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WTF Stories #5 : The Weasely Recruiter
May 23, 2007 07:54 perm link Readers: 5208

One of the worst things about being a programmer is dealing with recruiters. A few are great, most are useless, and some make black mold look appealing.

Generally recruiters only make money if they land you a job or contract. It also appears that in order to be allowed to continue on as a recruiter, they need to occasionally send a resume to an employer (sort of a ping) or they will be forgotten and begin to grow mold. So the race is on to grab as many resumes as possible.

Employers generally hate recruiters as much as the employees. They get slammed with as many worthless resumes as possible for every job on the thought that maybe one will stick. The theory is that recruiters only bring well-qualified prospects to the employer but the reality has more in common with a dump truck.

I have had recruiters:

  1. try to sell me on a great job which turns out to be the job I just left (and first on my resume)
  2. send me to interviews for jobs I had no interest in or qualifications for
  3. edit my resume to suit the job but not tell me ahead of time
  4. submit me to employers without my knowledge

These, however, are fairly common and not WTFs by themselves. The next two are my top winners. Or losers; take your pick.

Preliminary Bout

A long time ago before the web, I talked with a recruiter in New York City about a job at a big investment bank (J.P.Morgan). After the usual BS he pointed out that suits were required for this job, which I indicated I didn't own and never wore.

"You will have to buy a large set of suits for this job."

We then talked money and it wasn't much, so I mentioned I couldn't see how to afford to live in NYC on what he was offering.

"You can stay at the YMCA."

At this point I wondered if there was a businessman in the Village People. The song danced in my head and I openly wondered where I would hang all my suits, in the locker with the Indian Chief's headdress? What kind of an idiot would even suggest such a thing, work on Wall Street and live in a popular song.

I said no.

Main Event

Recently I talked with a local recruiter who promised me I could start the next day. He only said the requirements were strong Java and familiarity with OpenCMS. When I asked about what the job entailed, he said he didn't know but another recruiter from another recruiting firm "he worked with" would call me at 13:30 and give me the details.

So at 13:00 I get a call from this other recruiter. He immediately started to extol the company I would be working for, their customers love them, the two owners are his best friends, one of them is "the smarted DBA in all of Texas", etc.

So I asked him what the job involved.

He continued praising the opportunity for a bit more and then said I could start that afternoon after I talked with his two buddies. I then told him "I can't see signing a contract without knowing what the job involves". He asked me if I knew Java (well of course) and I told him I had downloaded OpenCMS once but never used it. That didn't seem to matter to him. Now we were down to one requirement, Java.

After more questioning he mentioned that the actual work would be "writing business applications" for a separate company but he didn't "know" what that meant. At this point I was long past caring but wanted to see where this surreal conversation would go so I pressed on.

Now he mentioned that this other company was in talks to be bought by the first company and that they were still in negotiation. When I asked about the team I would be working with he said "they had 20 people but now only have 2".

So, I asked again, what would I be doing with these 2 people? "I don't know" he said, (big surprise) "but when you talk with (his buddies) you can ask them".

Now we talked a bit about money, which was way below anything I would consider so I said "no thank you" to finally end this. He tried the great company spiel again but it was over soon.

Only after we hung up that I was able to analyze the conversation. I bet since the first company was buying the assets of the second (failing) company they needed someone to support the existing applications during the transition. So basically this job was tech support hand-holding of a bunch of angry customers of some business applications written in Java and running on OpenCMS.

Maybe I could have sung YMCA to placate them.

My Tags:

  • Topbit: May 23, 2007 15:29

    My own favourite recruiter story was maybe eight years ago now - I was taking a day or two to tweak my CV for a company, via a small recruitment firm. Then I got a call from the big recruitment company in town, who had a CV on file - they had already forwarded it to a company and she wanted to arrange a time for the employer to interview me. Being sent to the company I was carefully honing my CV for annoyed me, of course

    I told the little firm of the annoyance, and I suspect he had a few words with his wife when he got home. His wife that worked at the bigger recruiter - and who had sent my CV without asking me....

  • JobSeeker: May 24, 2007 06:49

    "I'm a macho, macho, macho ..."

    Oops, wrong song.

    For those who may not know some YMCAs run low cost hotels. These days those that remain tend to be "exciting" places to live, since their low cost attracts parolees, almost homeless people, etc etc.

    Anyway, one time I went on an interview for a contract position, arranged through a decent enough recruiter. I bring some copies of my resume, as recommended.

    One of the interviewers looks at my copy and says it doesn't match the one they sent out.

    What the agency had done is change every job I'd ever held to a contract job, to make me look like a long term contractor instead of a guy out of work and looking for more or less any work he could find.

    Not a bad idea in some ways, but very embarassing. I did get the position but it was still unnerving, and could have cost me the job.

  • tom biggs: May 24, 2007 07:15

    I was very careful not to let anyone know that I was moving on from the

    job I was working. The work was good but the constant layoffs were making

    me nervous; I'd just had my second child. So I did want to keep the job until

    I got another.

    The recruiter thought he had something hot, but couldn't reach me at my desk

    phone - so he had me paged. I was in an important meeting with my boss,

    *his* boss, and the whole team! And the moron recruiter just couldn't seem to

    understand why that made me angry. I went back to the meeting and lied

    that one of my kids was sick, etc., which worked, but I hated doing it.

    When a friend and I had our own company, we made the mistake of asking a

    recruiter to find us a junior C programmer. This jerkwad called us every day

    with the most inappropriate candidates. "Hey, this guy is sharp! Lots of COBOL

    experience!" "Yo, just because the language starts with 'C' doesn't mean... oh,

    forget it!" It almost took threats of violence to get him to stop calling us.

    We tried polite hints at first, then simple requests, firm requests next, finally we

    resorted to shouting into the phone "You're an IDIOT! DON'T CALL US ANY MORE!"

  • Warren Henning: May 24, 2007 12:24

    http://users.adelphia.net/~33h3q/ymca.jpg

  • Noo Yorker: May 25, 2007 04:24

    JPM and other big banks do pay well, actually. It sounds like recruiter no. 1 got a bit greedy and was trying to pocket too much of the excess for himself.

  • Noo Yorker: May 25, 2007 05:45

    Also, have you thought of circumventing the brokers completely, and doing your own marketing?

    Here's an old forum post talking about this very idea: http://p222.ezboard.com/fcomputerconsultantsdealingwithbrokers.showNextMessage?topicID=2332.topic

  • Rob Menke: May 25, 2007 12:24

    My personal favorites are the recruiters that try to be "helpful" but don't understand what they're doing. Two years ago, when I was returning to the tech world after a long sabbatical, I had a recruiter submit my resume with "typographical corrections." He thought I had typed "X" when I meant "MS," so all of my X windows experience became... the wrong kind of Windows experience. Fortunately, the recipient of the adulterated resume had a sense of humor and the technical background to understand the difference between Microsoft and X11.

    There was also an in-house recruiter who started insulting me for not wanting to do MS Windows development, with blanket statements like "only idiots would ignore Microsoft"; he then had the audacity to suggest I come in for an interview. Desperation and condescension do not mix well. (They keep calling, as they have a high turnover rate in their HR department.)

    Sometimes it takes two to tangle: During one interview, the recruiter spent over an hour extolling the virtues of the company, before injecting sotto voce, "We wear suits here; your cover letter says you don't wear suits. Will that be a problem?" My response was far from mature, and her rejoinder was equally rude. I could have handled that one much more gracefully.

  • David: Jun 08, 2007 12:22

    I'll keep this short: a recent but noteable recruiter interview (I think they wanted to see how old I am) remarked after looking over my resume wanted to know what were all the references to: JDK on my resume! Geezenslaw out!

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