I’ll add mine. I’m looking for a job in Washington, DC. I think it might be a fucking long commute to Seattle, Washington!
I can’t tell you how many contacts I’ve gotten for 1-month contract, must be on site, jobs that are in Texas. Or want to pay me $35/hour for a 3-month contract, must be on site, in a place like San Francisco. Yeah, I’m REALLY going to move across the country to take a short-term job for an hourly rate that wouldn’t rent me a closet. Then there was the one who admitted to working at a foreign company when I pointed out that Pittsburgh was not commutable from Philly.
And then there are the ones contacting me for completely inappropriate jobs, such as the ones who want me to be a “lead programmer” for an AS/400. Obviously, they have not read my resume to discover that while I had a computer school course in computers that was taught on an AS/400, that was also more than 30 years ago and I’ve been a tech writer for well over 20. Or the ones asking me to be an SAP programmer because I had a 6-week gig documenting an internal, web-based tool that had nothing to do with SAP’s commercial software, but my resume says SAP so I must know how to set up … something … on a system that apparently is more convoluted and arcane than quantum mechanics.
Well, you have to admire the sense of humor at least one recruiter has. I got a job announcement via E-mail yesterday. Under Benefits, the list begins with Salary. Yeah, someone’s keeping up with the times there.
Might as well vent some more here: today I had an interview. One of the interviewers asked me an Angular (web site technology, for those who don’t know) question about something I had never heard of. I said so. Just to make sure, even though I know Angular quite well, I searched for it when I got home. Nope, doesn’t exist. Also, he asked about source control in TFS in regards to an offshore team at one of my past jobs. Yes, you can use Github instead, and I guess that is more popular today but it IS possible to share code around the world in other ways. Evidently he had no idea, because he sat there like an oil painting.
This is what I’m dealing with. How in the name of holy FUCK am I supposed to get a job if the hiring people don’t know what the fuck they are doing?
When I leave an interview that has gone like that I do a little dance like I’m Neo from The Matrix. Cause imagine what it would have been like to ace that interview and get hired by those clueless gits! You dodged a bullet, congrats. Hopefully your next interview will be with a firm that isn’t a bunch of morons.
Enjoy,
Steven
Thanks, Steven. That helps. 
It’s not that they think you’ll be great at selling insurance. It’s that they send emails to every email address on every job board they can find, offering a “job” selling insurance. The job exists, but it’s a 100% commission position with no salary. It’s not even an insurance company headhunter, they’re just spamming everyone.
As for never getting back to you with “thanks but no thanks”, that’s because what if the person they decided to hire bails on them? Then they need to go with their second choice or third choice or fourth choice. So what’s the upside of telling two, three, and four that they didn’t get the job?
Do you mean that if they don’t say anything, and then if someone does bail, they can come back to me and say that I was the first choice all along?
I was an IT recruiter and a damn good one if I may boast. I was never hands on technical but in the beginning I asked all sorts of questions of my candidates so I could talk The IT talk and understood from a high level view how things worked.
I recruited in the DC area for many of the intelligence agencies. I now live in Japan.
My resume is still up on monster and hasn’t been updated for 6 years. Half a dozen or so times a year I get an email from a recruiter for a technical position that requires a Top Secret level security clearance with a Polygraph (TS/SCi).
I always respond and tell them these type of shotgun emails are why recruiters have a bad name.
Then: I clue them in on THE BEST KEPT SECRET TO SUCCESSFUL RECRUITING———> “never send a job description to someone who’s resume you haven’t read”
Controversial, I know. But it always worked for me.
What, are ya’s trying to kill me ova here? I’d never get a response!
So, what’s up with this: I get an email saying the rate would be $5/hr.* I respond by saying no, that’s too low, my rate is $10/hr. I get an immediate response saying no problem. Other times, they stick to the original rate. Obviously, I think, some recruiters just offer the absolute lowest rate, and hope that someone eventually agrees to it and gets hired. Or, they offer the highest possible, in the hope that more candidates will be interested, and even though they will make less, their chances are better that way (more candidates).
- In reality, I’d say only 5% of the time do they actually mention a rate in an initial email. I refuse to talk with them until they give me an idea of it. Is this a good way to handle this, do you think?
For hourly our clients gave us a range and we would charge a certain perfectage of that hourly rate as our fee. The recruiter would get. Portion of the profit for that hourly rate.
In other words the recruiters interests and the candidates interests were in line: the more money I could get for you the more money in my pocket.
Any system where the recruiter gets paid more if the candidate gets paid less (un?) ethical.
I would decide based on the candidates precious salaries, his skill and how well he suited the position what to offer him. If I have. Range from 45-$60/hr and my candidates highest hourly has been $50/hr I would not offer the max of 60 even if the candidate was a perfect match (unless it was a dire need for my client and the candidate was insistent).
For your sake I hope your numbers are just examples!
Sorr I can’t answer why other recruiters do other things.
*edit ability timed out
Have stated clearly in your resume/cover letter what your hourly rate is. If the recruiter won’t get into specific numbers you can advise them that if it doesn’t meet your minimum then you don’t wish to continue.
I wish to God that a headhunter would contact me.
If you have a LinkedIn profile with a strong set of industry-specific keywords, and you set it to “looking for positions” … I would be surprised if they didn’t come find you.
How do contract agencies compare with headhunters?
I returned to California from a long overseas stay and soon was in contact with an agency (hereafter called “the guy”) I’d sent a resume to almost a year earlier. We didn’t know each other but after a few minutes of phone chat I was hired for a job. That seemed easy! Later, as the story unfolded, I learned the guy was desperate!
My first paycheck was marked “Debtor in possession.” Ok, whatever; at least the bank cashed the check. Apparently all the former contractors at his agency were now working for the Bank that had repossessed – the connections to these contractors were the “property” he had mortgaged!? :eek: I started getting phone calls from the guy’s former right-hand man — now working for the Bank — who kept asking me if I thought it was “ethical” for me to work for this guy instead of for the bank. Hey, it was the guy who offered me a job; I never heard of you or your bank; I’m just trying to make a dime. The phone calls stopped after my guy’s lawyer called the bank’s lawyer.
The guy got a new business up and running successfully, and always had a new job to put me in whenever I returned from a long vacation overseas. But I weaned myself from him and was independent for the last decade of my career. Years later I Googled the guy — he’d been written up in a magazine article about day trading fever!
So, I got an offer yesterday and accepted it, have had a drug test and fingerprinting, a background check is pending, and I am supposed to go tomorrow and sign papers, etc. Just now though, I got another offer. I think I’d like the second better, but haven’t officially accepted it. Is it ethical to back out of the first to do so?
I knew another job popped up on the circuit this morning, because I immediately got four calls from the headhunters. I have to see what this job is that has them so excited.
And I’ve been employed now for a couple of years.
I’ve read about tons of companies who give verbal (or even written) offers to people, have them move to their location, and then suddenly rescind the offer. So if you really prefer the second one, no problem taking it. Just be sure it is in writing and it is real before you reject the first one, since practically nothing is guaranteed until your ass is on the seat at your desk.
Another reason why companies don’t tell candidates they don’t have the job - if you do this, they can offer their number two choice now.
I had a staffing agency basically ask me to lie. I had said I have supported SQL servers at some point in my IT career and they wanted me to rewrite my resume to make it look like I was a SQL expert. I have no idea how to run queries or manage a DB, I just updated and maintained the damn server. I told them flat-out that the company would not be pleased with either me or them if I bluffed my way into a job where I had no clue what I was doing. They sobered up quick like they never considered anything beyond getting me hired.
I still get emails from the bums despite having landed a solid government job almost five years ago (on my own thank you) and telling them repeatedly I don’t want their 6 month entry-level contract job offers in faraway cities.
At my last employer we had a temp position available. I got called multiple times to fill a position in my own department.
So, basically, they were thinking I’d be interested in quitting my full-time managerial job to take a temp hourly job IN THE SAME DEPARTMENT. Idiots.