Clue for the clueless....ie IT recruiters

bigred

Penultimate Amazing
bigred
Joined
Jan 19, 2005
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Location
USA
I had a phone interview for a "Tester" position the other day....turns out they were looking for UNIX Sys Admin.

And on more than a few occasions I've applied or inquired about a "Business Analyst" position.....and it turns out they're looking for a programmer.

Earth to recruiters: please learn at least A LITTLE about what these terms actually mean before you screw up both the company you're trying to help and potential candidates by mis-labelling them. cripes
 
Also, let the technical people write the job ads for technical positions.

Nobody with a master's degree and fifteen years experience is going to take a junior programmer position making $25K a year, so stop asking for those qualifications!

You don't need a BA to make a website!

And, for reasons that should be obvious to all the world outside of HR, it's going to be very difficult finding someone who has "7+ years experience Visual Basic.NET". It hasn't existed for 7 years yet.
 
lol. Exactly.

I just got an email from someone who said they got my resume off of Dice.com and I'm "an excellent match" for this job and listed the 3 main things they were looking for. I never worked with the first 2 and never even heard of the 3d.

Also I'm getting REAL tired of recruits whose mastery of the English language makes Tonto look good.
 
Oh yes, and how the hell can you misspell an acronym?

And if you want someone to do 3 jobs, pay at least the going rate for 1 of them.

Could be worse. I once contacted the British Computer Society asking for an info pack. They didn't know how to spell IBM.
 
lol.

That beats the one I got for someone who knows "Dataware Housing" (they confirmed this wasn't a typo) :rolleyes:

Good ol Fred Majahraha, IT Recruit.
 
And I love the companies that are using outdated technology, and hope to hire people who know it still. My former employer wants VAX database programmers still. They've been looking for some time, since they've all retired by now, and the ones that haven't would want a bit more than $23,500 a year. There are no fresh young graduates going into VAX databases!
 
TragicMonkey said:
And I love the companies that are using outdated technology, and hope to hire people who know it still. My former employer wants VAX database programmers still. They've been looking for some time, since they've all retired by now, and the ones that haven't would want a bit more than $23,500 a year. There are no fresh young graduates going into VAX databases!
Click to expand...
Ahem. They would be looking for me, actually, and I am not quite yet retired.

But you are correct - I'm neither a fresh young graduate nor prepared to accept $23,500/yr (even in US dollars converted to Oz south-pacific-pesos). But if they up the ante somewhat and sponsor my US working visa, we could be talking turkey.
 
Wow this is like watching "last of the mohicans" ;)

Just make sure you speak English goodly.
 
bigred said:
Wow this is like watching "last of the mohicans" ;)

Just make sure you speak English goodly.
Click to expand...
I have a LOT more (modern) strings to my bow than just VAX stuff! That's just recycling my expertise from 20 years ago. :)
 
How I miss travelling through M6/M5 rush-hour traffic for an "interview" with what I discover to be some agency gimp in a suit, first 'job' since dropping out of college, audible acne and a shirt collar 8 sizes too big that is untutored in the art of knotting a tie.

This genius will then use all his skill and wisdom to match my experience and qualifications that he doesn't understand to a company that he doesn't know in and industry that is incomprehensible to him.

It took me a while to figure that if I could convince them that I can complete the latest video game without losing any lives, I'm suitable as software development director for any company.

;)
 
Ung

I just applied for my DREAM job, which I'm totally qualified for.
But I'd have to sell my house and move to a much bigger city.

I just know they're going to offer me LESS money than I make now. Back when I was fresh out of college I got offered a position all the way on the other coast, for about 5K$ less a year than I was making doing phone support. Bleah. Higher cost of living there too.

I'm starting to wonder how anyone manages to survive, much less buy things now-a-days.

SSR
 
bigred said:
Good to know (PS I'm an old VMS-er myself)
Click to expand...
Oh, YOU'RE the other one! :)

I'm still working on VMS myself on the latest platforms, but I do lots of other stuff as well - Windows, Linux, servers, networking, databases, all sorts of programming, PC support, user support, websites, systems admin, coffee-making, etc...
 
bigred said:
I just got an email from someone who said they got my resume off of Dice.com and I'm "an excellent match" for this job and listed the 3 main things they were looking for. I never worked with the first 2 and never even heard of the 3d.
Click to expand...

I once had a recruiter fax my CV to my own company. Funnily enough I was a really good skills match.
 
richardm said:
I once had a recruiter fax my CV to my own company.
Click to expand...
Ouch.

I always make it clear to the recruiter that if he or she sends my resume ANYWHERE without my explicit permission, he or she will never represent me again.
 
Back when I was in college, a rival university had posted an ad for a sysadmin with god-like skills: something like 10+ years required, with proficiency in every platform known to man, a wide array of programming skills, and a masters degree.

The kicker? They were offering 22K CDN. That translated to roughly 15K USD, perhaps a bit less.

Needless to say, they were still advertizing that position a solid year later when they fell off my radar entirely.
 
lol. I haven't seen any that extreme, but asking for every skill under the sun and giving a lowball offer is not exactly uncommon.

And I'm getting REAL tired of Joe Blow Headhunter "shotgunning" emails out to me offering temp. jobs or jobs in BF Egypt when I've made my desire for permanent jobs in specific areas quite clear.
 
I've got the opposite problem. I'm moving off my job to pastures new and my old job is advertised for 10k more than I got for it. I would have stayed for that!
 
Years ago, while job hunting, I had my resume posted on Monster.com. I'd get occasional emails with potential "job matches". I have nearly 15 years in Quality Assurance. My favorite match was "chinese language translator". I have no idea how it matched my resume to that one!
 
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