About two weeks ago, I got contacted by a recruiter (two recruiters, actually; the second one didn't tell me who the client was) about a senior Linux sysadmin position at Cadence. On Monday or so of last week, Gina (the recruiter) told me her Cadence rep was actually carrying my resume around with her. On Thursday, she told me Cadence had just hired one of her candidates for one of the positions and wanted to phonescreen me for the second either Friday or today. On Friday she told me the phonescreen had been set for 1500 today.
This morning, there was an update in my mail telling me it had been rescheduled for 1600. At 1600 I was on the phone, and by 1605 I was talking to three Cadence techies. We got off the phone at maybe 1705, and at 1715 the phone rang again; it was Gina telling me the Cadence people had emailed her as soon as we got off the phone, were really impressed, and wanted to set up a second-round interview. By 1745, the onsite was set up for 1400 tomorrow.
Things may be looking up....
(The second recruiter, by the way, also submitted me at a significantly lower rate. I'm wondering if not telling me the client was Cadence was some kind of plausible-deniability thing ... "Oh, I didn't know he'd already been submitted by someone else." Anyway, she is very much out of the process.)