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

[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.