Spidey sense - tingling!
Sep. 30th, 2009 03:45 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
the-s-guy.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
techrecoverySo I get a phone call from a recruiter, wanting to ping me for a TS job. This one's slightly more interesting than the slush pile as it's for the federal cops, in a town I did a couple of years' work in a while back. I ask for criteria and worm an email out of the caller. Some time later, it turns up.
Feels... odd, though. Something not right. For starters, the criteria to apply against are really vague, and aren't in a format even remotely resembling the one I've come to expect from federal agencies - and in my time, I've applied for a _lot_ of federal jobs.
So I react as any tech would, and start poking around. I check the agency's website - no IT positions open. At all. Suspicious, but possible if they're going through a contractor. I email their HR department and ask some questions about the team "because of the open positions". Get reply back "There are no open IT positions in the Department."
Are there not, now?
Forward them recruiter's email bragging about the multiple jobs in their helpdesk he's apparently recruiting for. Include his name, contact details, and office address conveniently ten minutes' drive from their HQ.
Send reply to recruiter -
"There seems to be some difference of opinion between you and the federal police about the existence of these positions. Have sent them all your details so things can be straightened out.
Fortunately, as an IT technician, my skillset includes diagnosing when something's not as it should be, and fixing things so that it doesn't happen again.
I'm sure this problem will be taken care of very shortly."
Feels... odd, though. Something not right. For starters, the criteria to apply against are really vague, and aren't in a format even remotely resembling the one I've come to expect from federal agencies - and in my time, I've applied for a _lot_ of federal jobs.
So I react as any tech would, and start poking around. I check the agency's website - no IT positions open. At all. Suspicious, but possible if they're going through a contractor. I email their HR department and ask some questions about the team "because of the open positions". Get reply back "There are no open IT positions in the Department."
Are there not, now?
Forward them recruiter's email bragging about the multiple jobs in their helpdesk he's apparently recruiting for. Include his name, contact details, and office address conveniently ten minutes' drive from their HQ.
Send reply to recruiter -
"There seems to be some difference of opinion between you and the federal police about the existence of these positions. Have sent them all your details so things can be straightened out.
Fortunately, as an IT technician, my skillset includes diagnosing when something's not as it should be, and fixing things so that it doesn't happen again.
I'm sure this problem will be taken care of very shortly."
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Date: 2009-09-30 11:49 am (UTC)oh please do update us on the outcome if you hear anything back!
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Date: 2009-09-30 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 12:04 pm (UTC)Incidentally, do you use LinkedIn? Because if you do then they've probably slurped all your detailed into their database. You'd expect it on explicit job boards like Monster and the like, but recruiters spend a lot of time searching LinkedIn too...
Fun times!
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Date: 2009-09-30 02:12 pm (UTC);)
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Date: 2009-09-30 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 02:29 pm (UTC)I should go and update my profile, come to think of it...
;)
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Date: 2009-10-01 12:37 am (UTC)In fact, my multiple unlinked internet presences are all, ahem, 'tuned' in certain ways to achieve certain ends. I figure that people who just want to hang out and chew the fat aren't going to care what's in my bio, and if my data's going to be spidered then it can be data *I* want to be spidered.
(I draw the line at anything which isn't technically true, but there's a lot of ways to say the same thing and to spin by omission.)
It's still amazing that so many people and organisations which deal with the internet and people in IT fields haven't grasped certain fundamentals about the sheer interconnectedness of data involved. Anything which is put anywhere on the internet, anything which goes on a corporate website, anything which is put on an internet form or emailed to anyone else EVER, has a really good chance of being eyeballed by a couple billion people who talk to each other.
Digitally speaking, it really is a case of never typing anything you wouldn't want to see turning up for the next twenty years on the front page of a newspaper on the desk of every single person you've ever known.
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Date: 2009-09-30 12:30 pm (UTC)even better - just browse linkedin or monster, and you'll get as many CVs as you need
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Date: 2009-09-30 12:55 pm (UTC)Which is just as well, considering that processing that data is what pays my wages. :o)
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Date: 2009-09-30 01:41 pm (UTC)So when they reach out instead, what is there to hide, and why lie about a job offer?
just doesn't make sense to me
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Date: 2009-09-30 01:56 pm (UTC)They approach with a good-sounding but bogus job now so that they have your details when something else appears and can contact you again then. If they just said 'can you update your CV and fill out this questionnaire for us even though you're got a job you quite like already and we have nothing lined up for you' they'd not get as many responses.
The slave-traders are probably slightly better than the marketing weasels, but it's a close thing.
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Date: 2009-09-30 02:07 pm (UTC)I left my previous job (and country), with 15 interviews already planned at the new location, most of the jobs half mine due to phone interviews.
Then I land here, and all of a sudden - the economic crisis strikes, and instead of wasting a maximum of 1 week (most of which spent deciding which job out of N choices I would like) I end up looking for a proper job for two months. To make the story short, if it wasn't for a recruiter, I'd be helping users set up their outlook instead of the really nifty job I have now. So I don't mind letting them have their share, especially if it doesn't cost me anything :)
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Date: 2009-09-30 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 02:31 pm (UTC)to quote good ole 'tallica: so fucking what?!
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Date: 2009-09-30 02:26 pm (UTC)The salve-traders charge companies a pretty hefty fee for 'finding' you, and a lot of them are borderline incompetent.
Don't get me wrong, if I was looking for work I'd be giving my details to the local agencies, but they're still evil parasites.
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Date: 2009-09-30 02:34 pm (UTC)>I've seen advertised specifically say 'no recruiters'.
around here the companies prefer to use recruiters, because the recruiter, if he wants to keep working with an employer, will conduct the initial candidate filtering, and will do it well, thus saving the HR expenses for the employer.
>The salve-traders charge companies a pretty hefty fee for 'finding' you,
>and a lot of them are borderline incompetent.
yeah, I've seen quite a few really bad ones, but not as many as actually technically savvy people.
And as I said - they are considered "outsourced HR" so they charge not only for finding, but for digging through CVs as well
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Date: 2009-09-30 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 01:50 pm (UTC)I may be a cynical bastage, but I have had recruiters send me sysadmin candidates who, when asked, did not know hot to troubleshoot a DNS resolution issue and could not tell me what stages a DNS query went though aside from saying that "it went to the Internet cloud" to get the IP address.
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Date: 2009-10-01 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 02:03 pm (UTC)With supposedly 5+ years of experience.
Does not help that I am one of the senior engineers in the office who started on year 10 today and works on both *NIX and Windows boxes for multiple customers.
I hate being asked to sit in on some of these interviews.
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Date: 2009-10-01 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 06:14 pm (UTC)[1] I was working in my home-office so the call got redirected to my home phone... and I ended up deleting it from the company directory just because of these douchebags[3]
[2] if he found my resume online, on my own website, there is the email address right there.
[3] to be honest I have to find a headhunter that is useful.
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Date: 2009-09-30 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 06:27 pm (UTC)I even had one had the guts a couple of weeks ago to email me 3 time in 2 days interval because I didn't reply to his email[1]. Because of course, like all the other, he'd not give a reply in 2 business days (or month).
[1] there are plenty of reasons, the first 3 are that I'm employed, the position is in a wrong country, and he didn't name the company. so why wasting time. Better spent on LJ ;-)
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Date: 2009-09-30 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-03 05:19 am (UTC)