Recruiters

Recruiters already have a bad wrap, I’ll admit. I’m not covering new ground here when I say that I have been consistently disappointed with my recruiter experiences. To bring you up to speed, here’s a short list of recruiter offenses I have experienced.

Claiming to be “Technical”, but technically not knowing anything
If they claim to be a technical recruiter, they shouldn’t say a Java position is a “perfect match” for me, because I had JavaScript listed on my resume.

Not knowing anything about the job.
“I’ve got a great opportunity for you at a company here in town. You need to know PHP, SQL, CSS, HTML, and it looks like you have those qualifications” I’m not sure if they expect me to say “Oh great! Sounds like my dream job!” from that much, but 9 times out of 10 when asking “What does the company do?”, they can’t tell me anything. “Software”, one said.

Pretending we had a conversation, when we didn’t “Hey Jeff, sorry I didn’t call you back sooner, but this is…”, or “Hey Jeff, this is Phil from XYZ Recruiters, we talked last week”. That’s low.

Calling after successfully matching you with a job, to see if you want to change jobs.
Now that their commission has processed, and they’re not bound by a contract with the company they hooked you up with, why not try to get another commission out of you? Loyalty.

Not respecting my calling preferences. The last time I was job hunting, I listed my resume on monster, and had loads (5+ a day) of recruiters call me as early as 7am. It became annoying to have the same conversation with them over and over, especially since I listed clearly that I only wanted to be contacted via email. Which brings me to the reason for this post: When I ask to be removed from your call list, respect that.
I had a run-in with a recruiter a earlier this year, and have been slacking a bit on posting about it. First, I got the following voicemail:

Hey Jeff, this is Tony with [Recruiting Company] out of Milwaukee. I don’t think you’re familiar with our company, so I’ll tell you what we do exactly. We’re the fastest growing program placement search firm in the world, and we work with a lot of Electrical-Controls Engineers. I have an exciting opportunity for an experienced Electrical Controls Engineer, down in the Carolinas. It’s for an OEM equipment manufacturer, for high speed packaging. I’d love to tell you more, though, my number is [#]

While perfectly polite, there are a number of things wrong with this:
1. I don’t live near the Carolinas
2. I have never marked the “I’m willing to move for employment” checkbox on any resume listing service.
3. I haven’t worked in the Electrical/Controls since 2004.

So rather than continue to receive calls offering jobs I’m not interested in, in areas of the country I don’t live, I called back and simply asked to be removed from their call list. The guy I talked to, Kevin, seemed a little confused, but after I politely said no to a few guilt-enriched questions such as “Are you sure you don’t want to stay on our list, so you can improve someone else’s life by helping them find a job?” he reluctantly agreed not to call me again.

The next day I received the following email from Tony, the recruiter who originally called me.

Subject: Sorry I wasted your time

Jeff:

It obviously bothers you to network with a professional that specializes in your industry. It also seems to bother you that what I was calling about could possibly improve the quality of someone’s personal and professional life. Well, if that’s the case, trust me, you’ll never hear from me again. Your ego is so large that you have to call us back and berate us to take you “off our list”? Well, if calling you on 6/5/06 and then again on 5/19/08 is too often, buddy, you obviously don’t have much to worry about in your life.

Wow! That paragraph crescendoed, no?

I’ve debated whether or not to post the full content of the emails on this blog, here, and have decided that yes, I will. Part of me feels like it’s information overload, bordering on you thinking I’m trying to display my email zinging prowess, but I’m not. These emails tell a story of a sad, sad, recruiter, desperately avoiding the realization that the career he chose is a complete sham.

Also, I had some pretty good zingers that are worth sharing.

Anyway, my retort to his first email:

Dear Tony,

I’m failing to understand how my simple request for you to remove me from your list of possible job-seekers was out of line, and further how it warranted such an unbelievable response from you. Apparently I hit a nerve. Did removing me from your list leave you with no one else to call? I suppose I should welcome irrelevant phone calls? Under that same logic, maybe I should start signing up for spam.

The fact is, your call was yet another example of recruiters taking blind stabs at possible job applicants instead of doing the necessary research involved in producing a quality match. I’m sure my name got added to your list in 2006, either from a site I voluntarily listed myself on, or a recruiter I had spoken to. At that time I was looking for a job in the “Electrical/Controls” field, but since then I have switched careers to Software Engineering, moved states, and worked 3 different jobs. When providing my information to the aforementioned sources years ago, I am sure I specified that I was only looking for jobs in my local area, so the fact that the “exciting opportunity” you were calling me about was not in my current field and over 1000 miles away makes it unbelievably irrelevant.

Further, my resume isn’t even listed on any resume sites currently, as I’m *not looking for a job*. I’m satisfied with my current job, and in the future when I’m seeking other employment, I will relist my resume on job seeking sites, so that I can be contacted. However, when I’m happily employed, I have no interest in hearing about your job opportunities for a field I’m no longer in, in a place I don’t live. Is that so unreasonable? I felt that your snarky subject line “Sorry I wasted my time” was absolutely true–which is why I asked to be removed from your list.

So thanks again for your professional email. I’m glad to see that you’re improving the already impeccable reputation of recruiters.

Jeff

His response:

Jeff:

I’m not going to get into an email war with you. I am simply trying to do my job and that is attempt to network with industry professionals who want to either enhance their career and/or have the common courtesy to point me toward someone they could help. Jeff, I have found that overhwhelmingly, the best people at what they do are currently doing what they do. They are not sitting on Monster.com and catching up on the Flintstones in the afternoon.

Thanks for the tip on how to do my business, but quality matches come from meaningful conversations, not “blind stabs”. If our last “meaningful conversation” was in 2006 and your career objectives have changed since then, I can apologize for a lot, however, I will not apologize for my lack of mind-reading skills. The vast majority of our candidates come from good, old-fashioned phone calls, networking and the subsequent conversations, not job boards or the internet. That is the “necessary research involved in finding a quality match.”

Apparently, I also hit a nerve with you and unwittingly called a guy who has absolutley no clue of how this all works, but is ready, willing and able to dispense advice. To be fair, I’ll explain rather than only take a shot at you… The “research” also entails finding “quality matches” that have personality, communication and chemistry. It’s not solely about a verbatim match of skillset to job description. I’m sure that you’re in a good job right now and regarding that, I’m happy for you. But to treat us like lepers because we are trying to help our client find the best? Should I also aplogize for contacting “irrelevant” people that seem to do exactly what my client is looking for? Scratching my head on that one, Jeff…

Bottom line: It’s all about helping people and improving the quality of their lives, but if those darn trees weren’t in the way, that forest would be much more visible. Or, is it just plain selfishness? Not sure and I don’t really care to find out at this point because you will not hear from us again. And I stand by my “sorry I wasted my time” statement, however snarky it may be viewed by you. Dang, now I did it a second time! My bad.

Did that even make sense? I don’t think so.

The final reply:

Harassing people via email is also part of the job, I see. Does everyone who dares to request to be removed from your call list get a verbal beating? The level of professionalism you show is impressive.

This email conversation ends here. I have gone from being annoyed at your rude responses and your inability to understand simple logic… to pitying you.

Good luck with your future career, and your anger management classes.

I might have been a little harsh at the end there, but man, he had it coming.