Tales of IT Recruiting

I feel sorry for IT recruiters, especially ones working for firms that are struggling to try to establish a niche in the industry. Their jobs must be no fun at all. They're constantly on the phone cold-calling employers or job-seekers. They have to dress professionally (on what probably isn't a professional salary). And they know full well that their field is overpopulated and that they themselves are easily replaced. I especially can't help but feel sympathy for somebody who is calling from a crowded office environment: when you can hear several voices in the background of your conversation, you can tell that your poor caller is working from a desk instead of a cubicle or an office.

Having said that, I have to say this: there are a lot of bad recruiters out there. I've had to enter the job market several times in the last few years, and I have a lot of stories to tell.

First off: there seem to be many firms that try to fill positions by contacting several recruiters at once. (Maybe they're in a hurry or something.) When I have a resume active on monster.ca, I find I can tell when one of these new positions hits the streets, as I usually get called about it by two or three recruiters.

My personal record for most times being contacted about the same position is eight - three of which were from the same recruiting firm, and two of which were from the same recruiting firm within a half-hour of each other. The firm must have hired a bunch of newbies and turned them loose on the same database. I found it amusing, but felt compelled to tell recruiter #3 that perhaps he might want to touch base with his colleagues. (Of course, he might be being asked to compete with his colleagues for a position. Yuck.)

Somebody once called me at 7 in the morning. I was awake - it was the Monday after the shift to Eastern Standard Time - but wow, that's early.

A few years ago, I had just decided to accept an offer of a writing job from a startup company. The week before I started work, I got a call from a recruiter wanting to talk with me about an "opportunity" (which is what they always call them). When I said that I was about to start a new job, he tried to talk me into taking his job instead of the one I was about to start. Curious, I asked for details - it turned out he was recruiting for the position I had just accepted.

A recruiter phoned me on a Sunday about a job that had been going around a lot of agencies. When he provided details, I told him that I had already applied for that job through another agency. He then offered to try to get me a higher hourly rate, provided that I pull my application from the other agency and go through him instead. Ick.

Some really bad recruiters use a simple checklist when trying to determine suitability for a position, asking questions that have "yes" or "no" answers. ("Do you have the following skills: Microsoft Office? HTML? FrameMaker?") I don't see how this serves as an effective screening tool at all, as the temptation to answer "yes" to everything would be difficult for some job seekers to resist. (Me, I'm always honest. This may not be an effective strategy, but I can look at myself in the mirror without flinching.)

And last, and definitely least: I was contacted by a recruiting firm that wanted me to go out to Mississauga for a face-to-face interview. When I asked whether we could do this over the phone (I don't have a car), the caller said no. After the caller hung up, I did a Google search on the firm's name, and found out that there had been complaints about them: apparently, they get candidates into their office, and then try to offer them "special access to the hidden job market" for a fee. Worse still, the fee is apparently based on an estimate of the candidate's ability to pay. If you're well dressed, and look vulnerable, they'll try to hit you up for more.

All of this would be annoying enough if recruiters were successful at finding people jobs. But I've found that I virtually never get good job leads through recruiters: they only get their hands on jobs that nobody really wants. Which is why I'm trying to learn how to network - which is a difficult thing for a shy geeky person to do!