Lazy headhunters

Headhunter ads posted on sites like Dice and Monster annoy me. The headhunters (they like to be called "recruiters" from "staffing agencies") are serving no purpose. So far, the only purpose I know for a headhunter is to serve as a human search engine matching resume key words with job description key words, but if I'm already using the Dice or Monster search engine then I have no need for the headhunter. When I see these ads, if I can I try to figure out the real company with a Google search on some unique phrase in the job description, so I can go to its web site and apply directly to the original version of the job posting.

If I get desperate, I may try using a headhunter if they actually tell me about a decent job, to reward them for being a good search engine, but once I know the name of the company I will give them some limited amount of time to get me an interview. If they don't then I will assume they are just screwing with me and will send in my resume myself (which is what I would prefer anyway).

I respect companies that post their own job openings. Headhunters just get in my way, ask me to describe in detail my technical experience when they are incapable of understanding it, and misinterpret basic things about the description of the job they are trying to force on me. How can a "recruiter" "recruit" when I can understand the job description better than they can? I'm recruiting myself!

Reply to
BubbaGump
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They're known as "pimps" in my CPOE, although I suspect most pimps are more honest ;)

pete

--
pete@fenelon.com "it made about as much sense as a polythene sandwich"
Reply to
Pete Fenelon

I gave up years ago with agencies. They're the scum of the earth. That and advertising jobs which don't exist just to bolster their candidate database.

Talk bollocks for a living - become a recruitment consultant. ;-)

Reply to
Alison

"Oh that job was filled yesterday, but why don't you come in for a chat because I know of one job that is about to come up - it hasn't been advertised yet because they're still writing a job description but I do know that it's even better than the first one!"

...1 week later...

"It's all set to go but the guy who has to give the final OK for the new position has been on holidays all last week, I should hear back from him this afternoon."

...3 days later...

"I feel really bad because they've been screwing *me* around, which is why I've taken so long to get back to you. Apparently they're going through a restructure, and they're going to try and fill the position in-house. Besides, turns out that the job wasn't quite what they told

*me* and would probably be beneath you. However, I do have a new listing which is *definitely* legit... now I know it won't *sound* like your ideal job at first, but it does have a few things going for it, like that fact that it is right on a public transport route..."

...5 mins later...

"Well yes I realise the company primarily does help desk support for Microsoft Office, but they are looking to expand into high speed digital design... well yes I realise you were earning more at McDonalds when you were at school than what they're offering, but they have very generous performance-based bonus incentives... they've indicated they'll give you a laptop to work on your 4-hour round-trip to/from home each day... yes, you will have to convert to Islam... none of those former employees have established a definite link with brain cancer... why don't you at least go along to the interview and see how you feel after you talk to them?"

...and you never hear from them again!

Regards,

--
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Mark McDougall

Genius. I think we've all heard that very story dozens of times. It *really* starts to get amusing when the first thing a pimp asks you when he phones is "And I suppose you wouldn't contemplate taking a pay-cut?"

pete

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pete@fenelon.com "it made about as much sense as a polythene sandwich"
Reply to
Pete Fenelon

That and

database.

Brilliant!! That really is it entirely. :-)

Oh, and I can structure a sentence and speak plain English. "The reason why your network is so slow is because your external router is being throttled and is 10-years old." Can I have that in plain non-techno babble English please?

Obviously the wrong candidate for the job. We need someone who tells us what we want to hear, and doesn't cause problems.

Reply to
Alison

-- snip --

I was just involved in helping a client do a search for an engineer with a rather unique set of talents. No one was listing, and because the fit would be so narrow I don't blame them.

We got some good valid leads from the head hunters (also a lot of dross, but that's to be expected).

--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

"So Embedded, is that like IT?"

Reply to
Emtech

That's actually missing the point. The real question to be answered is: was the hit/miss ratio of the leads provided by head hunters significantly better than that of other methods? Enough so to warrant their fees?

Reply to
Hans-Bernhard Bröker

My PPOE once had a "preferred supplier" deal with one agency, the logic being that we'd rather only have to deal with one set of pimps.

Of the first 40 "carefully pre-screened" CVs we received from them, we hired nobody. One guy was made an offer but he'd been given entirely unreasonably expectations on salary by the agency; about 6 had got as far as first interviews and of those 6 only half got as far as a second interview, with only that one offer being made....

I actually wrote a blow-by-blow analysis of *why* the CVs they were sending us were inadequate - it didn't appear to change anything...

pete

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pete@fenelon.com "it made about as much sense as a polythene sandwich"
Reply to
Pete Fenelon

You know what I liked about one company I talked to recently is pretty soon after I submitted my resume, the first person they let me talk to in a phone interview was a senior engineer. I don't really care about his senior stature. What mattered to me was that he was an engineer and was able to speak the same language as me (even though he didn't even know English that well). I don't mind too much if the next person I talk to is a business-type person who can assess my lack of ass kissing skills. :-)

I know, recruiters (even internal HR ones) are meant to somehow help out the company by recruiting new people, but how can they when they are not the people really qualified to judge? Couldn't all these recruiters be demoted to mere secretaries who fill out the necessary paperwork? In this educated field, I think there is far too much educated work delegated to uneducated people. Couldn't the actual engineers and team leads be the ones to actually seek people out? I know we have more important things to do like build the actual products the company needs to sell, but an occasionally change of pace isn't too bad. Maybe a couple hours a week engineers and team leads could take a break from coding/designing to look through resumes and interview people.

Reply to
BubbaGump

[...]

That's exactly how we built the teams at my PPOE. The other team leaders and I essentially built our own teams from scratch, teaching ourselves to assess CVs and to interview people effectively. Until the company was taken over by a multinational we had a phenomenally low engineering staff turnover - because we'd recruited *exactly* the people we wanted.

Unfortunately you can only deal with the CVs you get, and at least in the UK that's overwhelmingly done through agencies, so you get a lot of dross that shouldn't even be crossing your desk.

We did have one administrator doing basic sanity checking - throwing out CVs with no/poor degrees, or anything that looked obviously illiterate - but most of the content filtering was done by the senior engineering staff.

pete

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pete@fenelon.com "it made about as much sense as a polythene sandwich"
Reply to
Pete Fenelon

Surely what is important is the absolute number of good CV.

Are you paying the agent for the sorting, or for the leads?

IME if you ask the agent to do too much sorting he will not only sort out the dross, but also the really good ones as they will be easily marketable to companies that aren't running a campaign.

tim

Reply to
tim.....

Am I the only person who doesn't understand ths?

Point to Point over Ethernet, just doesn't fit.

Don't they always.

But perhaps as he was the only one out of 40 that you were prepared to offer to, his expectations weren't that wrong?

tim

Reply to
tim.....

Point-to-Point Over Ethernet?

Reply to
BubbaGump

Previous Place Of Employment.

-a

Reply to
ammonton

Previous place of employment

--
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
Reply to
CBFalconer

Son of a bitch. Internet abbreviations kill me. Come on people. A keyboard makes it easy and comfortable to spell out even long words like supercalifragilisticsexpialodocious (spelling?)

Reply to
BubbaGump

Ta,

tim

Reply to
tim.....

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