I got a few responses like the below. It's true that there are recruiters out there that don't have much to offer, and in my own records I maintain a "standing" field for each agency based on their past behavior; of the scores or hundreds of companies in my contact database, maybe a half dozen have earned a do-not-employ rating from me, when I catch them in practices I regard as dishonest.
And I admit that even among the folks I respond politely to, I don't give them all the same degree of attention. But if you're serious about contracting - and I've been doing it since 1996 - well, of course you have to sift out the agencies that can bring you work from the ones that only hope to. The only way I've found to do that is to talk to them, find out what they offer. And yes, these recruiters don't really know what I do for a living. How could they? So given the opportunity I occasionally spend a few minutes explaining a little about RACF/ACF2/TSS, or that when a client says he wants COBOL, CICS and JCL, the JCL part may be optional but CICS probably is not. Mostly these folks are willing to learn more; it's important to their effectiveness, after all. It's a good investment of my time, from which everyone benefits - the gig worker, the head-hunter and the client. --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* I much prefer life under the U.S. Government to life under the brutal Chinese regime, because many of our freedoms have, after all, survived the U.S. Government's efforts to whittle them away. But this is not to say that we owe those freedoms to our government.... -Joseph Sobran, 2001-04-03 */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Chris Hoelscher Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 11:56 Was this a "fishing" email? -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Seymour J Metz Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 11:35 ...How many of the reqs are real and how many are just stockpiling resumes? -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of David Elliot Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 11:11 Yes. I get these things by the ton too. Greetinshowareyoutodayhopyoudoingreat don't waste your time with these things there's nothing behind most of them. --- On Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:50 AM Bob Bridges <[email protected]> wrote: > Not too long ago on the RACF-L listserv someone mentioned a dearth of > mainframe jobs, and I opened my mouth and put my foot in it: I said I > get emails from recruiters pretty frequently and I could pass along > some of them if anyone was interested. I immediately became the > possessor of a short distribution list of folks from RACF-L who were > interested in seeing any interesting-looking reqs I got. > > Just about that time the COVID problem became real (I guess it was > longer ago than I realized), so nowadays instead of half a dozen in a > week I get only two or three tops. I'm still passing them > along...but it occurs to me maybe the handful of people on my list > aren't the only ones out there interested in finding mainframe work. > > The reqs I get are usually (but not always) for contract work, almost > always (with only a few exceptions) for the mainframe, about half for > security and half for development of some kind. I'm not getting > anything for this, nor asking anything; all I do is create a new > email, attach a few emails to it and send it to the list. So if > anyone here is looking around, let me know and I'll add you to my list. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
