Lying recruiters

[unixronin]

$RECRUITER wrote, in email:

Recently on national job board you indicated your interest in jobs with the following skillset:

Java, J2EE, Linux, JBoss, and Tomcat

No I damned well did not, you lying sack of shit.  I have experience with precisely one of those, and it shouldn't be a hard guess which one.  (Hint:  It's orthogonal to the other four.)  Do you really think you're going to get my interest or get me to work through you when you start out by trying to feed me an obvious bald-faced lie?

Comments

[richspk.livejournal.com]

What a coincidence! Someone with $RECRUITER's last name was killed in a battle with Tamil Tiger rebels last year and left behind a bank account containing $20,000,000 US dollars. If $RECRUITER forwards me $5,000 I'll transfer the $20 million into $RECRUITER's bank account.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I like it. :) Shame I already deleted it ....

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Somebody obviously has confused "and" with "or".

I'd love to start a real technical recruiting firm, with technical people doing the recruiting rather than these uberslick gladhanders who think they can make a fast buck herding warm bodies...

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

The trouble is that most technicians have notoriously bad people and negotiating skills, and that's what the recruiter job is all about. Plus, recruiters don't get paid as much as good technicians/engineers.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I know a 20 year old kid that has better people skills than some of our salescritters.... it all kinda depends. Or maybe we could start the company, hire a few of these slicksters and let them sell to the HR weenies while we go do the grunt work.

As for recruiters not getting paid as much as good engineers, tell that to poor alaric here. Or charlesks, or riverheart, or me... unless the headhunter is getting a ridiculously low salary, not enough to live on, they're getting paid more than we are. (Two of us have no income atall.)

And it'll improve the state of the industry.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

You did it again, Glenn. Someone got Alaric as a username before he got here. :-) But yeah, sometimes it is hard to think of him in any other name than Alaric.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

In this case, I think it's a case of "We searched the web for resumes, and found one or more of the above listed words in yours, so we're going to see how much money we can make off you."

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Yaknow, maybe it's just me, but when that kind of thing happens, I'm suspicious of an automated harvester and a poorly-written one at that.

Can you say, fully automated spam?

I tend to put a honey-pot entry in online resumes... a comment like "I never want to do IBM VM-CMS or COBOL"... and if they come at me for that, I killfile'em.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That was exactly my point.

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

A major defense contractor has my resume on file for IT and security related schtuff - I've been in the industry for 10 years. They are notoriously sexist.

They send me emails about jobs I would be qualified for:

Food services
Secretary ("Get your foot in the door of an IT career" seriously)

I'm still waiting for "fluffer".

I've always wanted to change my resume just a little, use my first and middle initials instead of my first name, and check off "male" on their on-line resume just to see if the emails "R.L." gets are different than the ones I get.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

ahhh, if they're asking gender that's grounds for a lawsuit.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

do it!

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It'd be an interesting experiment.


Personally, I have become convinced the principal reason no-one will hire me is that at any face-to-face interview it is almost immediately obvious that I'm in more or less constant pain, and there is a natural assumption that I'm not going to be able to hold down a regular job. Naturally, no-one will SAY so in so many words, because if they did they'd be facing an ADA lawsuit.

[tabbifli.livejournal.com]

I have gotten very, very good at masking everything, especially pain, so that nobody (*) sees anything except what I want them to see. Especially not pain.

Of course, I'm no longer interviewing for jobs, so it's a non-issue for me in that respect, but it's a useful technique. A pleasantly neutral face deflects an awful lot that I simply don't want to bother with.

It's funny, though, how many people think it's lying to have such a face. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't care. It's nobody's business how I feel, what I think, if I'm in pain. We have, many of us - especially in the geek world - gotten too far into the extreme of all blunt honesty, all the time, and lost this exact point of social masks.

Of course, if the pain's too extreme, there's nothing any mask can do for you. It's going to show through anyway. But if you're stuck living with it for the rest of your life, like I am.. it might be worth developing one.

(*) Alex sees through it for me. But he sees through me anyway.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

It might be doable if it were only a constant pain. But it spikes sharply upwards so that it can't be masked at all times. If he could find a telecommuting job then it would be much easier. Especially if he was using text to communicate instead of audio. But with audio you can hit the mute button.

I think he could do any job that he set his mind to, if he could do it as a telecommuter. But right now he can't set his mind to anything because he's clouded by depression.

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

nodders

we have a woman at work who has had multiple surgeries lately, and you know they are pissed, but cant do anything about it. I feel really bad for her, she's just a mess, but she's always at work.

Good luck... maybe you can find something that allows you to work remotely?

Red Hat release engineering was prefect

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

He got up with me at 0700 to take Goose to school and worked for the half hour for me to walk her to school and walk home then took a half hour break for breakfast then worked til about noon when he took an hour break for lunch. Afternoon he would take a break at 1500 once or twice a week so we could go run errands and be back to work at about 1800. Take a break at 2000 for supper and back to work at 2100 then work til 0200.

He would probably love to have such a job again. They didn't demand that he work that long but that was what he was comfortable doing. RedHat's releng group was world-wide.

His resume, if you feel inclined to help him find such a job, is at http://co.ordinate.org