Why are headhunters overwhelmingly idiots?

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Quite a lot of headhunters/recruitment 'consultants' (in UK) are just glorified insurance/snake oil sales people with the so called ability to matchthings up. Often some companies have targets to meet so do simple word searches and never read the resume/CV.

I have in the past had problems with "VME bus" and "VME Operating System", those who know the later will know that it is rarely considered an embedded system let alone a small system!

Personally I think resumes/CVs should be distributed as image files, with sufficient added noise to the image to make OCR very difficult. To force reading and stop word searches and changing of the documents to send to potential clients/employers.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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Not all. I haven't met that many who insisted on flaunting their ignorance. The smart ones will learn from you. But then, when I'm usually out of work, so are a ton of other programmers and I seldom get such calls. I wonder if there's a website to showcase such experiences. You see a lot of "Do's and Don'ts of Interviews", maybe there should be a "Dos and Don'ts for headhunters".

I have a technique that handles this.

(Note; this is only for idiot recruiters. *Ignorant* recruiters get a different treatment; walking them through what each part of the job desciption means, helping them to do their job better.)

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GM: "Guy Macon speaking."

HH: "Hi! I am a recruiter and I have a job that you might be interested in."

GM: "Great! Have you looked at my online resume at

"

HH: "I don't have internet access here."

GM: "I'm sorry, but I only deal with recruiters who are able to read my online resume. Feel free to call back when you have done so. [CLICK].

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

GM: "Guy Macon speaking."

HH: "Hello. I represent XYZ recruiting. Do you have a moment to speak?"

GM: "Glad to. Have you looked at my online resume at

"

HH: "Yes, I have it in front of me. I have a position that has the following requirements. [long list of buzzwords ending with a requirement for a degree in mechanical engineering]."

GM: "Did you read the section of my online resume titled "education?"

HH: "Yes, I read that."

GM: "Why, then are you wasting my time with a position that requires a degree in mechanical engineering? Feel free to call back when you have a position that matches my qualifications. [CLICK].

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I have found that roughly 90% or recruiters *have* read my online resume and *have* done their best to match me up with the job. Those recruiters get treated with the respect they deserve. The ones who screw up on matching person to job will no doubt screw up in many othetr ways, so I don't want to deal with them.

Not all, but a lot of them are. There's a very high turnover rate, and most of them only last a few months. They typically have no training or experience in either HR or the field for which they're recruiting.

Most are just sales people making cold calls with a script in hand.

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really

like

Java.

Too many are, in my experience. My pet peeve was being asked to "tweek" my resume for each and every prospective employer. After doing that twice I refused all further such requests. I was an Assurance engineer who specialized in the IBM S/370 "channel"; any prospective employer who doesn't understand that short and to-the-point job descripton doesn't need my skills.

... snip ...

I assume you are restricting your job search to firms that want an "Assurance engineer specializing in the IBM S/370 channel" and that you have no interest in any other type of position. If this is correct your attitude makes sense. Good luck, you will need it.

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No, most of them are *much* worse.

IAn

--
Ian Bell

Which begs the question "are there headhunters for headhunters?"

Not that I know of. The ones I knew started out as HR recruiters or they just answered an ad in the paper and went to work for a sweatshop type operation.

"begs the question" refers to making an argument containing the logical fallacy in which the argument assumes as a premise the result being proved. It's pretty much the same as a circular argument.

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                               visi.com

[%X]

Of the order of 90% are probably retarded to this sort of degree. Of the remaining 10% half will be quite decent worthwhile companies that will be quite clued up on the positions they are offering. The trick is finding those few.

I don't know any US ones but I do know some good UK ones.

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No. Headhunters are for hard-to-fill positions. Nobody is going to pay that extra expense for a position where a newspaper ad gets them more applicants than they can handle.

I was contacted by a recruiter for a job that sounded interesting but the job description/location/etc. was somewhat vague and I wanted some questions answered. When I got the guy on the phone after not being able to get any answers via email, he said that he makes $200/hour and doesn't have time to answer questions!

If they know anything about programming they wouldn't be headhunting programmers but they'd get their own programming job!

Norm

The short and irresponsible answer: yes.

In my experience HH firms are generally manned by failed salesemen and managers. One bad thing is that they are messing up the job market by their sheer ignorance, but worse is the effect that they create a barrier between employer and employees. A barrier that wasn't there afew years ago when real people actually spoke directly togehter about the real issues.

HH ads that I see all to often goes almost like this: "Engineer wanted for company." The people that puts up ads like that probably know little more than what is literally stated. IMO that's an insult to both the anonymous company and the potential employee.

Another strange thing is that many firms seemingly care more for exposing you to (bogus) "personality tests", than examining your professional ability. How low can you go?

There may be competent HH firms out there, that does something more than leeching. I hope to make such an observation one day, but maybe I'll be better off looking for Dodos :-D

DJ

Yeah, that's how it always starts out. They may SAY they just want some company, but they want a lot more!

But before you know it, you're holding hands, then engaged, then married with 2 kids...

Give 'em inch, they'll take a mile.

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Here's one for you...

A while back I was contracting and was contacted by a head hunter about a job "involving linux running on a proprietory platform". She couldn't tell me much more about it but set me up with an "interview" with the client the following day.

I turn up, and they tell me that they'd like to be able to run linux on their hardware (I can't recall which processor it was, but Linux already ran on that processor). I told them that I've never actually bootstrapped Linux on another platform but couldn't see why it wouldn't be possible, and that I can look into it. With that they nodded and walked away.

So here I am, sitting at the desk, thinking they'll return in a few minutes. I think nothing of it and start to look into things, read doco, source etc. Before I know it, it's lunchtime and they're inviting me out to lunch. We return to the office, they ask how I'm going, and I say that I'm confident it's do-able (they had a 4 week schedule). Again they leave me to it. By about 3pm I'm starting to think they're milking some free advice so I get up and try to find someone (the office is almost empty). After a quick chat I realise that they're under the impression that this is no interview at all - and that I've actually *started* working for them!!!

I go downstairs, ring the HH to find out WTF is going on and she swears it was supposed to be an interview! I leave the matter with her to sort out and head home.

[At the risk of being labelled a sexist pig, I actually met this HH a few years beforehand and her only saving grace was the fact that she was, quite simply, stunning! ;)]

As luck would have it, that same afternoon I get a call about another (longer term) contract with former colleagues and I could tell the HH "thanks, but no thanks". They obviously had a lot of trouble trying to find someone to do the job because she begged me to reconsider and offered me more money just to stay for a few days until she found someone else!

Regards, Mark

[...]

If I had a file, this would go into it. You can't make this stuff up!

[...]

[snip] [snip]

LOL - Undoubdedtly! :D

Heres an HH anecdote:

One time I had announced myself available and registered my CV. The CV is the kind that a computer/embedded engineer has. As it happens it has the word "development" in it. This led to an HH contacting me, wanting me to start working in a property broker firm doing "property development". He was very insistent that I would be a good man for the job with all my development experience...

DJ

retarded?

I must've been really lucky then. All my recent pimps have perfectly well understood what "embedded" means, and how my CV and potential jobs will relate to each other.

Richard [in PE12]