I got a weird call on my direct extension at work last Thursday. The transcript went basically like this.
I probably gave him more information than I should have. Only way I can think he got my name and number was by talking to my boss who just got fired (for political reasons and through no fault of his own), but wouldn’t mentioning my former boss’ name make his call more credible? What did he want?
In general for calls about “opportunities” (which are not jobs or positions), I figure MLM or the like.
MLM?
Multi-level marketing, like Amway.
Multi-level marketing. Amway and stuff like that.
My experience with cold calls like that is they got your name somewhere – off your company’s website, out of a directory, bought a list of email addresses, whatever – and they’re canvassing to get a bunch of names they can throw at prospective clients.
IMHO recruiters like that deal in quantity, not quality. They aren’t interested in matching a person’s skills and experience with an employer’s needs, they just want to throw a bunch of prospects out there and hope something sticks. Tell him you have a PhD in biochemistry and you’re interested in cancer research, and he’ll keep calling you back with “great opportunities” selling insurance.
I got a call like that once. It ended up with a legitimate job interview.
At a place that sounded like hell to work for. Mandatory overtime? Every day?
It’s not MLM. The guy is building a call network. He’s a recruiter and he’s building a database of workers/executives/whatever. So when some company calls him and says ‘Find me an X’ he can go into his records and give you a call.
The bit about retirement there is designed to judge your willingness to relocate for a job. So if you say ‘yes’ he knows not to refer you for jobs out of your area.
The guy was a headhunter.
Having relationships with headhunters is not a bad thing. They pitch job opportunities to you. If you don’t like them, pass. If in the future, you decide you want to change jobs, knowing a few headhunters is a good thing.
You don’t pay them. The hiring company pays their fee. So don’t get the impression that they are working to help you find a job. You are the product they are getting paid to find.
I would recommend to be cordial and polite with headhunters primarily for future reasons.
It could be an MLM, but probably not. It is a pretty standard recruiter (headhunter) call. They usually get names from other people they have talked to. If you had talked further to him, he would have asked you, at some point, if you knew anyone who would possibly be interested in opportunities. A lot of people who give names don’t want their name revealed for various reasons, including:
Because of this, and also because recruiters will sometimes get names from the internet or other sources, they generally don’t give out where they got your name.
There is nothing wrong with them though, as long as you don’t think of yourself as their customer. You are their product. their customer is the company they are trying to fill a job for. It obviously is beneficial for them if they have a large and varied product line, so they are always on the lookout for new products to stock. Sometimes because they have a specific job they need to fill, and sometimes just to get people with the skillsets they typically look for.
I’ve had tons of interviews and several job offers from recruiters like this. I would be polite to them, they may be able to help you out in the future.
Sometimes I get the impression SDMB people don’t know a lot about business (not talking about the OP)
It was probably a recruiter, but there’s another possibility: could be a salesman or competitor trying to find out more about your business. He’s playing recruiter to get you to talk more. Some years back, I was chatting with a sales guy I worked with and casually mentioned that I knew very little about another nearby company. He said, “watch this.”
He called the main number at the business and asked for a common first name (Dave? It was a long time ago). The receptionist asked which one. He said he didn’t get the fellow’s last name, but he was trying to help with a project. He thought Dave worked in engineering. The receptionist said, “oh, Dave Jones!” The sales guy continued on:
“Yes, Dave Jones, that’s it. He had another engineer from his group with him. Tall guy, young, dark hair…”
“Oh, that must have been Bill Smith.”
After 15 minutes of “social engineering” with the receptionist and the engineer he got transferred to, he had a rough org chart of the whole department, and a starting point to get into the next department.
You’re probably right, at least about this aspect of it. Are you surprised? I’m not.
Of all the thousands of career fields out there, how many use headhunters like this? I’d say it’s a single digit percentage. The overwhelming majority of people do not have experience or knowledge of this type of recruiting because it’s not done in their line of work.
As above, the most likely answer is headhunter. There is a darker possibility though, especially since your boss got fired recently.
Sometimes companies will hire outside firms to make these sorts of calls to test the “loyalty” of their employees. Often it’s right before a lay-off, when they are making decisions about who to let go. They will rank employees on several criteria, including things like review ratings, experience, certifications/education, and loyalty.
I repeat that random headhunter is far more likely. He may even have begun with the main phone number, then started calling random additions (555-3001, 555-3002, etc) at night and writing down the names from the voicemail messages. Then he calls each during the day to see if there is any prospect there. It happens in niche markets like mine.
Except that a recruiter who was a) competent, b) referred by a credible source, and c) not a sleezeball looking to make a quick buck would have made more of an effort to know the background of the o.p. and the position(s) to which he might be suited. The “Do you plan to retire there?” question screams mid-level marketing or some other type of scam like Jamie Lee Curtis in a John Carpenter film, i.e. trying to make the potential applicant feel uncertain about himself and then inserting his “opportunity” as a means to better himself. The “Well, Adam, I talk to so many people, it’s hard to keep them straight,” indicates that he either is terribly unorganized, or he’s cold calling based upon a list of names gleamed from a phone registry or training list. If I had a headhunter call on me with that kind of approach I would ask him directly what he is offering and dismiss him immediately if he can’t provide a straight answer.
Back when I had my resume out on several boards I would get 2-3 calls a week from recruiters, most of them legitimate. They would introduce themselves, ask me a couple of small details about my resume or background (mostly to ease into the conversation or confirm that I’m not bogus) and then talk in overview about specific positions they were looking to fill, or if they had nothing specific, ask me about the position I am looking for. Time is money to these people, and they don’t waste it by giving vague, non-specific answers to direct, easy questions like “Where do you get my resume?” and “Who referred me to you?” (I’ve never had a recruiter fail to divulge that information up front or with minimal prompting.)
About fifteen years ago, the company I then worked for sent a bunch of use to training for a then extremely popular CAD software. On a day the week after, the phones started ringing right down the line of cubicles with a headhunter who had clearly gotten the attendance list from the company that provided training, trying to pimp each and every engineer and designer to come to work for his company. That was borderline sleazy in my opinion (albeit more on the part of the training company that sold the list than the recruiter) and I told the recruiter very plainly that I wasn’t interested in his opportunity. He quickly thanked me and moved on to the next name on his list.
Having a relationship with credible recruiters is certainly a good practice to follow, but I frankly don’t want some incompetent sleazeball handing out my resume far and wide to every company on the planet, lest they just dismiss it as another in a pile of resumes coming from Mr. Sleaze. Similarly, when I get resumes from outside sources, there are certain recruiters that I’ll pretty much dismiss out of hand, taking only a cursory look through the pile, because I’ll get a pile of a couple hundred resumes of liberal arts and business majors for an engineering position.
Stranger
Stranger
There is also a cold call technique where the recruiter or salesman calls up, professing to have your number on his desk but not knowing who left it or why. He’ll then pump you for information to test compliance and/or see if you can give him anything. I get these calls about once a month or so, and shut these guys down automatically by not divulging anything. If they get really pushy, I’ll mention that I work in a secure facility and that I’ll have to report the call to security, who will have to follow up with the FBI, and then ask for their name and contact information for the security exception report. That usually cools most heels.
Stranger
I agree it is a random headhunter fishing for prospects. I work at a large bank and get calls just like this from time to time. I have also been in the office late at night and have seen many numbers on my floor get called in sequence (555-3001, 555-3002, etc). The caller id showed the name of a recruiting firm.
Except he wasn’t a *good *head-hunter. How stupid was that conversation, on a scale of 1 through 10?
Headhunter Jackass: Hello, is this Evan?
OP: No, this is Adam.
HJ: Hello, Adam. I was given your name by someone.
I would have said, “No you weren’t, asshole. You thought my name was Evan.” Am I really supposed to believe this guy is capable of matching candidates with the right companies and positions? Even good recruiters suck at that. I don’t think it was anything nefarious, as others have suggested. I’d bet $35 that he was trying to sucker you into some “business opportunity” that involves selling life insurance. Anyone who’s ever put their resume on Career Builder knows to to expect 15 e-mails a day about business opportunities “in your area.” It’s always “in your area.”
IMHO, in busines being polite and cordial will never come back and bite you in the ass. Being a dick and calling someone an asshole, may make you feel better at the time, but will burn that bridge forever.
Why would I be concerned about a bridge that doesn’t lead anywhere? I’m 100% certain this guy can’t do anything for anyone ever. I was using colorful language mainly to amuse myself, and probably wouldn’t have called him an asshole, but I would have asked him if someone had given him my name, why didn’t he know what it was?
If he was a legitimate headhunter, why didn’t he know the OP’s correct name?
The majority of positions in the country are “unskilled labor” (even for things that require skills, like, say, an administrative assistant), and there’s enough of that to go around that headhunters aren’t needed in most cases. Taco Bell has enough applicants off of the street.
Taco Bell corporation, though, may need a new food science engineer. You don’t get those by advertising in the newspaper classified ads. They’ll typically hire a headhunter to find the right talent.
I was hired into my current company after being found by a headhunter. Even to this day, I continue to get headhunter calls out of the blue from competitors’ headhunters.