February 07, 2006
Recruiters. Grr.
I’m pretty happy working at Atlassian. It’s a great work environment (modulo a few air-conditioning problems), and the work is both challenging, and something I’m personally interested in. As such, there’s probably fewer than a handful of companies that, if they made me an offer commensurate with my abilities, would stand a chance of luring me away.
On Saturday morning, I woke up to an email from one such company, saying they’d found my details online, that they were recruiting software engineers for “a special project”, and would I be interested?
I’m not naive. I gave good odds that I was on the receiving end of a fishing expedition similar to when Eric Raymond got a job offer from Microsoft. I emailed back to say that yes, it was something I would potentially be interested in, and that I might be quite good at, but due to my lack of certain required skills (C++ was listed. Bleah) and general being-in-another-countryness, I probably wouldn’t make the cut.
Come Tuesday, I woke up to another email asking me to send in my resumé anyway. The main problem here is that I don’t have a resumé. The last time I needed one was two years ago, I wrote it using lyx for a laugh, and lost the LaTeX source file. So I spend an hour or so writing a new CV from scratch, mail it off… and within fifteen minutes receive a stock “Sorry, we have nothing suitable for you right now” response.
Grr. That fast a response means a first-pass rejection — I didn’t make the technical requirements for the position. Which is exactly what I said in my email before I had to rewrite my CV. I‘m sure there’s something in the HR manual that says to be sure you get a resumé on file for future reference, but this whole thing leaves me with a “my time is more valuable than your time” taste.
Posted to nerd at February 7, 2006 10:21 AMYou've got to tell me who the company was!
Nick
Posted by: Nick Faiz at February 7, 2006 11:49 AM (#link)hi charles,
some big(and small) companies did such interviewing/recruiting practices a while back in the silicon valley. If their competitor laid off a bunch of people, they would set the recruiters -- get all strategic/tactical information from the various rounds of interviews and ultimately say, we don't have the job for you.
In your case, it did NOT proceed to the interview stage -- maybe the low-level recruiter was told to harvest as many (good) resumes as possible!!
BR,
~A
I would forward the article permalink to general (or management) email address at that recruiting company with a note that the old behaviour no longer works in the internet age.
Attach to that some server statistics of how many people viewed the article and maybe a link or two to similar situations where misbehaviour had backfired fast and hard (Sony DRM case?)
I know it may take 10 minutes more, but in the long run it might be worth it.
Posted by: Alexandre Rafalovitch at February 8, 2006 04:01 AM (#link)I believe everybody should keep their resume up to date at all times. You never know when it will come in handy, and it's hard to go back 2 or more years and remember what you were doing to make a good update when you need it.
Posted by: Ed Burnette at February 9, 2006 12:58 AM (#link)You didn't want to work for Google anyway ;-)
Posted by: Cameron Purdy at February 9, 2006 02:13 AM (#link)I'm ready to abandon resumes, and the experience you recounted is exactly why. I don't keep mine current, and I've never really felt happy with any of the ones I've tossed together.
Maybe the next time I'm in your situation I'll have the guts to say "Thanks, but I don't really keep a resume. You're more than welcome to give me a phone interview instead."
Posted by: Phill at February 9, 2006 11:11 AM (#link)Standard M.O. for most recruitment agenices in the UK: they ask what you do / what you’re interested in doing, then ask you to “send in your CV ayway, you never know”, then tell you they don’t have anything.
Let’s face it, most of the decent jobs nowadays seem to be through people you know and / or mad chance. I’m amazed recruiters still make a living.
Posted by: Ben Poole at February 10, 2006 08:22 AM (#link)So learn C/C++. With what you know of Java, it probably won't be as hard to pick up as you think it will.
Posted by: Lythande BlueStar at March 8, 2006 05:34 PM (#link)