I've worked with both, if I do go down this road I know who I don't want to be and that the guy who recruits by attrition. I've been the recipient of the fishing email and phone calls dozens of times, and it's never panned out.
Someone with horribly broken English calls about a job half way across the country and my first response is "are they considering telecommuters", the answer is usually no, or "what?". My next question is "is your client willing to contract a relocation company to move myself and my wife and buy our house". The answer again is usually no, and then they ask if I'm willing to rent an apartment wherever the job is, my answer is always no, because by this point, their asking me to take a financial loss to work for their client. On the other hand there are a handful of recruiters with whom I have had very very successful relationships with, and one in particular who has become a pretty good friend.. why, because they're honest stand up people who look at prospective employment candidates as something more than just an email address or a means to fulfill US State Department guidelines, to bring in H1B Visas candidates. -- Scott Stewart ColdFusion Developer 4405 Oakshyre Way Raleigh, NC 27616 (h) 919.874.6229 (c) 703.220.2835 -----Original Message----- From: William Seiter [mailto:will...@seiter.com] Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 12:50 PM To: cf-jobs-talk Subject: RE: Thinking of a career change.. how does one get into Technical Recruiting.. Some technical recruiters work with the concepts of a fisherman's net. They will catch anyone and everyone for a position, good fit or not. Whenever a recruiter contacts me I take control of the conversation, as I have gotten tired of driving all the way down to 'their' office to fill out their paperwork, just to find out that the job they called me about was not suited for me or my experience levels. Just one story of why it pays to take control of the conversation. I was called by a recruiter who was asking me about my skills for a position she had to fill. After about 15 minutes of talking she said she saw that I had expert skills in Java. I asked her where she saw this and she told me the name of a popular resume site. I immediately pulled up my resume there and looked at it to verify that I was not misrepresenting myself and saw that I made no mention of Java at all in my resume. I am sure many of you have dealt with this yourselves. I told her that I did not have expert skills in Java, and asked her if it was pertinent to the job position. She said it was in the list of required skills and she said that she saw it, then she read to me the line I wrote in that resume describing my Javascript skills. I told her that Javascript is a completely different language from Java. To her credit, she did ask me to explain to her the differences. I did. At least she, hopefully, won't make the same mistake in a future recruitment, but if she hadn't been very conversational, I would have wasted my time going to the interview. I guess I am saying this to you, if you choose to join the ranks of the recruiter, make sure you understand what you are looking for. And if, like so many HR departments do, the requirements look like 'programmer soup' as opposed to a specific requirement, ask the HR department to speak directly to the supervisor who needs the employee. The more knowledgeable of the position you are, the better you present yourself. Looking for a web programmer for a specific company who has to have 8 years of experience in: CF, ASP, .NET, C#, PERL, PHP, C++, JAVA, JavaScript, HTML, PHOTOSHOP, et al Is the same as saying you don't know what you are looking for, unless the actual job description describes why all of the same kinds of programming languages. ------------------ William E. Seiter Need to have your mortgage modified? I charge no fees until I am successful, then I charge almost half the rate you would find elsewhere. Professional. Dedicated. Effective. The Easy 24/7 way to get started: http://www.goldengrove.net/ or you can call: (626) 593 - 5501 -----Original Message----- From: Ravi Gehlot [mailto:r...@ravigehlot.net] Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 8:02 AM To: cf-jobs-talk Subject: Re: Thinking of a career change.. how does one get into Technical Recruiting.. Just my $0.02 cents...I think that recruiters do help one get a job. Yes, most recruiters are all about business but who is not? They try to get you in and if they can not then they go on to the next one. This is just the nature of their business. They gotta make it work and in order to make it work they have to move fast and find the right candidate for the right position. That's fine. However, what I do not agree with is the fact that most of these recruiters are extremely friendly at first and then it all changes afterwards. I have heard this from most programmers. This is not just coming from me. Also, if they can not get you the job that they have been trying to then they also vanish without a trace (this does not apply to all recruiters). They don't even send you an e-mail to say ....go look for a new opportunity. I mean, it only takes 5 seconds right? I took 1 week of my time to talk to you and you do not have 5 seconds to say..."Hey, it did not work but maybe next time?" Also....I had one recruiter call me every 2 weeks to have me rely information about the company hiring procedures. He wanted to know if anyone was being hired directly by the company instead of his recruiting company. So....I try not to be on either side..I am neutral. But man...you come to me to ask me questions but when I go to you to ask you questions you just ignore me? What kind of recruiter-to-programmer relationship is that? This is not an attack on recruiters. My experience with recruiting companies is OK. Will I work with recruiters in the future. YES. Everybody is entitled to making mistakes right? I am sure they also have a lot to tell about programmers too. This is just my $0.02 cents, Ravi. Jerry Johnson wrote: > I was (mostly) kidding. > > But many programmers and tech types do not realize how _hard_ placement folk > work to get someone into a job. > > It seems like free money when you see how much they added to your > contracting rate, or how much you hear they get paid per permanent > placement, but believe it or not it is a difficult job. > > You _need_ to divorce personal feelings for each client from the equation. > It is easy to get paralyzed with "I _need_ a job this week, or I lose my > house (my children are sick, my mother-in-law lives with us, etc)", but you > cannot let it get to you. You need to be able to take 30 rejections in > stride, and swing just as hard, with as much patience and professionalism as > you did on the first. And you need to be able to > > In the glory days of the dot com era it was an easy job. (pick one resume at > random from column a, match with one job opening from column b, profit!) > > But companies (for the most part) are much smarter in their hiring. and tech > staff are much more skittish after bad experiences. So matchmaking is > important if you want any follow on placements. > > The skillset that makes a good recruiter, in my opinion, are very specific. > As Rob mentions below, they need to leave the tech staff feeling decent > (even if turned down), need to leave the company feeling good (whether you > place a person or not, you still want them to keep your card for next time. > Because there will be a next time). You need for your recruiting company to > feel you are contributing. And you need to feel pretty good about what you > are doing (and how you are doing it) or the smudges on your soul get > overwhelming and over time very obvious to others. > > I don't have the right skills, but I respect the skills in others and can > recognize people that do have it all when I meet them. > > > > On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Rich Baker <ri...@teaminfo.com> wrote: > > >> Wow... Probably should have exercised better judgment than in sending >> that email to the whole group... - To each his own >> >> Richard E. Baker | TEAM Information Services >> >> > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-jobs-talk/message.cfm/messageid:4201 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-jobs-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.11
