Friday, August 5, 2011

Job Recruiters Amuse Me

Having my resume on Dice.Com, Monster.com, and Careerbuilder.com I get to speak with recruiters.

It is like saying you will get wet if you stand outdoors.  Underwater.  Repeatedly.

Yesterday I had two things happen that had me amused.  

I have a Lot of Project Management experience.  I'm doing some consulting for New Divine Mercy church where I have migrated their website off of LAMP and Joomla to Google Sites.  I also act as their videographer, and handle their technology needs.  I also have been the treasurer for a political campaign, and a webmaster for two campaigns.  I have written advertising copy and have been a speech writer - all of which in the last year.

I am also the social media director for Wilton Manors Main Street, maintaining their facebook group and their blog, as well as producing the monthly newsletter.  I produce the newsletter and the embedded newsletter site with content from Krishan Manners and it was my idea to get content from other organizations within the area so that there would be one central place to find the information as well as one newsletter going out instead of five or six.  It is well received and is growing each month.  If you would like to get our next newsletter - click on this link. We don't sell the email addresses to anyone else.

Yesterday I got an email from someone at Robert Half International about a position.  I had read it, shrugged since I thought I was a little "short of the qualifications" and moved on.  A couple hours later I got a phone call from the same "associate" who sent me the email.  After her interviewing me and going past the elevator pitch, I told her my opinion.  I also told her how they typically do their interviews.  After being in the market as long as I have been , I'm a bit more wary of agreeing to go in to talk to recruiters.   They have a habit of wanting to see you, a Meet and Greet, without anything concrete behind it.   Robert Half is guilty of this as are some of the other firms in this field.  I have a hard and fast rule if I have done the Meet and Greet before, I won't do it again unless you are ready to send me out on an interview.   I told her this and thanked her for her interest but since "gasoline is $4 a gallon and this would take two hours out of my day to get there and back, I was not inclined to come in for a face to face but would consider it 'if there was something concrete' involved".

You see if you are interviewing your time is free, theirs is not.

Nothing against this particular recruiter, she was knowledgeable and understanding, she was polite, and she was willing to listen.  I just didn't want to play by the script.

The other wrinkle I found over the time of interviewing is that most recruiters are fairly useless.  There are some exceptions and I write THEM, directly.  These are the ones that after going the first meet and greet contact me about specific opportunities.   I keep their emails on a spreadsheet for easy access.  There simply are too many folks in and out of that career for me to bother with the fly by nights.

Why I consider most fairly useless is that there is a pattern.

First the company needing the new hire will post a direct job specification either on their website or on one of the job search boards.  In Technology, Dice.Com is probably my favorite - I can submit a resume in under 5 minutes, a little more if I have to tweak my resume or my cover letter. The State of Florida has a page that is utterly useless, and the Federal Government's is bad as well but better than Florida's.

After the company posts the specification, recruiters will spot this and contact the company and find out if they are open to recruiters.  That may be as simple as Recruiter A sees Company Posting B at 8AM, claims it as their own and posts it to Recruiting Company internal website and then onto Dice/Monster/Careerbuilder.  That happens usually by 8:01AM.  It can be that fast.

If it is a Project Management or Business Analysis position I know I will have a busy day because I will notice multiple hits on my resume on those boards.  I keep a spreadsheet that tells me what the raw counts are and how many hits there were since yesterday. 

Usually after the local boards send me a feeler, a couple days later the Out Of State recruiters start calling.   They're much later because they're "fishing" for a hit.  The problem with the Out Of State recruiters is that you will never have any kind of a relationship with these peoples.  It is like a door to door contractor showing up and asking if you need your driveway sealed.  That's a call I get every other week, the recruiters are daily.

If there is a phone call on my cell I immediately look to see the caller ID.  I have a definite priority of who I answer.  If you have called me, I add you to the SIM list.  If you haven't then it shows as a raw phone number.  

First Priority are people who I have spoken with before - Friends, Family,  Business Contacts and former recruiters who I have dealt with.

Second Priority are those who have a local area code.  954, 754, 561, 305, and 786 area codes.  I'll consider my own time constraints as it is usually easier for me to go on and let them talk to my phone and I can screen it later.

Lowest priority are out of state first time callers.   If they are from places like NYC Metro, specifically North Jersey I will always let them go to the answering machine.

The lowest priority calls are invariably someone calling from India as a recruiter on a scratchy Voice Over IP phone line trying to pretend that they are here.  If I make the mistake and actually speak with one, I can't hear the accent over the static and tell them that they need to email me, they have my email address on the resume, and that they can expect an answer "shortly".

Then I forget they ever called.

After all, there are people here in the United States who need the jobs more than shipping them overseas.  I know one, intimately. 

So if you need a Project Manager, Business Analyst, COBOL Programmer, Web Developer, Social Media Director, Software Development Manager, or one of about 30 other hats I wear or wore, let me know.  We can work something out.

Did I tell you about the telecommuting organization that I built using Skype and functioned as it's CTO with help from my business partner?

Yeah, I've done it.

1 comment:

  1. All that and your out of work...Nahh....the job market is GREAT!!!!!! I love it when people tell me, "it's not that hard to find a job" I just want to bitchslap them!

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