Latest recruiter to blow smoke up my ass

[unixronin]

"Having most of these skills makes you a good match for the role," says the recruiter who emailed me this morning.  What role?  "Senior-Principal Device Driver Software Engineer."  Uh ... OK, what skills?

• Six or more years writing device drivers for Ethernet switches
• Hands-on proficiency in layer 2/layer 3 switching
• Familiarity with MCP854x processors
• Experience with writing drivers for large Ethernet Switch FPGA's [sic] or ASIC's [sic], including writing shim APIs
• Ability to troubleshoot complex routing/MPLS/L2/L3 problems and debug protocol and data-path problems
• Skilled in C, RTOS VxWorks and Tornado
• Familiar with IXIA and Smartbits

Needless to say, I have NONE of the above experience, although there are a small handful of keywords in common.  OK, I have some proficiency in C, and I've poked around and fixed bugs in a couple of pre-existing device drivers ... but, really, that's the extent of the overlap between my skillset and what he's looking for.

I wonder if any of these headhunters whose idea of matching skillsets consists of doing a search for a few poorly-chosen keywords, followed by either not actually reading the resulting resume hits or being unable to understand the big words in them, have ever considered what it does to their credibility to constantly waste people's time with positions for which they are obviously totally unsuited.  Those of us who have a good idea of what our actual skill sets and experience really are don't appreciate having smoke blown up our asses.

Maybe this is how incompetent boobs like Mike Brown end up in charge of FEMA.  Or, for that matter, how incompetent boobs like George W. Bush end up at the helm of the three or four corporations he rode into the ground before moving on to bigger and better failures.

Comments

[lonewolf545.livejournal.com]

Yeah, some recruiting companies OBVIOUSLY pay zero attention to what is actually on a resume. I updated my Monster profile earlier this week, in response to some management idiocy, and only two of the four calls or emails I've gotten have involved Unix work, one of the others was for a financial advisor position, the other appeared to be for selling payroll and tax services to small businesses.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've gotten the "financial advisor" probe, and one for selling insurance packages to small businesses. I suspect their required qualification profile is "still warm, looking for a job, apparently able to read and write".

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I suspect that you are running into ignorance and lack of tech understanding on the part of the "recruiter". It used to be that tech head hunters had some understanding of the field, not any more.

Have you considered taking a college class or two, in order to get into their placement program?

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Supposedly he is still eligible for Career Services from Eastern Washington University.

Must ask Dad to check in to it before they come visit.

[bfudlmint.livejournal.com]

That is an idea that I hadn't thought about in my own job search. Thanks for the suggestion.

[unix-jedi.livejournal.com]

Oh, the stories I've got of Recruiters...

I've run into a few decent ones, lets not tar all of them with the same brush. But most are people who got kicked out of Human Resources for not being clued enough.

I once got a stream of phone calls about mainframe jobs. Confusing me, since my experience with mainframes has been very tangential and peripheral. Finally, I asked a caller why he was calling me about this job. "Well, your resume says you've got 4 years experience with Unisys." "AhwuahaHUH? Would you mind terribly sending me a copy of what you've got?"

Turns out that all my UNIX experience had been /s/UNIX/UNISYS by a "helpful" recruiter, and disseminated on some sort of a recruiter BBS. That was when my resume became .pdf'ed. He thought he was helping me by "fixing" my typo.

The problem is essentially one that Scott Adams has made a ton of money off pointing out - the people who are good at doing things are usually busy doing them. They can't be spared for the crappy managerial stuff. If you get them to do it, then, it doesn't get done well. (Everyone here is familiar with the BBC Show "Red Dwarf", right?).

I wouldn't want to take a job doing that constantly, dealing with crappy managers, lying job applicants, and trying to wade through those two to match good people to good jobs. So I have some sympathy for the recruiter position, but most of the people don't care about long term, they just want to get a commission, and move on.

I did get one interview by answering (honestly) that I wasn't a guru. That was a good recruiter, he was asking me what my level of experience was, and going through my resume, and said "well, you're a guru level, right?" My answer was "No, nowhere close. I've met 'em. I can follow a discussion, but it gives me a headache". He laughed, said "Good answer. Let's set up an interview".

I'd go on about the people who have been placed by recruiters not like that.....But this is long enough.

Re: Not the right place, but...

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

I'll make sure he sees it. Still no phone/internet access at home.

He's done work from home before with occasional trips to Sunnyvale, CA (we lived in Tracy, CA. :-)

He'll probably not apply because(!) of J2EE (JBoss or Weblogic preferred) &/or EJB experience and Familiarity with MS-Windows user environments, including MS-Windows-XP, MS-Windows-2000, MS-Office and MS-Project. He's trying to stay away from anything M$.

But who knows, the * Include your resume ONLY in plain text (ASCII) format. Resumes submitted in non-plain text formats will not be considered for this position. might persuade him as it indicates old school engineers.

Re: Not the right place, but...

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Doug, our list administrator, does not suffer fools gladly. I am not sure if that is because he CAN, after doing support, but he usually calls it like he sees it. I think the M$ requirement is not so much about direct support, but being able to fix problems that it causes.

I was more concerned about it being a support position, rather than and administrator position. I really do understand about wanting to avoid M$, I just think all 10 of those positions on this continent are filled.