a first phone call. I worked nine gigs for a national company over the summer. EACH AND EVERY TIME they wanted me to fill out the EXACT SAME THIRTY-TWO PAGES. Deforestation? After the third, I got smart, and just used whiteout over the dates, updated the scan, and sent it on.
6) And last, but certainly not least, temporal disconnects. How can someone have ten years experience with Windows 2003? How can you even value ten years experience with ANYTHING specific? I certified in every MS O/S since DOS for crap’s sake, but I haven’t touched an NT4 server in since 2005, and that was to put it out of its misery, not because those skills were relevant to the job.
/rant
Thank you for saving me at least two therapy sessions. I feel better now.
This example/reality is perfectly done to a “P” (cause T is used too much). I have this same problem with any and all of the agencies I have ever dealt with. Why make an effort to conjure up and write down all of the “work life” you have experienced so far if the job that they have at hand to do (reading it) isn’t done!!!???
*UUUUHHHHGGGGGG*
It’s kind of scary. Where have all the intelligent people (or in the very least, the people with common sense) gone?
As I’ve been gainfully employed for the last three years (looks around desperately for some wood to knock and finding none raps forehead furiously) , I’ve been blisfully ignorant of how nuts it can be to deal with IT recruiters. I had several headhunters call me asking if I was interested in jobs that were totally out of my skill set on platforms I had no experience with, but SOMETHING in my resume had enough keywords to lead them to think I could meet the minimum qualifications and bullshit my way through the rest. I can also testify that at the risk of being accused of xenophobia, it’s tough enough to hold a conversation with a recruiter when English is their second or third language. It’s even tougher when they’re bumping their gums about some IT skill set that’s not yours. Thanks for sharing your pain.
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