My love hate relationship with recruiters

So the GIS market near Denver must be picking up again…either that or resume database searches and automated bots are getting less and less selective.  If you live in the Denver area and your resume has the letter “C” in it anywhere, watch out…your phone will be ringing soon with heavily accented offers of employment as either a C, C++, C# developer, or a cat herder.  My phone is ringing more often of late with unknown, or at least unfamiliar, numbers. 

Selfish disclaimer designed to help me keep my job once I post this: To be clear, my issue is not with corporate HR departments, or recruiting agents otherwise gainfully employed with the companies they are actually recruiting for.  In fact, my company has two of the best in the industry and I’m thankful (and flattered) that I finally got in the door.  And for the record (since my employer is likely one of the 5 people who actually read this blog) I love my job and where I’m at. Keep those checks comin’!!!

On with the rant.  I’m conflicted about all the third party recruiters out there who’s only job seems to be submitting as many candidates as possible for any job that comes down the pike.  These “butts in seats” types are largely the reason that my profiles on sites like Monster and CareerBuilder have been turned off for months…there’s simply to much “noise” in those systems.  On the other hand, while I hope my professional network holds and bails me out of a jam, I may need these folks if, for any reason, I wanted or needed to work somewhere else someday.  The fact that I have no profiles posted online right now raises the question as to how these people even got my information for the position that opened yesterday?  Likely they’ve got a database somewhere that says I once posted a resume online somewhere and thus I must be jumping out of my skin to be submitted for a position in South Outter Nowhere despite the fact that I checked the “No” option next to “Willing to Relocate”.  My other favorites are the mass emails for “work from home” stuff or the outright employment offers that roll in for some minimum wage job that has nothing to do with what I do. 

Awesome! I’ll take your job…should I also send you my bank account and credit card information so that you can deposit my Nigerian lottery winnings as well?  Is your uncle by chance the deposed military ruler of some country I’ve never heard of?  Can I help you smuggle his riches out the country please?

Since recruiters are ostensibly screening you, here’s a few questions I like to use to screen the third party recruiting industry:

1. Have you qualified the position and do you have a personal relationship with the employer in question?
2. What exactly is  ”See pound”
3. Did you just say ”ess cue ell”? Ya’ mean SQL?
4. What exactly is this “graphical information system” of which you speak?
5. How did you pronounce my name again?  How many times have I corrected you?
6. Why are you talking so fast? Is this a race to see who can annoy the most candidates in an hour?
7. Where exactly did you see Java, C, or C++, PHP on my resume?
8. Remember last time we talked?  The time when I asked you never ever to call me again with regards to anything including impending implosion of the planet?

My other favorite thing these folks do is ask if I can recommend someone that would be interested in the position.  Thankfully, there are some follow up questions you can use when interviewing your annoying recruiter.

1. So you’re asking me to do your job for you?  I already have a job.
2. So you didn’t qualify the opportunity, you didn’t even review my credentials and you want me to give you the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of my professional network so you can annoy the hell out of them too? 
3. I work for a company that is also looking to hire some good folks. Why would I hand out their contact information to you?

Be careful when using question 3 immediately above…this frequently leads to a counterpoint from the recruiter of the following general form:

Have you thought about having someone (usually their staffing organization) help you with your recruiting and staffing needs?  Why don’t you give me the name and contact information for your boss, your HR director, your nanny, your butcher so I can call and annoy them too?

In my opinion, sites like Monster and CareerBuilder, which ultimately led to all these calls to me in the first place, have largely outlived their useful life for the tech industry with rare exception.  Due to the large number of “butts in seats” recruiters and due to the large number of folks harvesting information for storage in offline databases, there is simply too much signal noise for such sites to ever yield your next big dream job.  When might they still be useful?  Recent grads, career changers, and folks who don’t have a well developed professional network can still benefit if they are extremely selective about what they search for and who they respond to. Employers looking to fill a room with 100 entry level code monkeys by next Tuesday can probably also reap a little benefit. 

I’ve been best served by developing a pretty good professional network.  There are three recruiters in my geographic region that I have cultivated relationships with: All know that I am happily employed, but usually meet me for coffee every few months and will likely have something for me should the need ever arise.  These are the only folks I’ve run across who didn’t come at me like a used care salesman.  All have a tech background, I get birthday cards from some, and it’s always a pleasant experience when they call or we run into each other somewhere. For the benefit of others, they are:

LeapFrog Systems, Hudson Highland Group, and Sempera 

Most of the time though, I lean on my colleagues and peers whom I’ve worked with in the past, collaborated on projects with, or met at trade shows and conferences over a beer. 

As always if you’re a job seeker unhappy in your present situation, or don’t even have a situation, and you’re into GIS, .NET, Web 2.0, etc. etc. you can contact me here or check out my organization’s careers as well.  Don’t feel like you have to take the next Cobol or Fortran job that some idiot calls about.