How many headhunters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Excuse me. But there must be a newsgroup for job rants?

Excuse me. But there must be a newsgroup for job rants?

So, you haven't read "what color is your parachute?".

Rarely do you get jobs by applying through the company channels. It happens (it's happened twice to me, and to at least 1/3 of the folks that I've been involved in hiring).

Where you'll do the best job getting hired is through a friend. You want the hiring manager to be sitting at his desk with your resume, telling HR to give you a call. Not only will he be pestering HR to make sure he gets to talk to you, but he'll have the recommendation of the friend of yours who gave him the resume, so he knows that you do well past the interview.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

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"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" came out in April.
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I have read quite a few of your posts now, and have recently contributed to one. The more i think about it, the more you are starting to look like a dickweed who has been sacked from a job and cant get another. Is this the case?

Tim, What you say is true..But first you have to have a friend that respects your abilities enough to put his/her own credibility on the line..

Ken Asbury

And if you've been in the biz for a decade and can't find such a friend (or acquaintance) then perhaps you need a change of career.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google?  See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" came out in April.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

Yes, but to be fair to them (I'll be washing my mouth out with soap and water after this ;-) ) most are not trained engineers with lots of engineering experience behind them. You must not expect more. If you do you will be disappointed. Some of them can lack scruples but that is different.

Are you sure about this? That's new to me. I don't think that is how they operate here in the UK.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I sense that may be you starting to get a chip on your shoulder.....

If you're job hunting more positive is what you need e.g. thinking "that nice lady in the HR department" is much better for you in the long term, not least because a lot of them are, even if it's concealed under some sort of weird corporate veneer (always the optimist).

Regards,

Paul.

Depends on the firm/office here in the US. In some, a junior headhunter will search resumes and the job sites looking for candidates and then making initial contact. Then a more senior headhunter will take over to inform you about his "client", actually "present" your resume to the client, and go on from there if there is any further interest.

In other firms, one person does the whole thing from initial contact on.

I actually had some dealings with a "junior" some time ago who handed me off to a "senior." After a week with no contact, I called the "junior" back. Turns out the "senior" had decided to move on. He wanted to pass me on to another "senior" but I suggested he step up and assume responsibility. He did get approval to do this, but it wasn't a job I was interested in when I found out the details.

~Dave~

In my opinion, many of the HR people are drawn to the job because they are friendly outgoing types who are doing it because enjoy meeting new people and getting to know them. I would say that, of the ones I've met, most are genuinely nice people who will try to help out wherever they can.

However, they think very differently to engineers and the things they feel are important are completely different too. For example, if they promise to do something and forget then this is not a problem to them because in their world you just go over and have a chat and remind them and everything is friendly and solved. However, if you don't chat to them and do the friendly thing then they take great offence and, due to their continual bondings with colleagues, word of your rudeness spreads quickly and you find HR suddenly becomes a frosty place for you.

I suspect many engineers who have difficulties with HR have probably treated them as they would another engineer and haven't realised that you need to be more touchy-feely and smiley to get anything out of them.

It's rather like dealing with women.

(sharp intake of breath) - You might get away with that, as this group has mostly male participants - we'll see :-)

Regards,

Paul.

On Feb 9, 4:47 am, "Tom Lucas"

IME it is almost exactly like dealing with women, mainly because the HR field seems to be predominantly female (at least all the large corporations that have impinged on my life).

Restate that: It's rather like dealing with non-engineers.

Furthermore, I would go so far as to say that engineers who cannot deal with other people (especially clients) have reached the limits of their advancement. At some stage, all engineers have to deal with people from other disciplines, and if they cannot or are not prepared to, they are severely limited both professionally and in general.

Stephen

--
Stephen Pelc, stephenXXX@mpeforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
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In answer to the question in your subject line, the generally accepted answer is two, with the reference configuration being one male and one female.

Well OK then. I suppose I'd better start behaving myself with Valentine's day coming up!

I think there are still places they can hide in big companies where they need have little or no contact with real people but their promotion prospects are nil. Of course, that suits some people but it's hard to know for sure because, by definition, it is impossible to meet the people it suits!

Personally, I rather like the meeting people aspect and being stuck in my office on my own is a bit too lonely for me :-( Fortunately I've got some new folk starting at the end of the month and I can release my months of stored conversation on them!

And with people in their own disciplines. I have unfortunately encountered engineers with speaking and listening skills that are worse than those of five year olds. (In the uk, speaking and listening is taught to primary age children). The root cause is ego.

Regards,

Paul.

I talked to a "senior" recruiter once who informed me that he was paid (some outrageous amount) for his work and wouldn't waste his time answering questions from prospective recruits about advertised positions! I don't predict a very good future for that AA (arrogant asshole).

You either have very large lightbulbs or very small headhunters.

Stephen

--
Stephen Pelc, stephenXXX@mpeforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeforth.com - free VFX Forth downloads

Hair lice are small headhunters; many of them will fit in a single light bulb.

Anyway, there is a 14-foot light bulb not too far away from me in Menlo Park, NJ:

I don't think it is always ego, I think there's a strong correlation between the kind of detail-oriented, task-oriented people who become engineers, and scoring high on the autism spectrum. I've worked for two guys in the past whose behaviour I could characterise as somewhat Aspergers - one slightly so, one quite profoundly so. Both were great thinkers, one a superb theorist and the other a great implementer. One of them could communicate but found it difficult and was clearly

*trying*; the other made a complete hash of any human aspects of his job but wasn't aware of it.

Sadly one project got stuck with these two guys trying to communicate with each other - they ended up using me as a go-between a lot of the time. (Which was an interesting way of slipping new features into the spec ;))

pete

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pete@fenelon.com "it made about as much sense as a polythene sandwich"