Let me start by clearly stating that not all the agents are the same and not all of them are "bad". However, unfortunately, many fit the description below.
This special breed of people, the perfect salesmen (in their views), is interposing between me and my "happiness" in annoying ways. Here are some things they, and only they, know how to do best:
- They understand 50% (if...) of what you can really do, but they have the audacity to decide your professional life by not putting you forward to the decision maker, the one that would really understand (as he needs and asked for you skills).
Sometimes you don't check a skill and, even they don't know what's the real relevance of it or how easy it is to learn it; they just feel that skill sounds impressive. If you don't have it, you're a looser.
Some other times they don't like you, you'll never know why. - They publish their own, "cloaked" version of a job that's already published directly by the hiring company. They leave the same keywords inside 'cause they're unable to reformulate the skill set.
- They publish non-existent jobs, probably just to motivate their existence to their bosses by pretending they have activity. Moreover, they fish for leads by asking you to provide info about any other interviews you had, motivating that they don't wanna overlap with other agents on the same positions.
I am sure (!) they don't contact an employer if they know that some other agent is already there :) They do have an exaggerated common sense. - They treat us as like... cattle by adding quantities to the job titles, like: "50 perl developers for a big company[...]", "Calling for all perl developers [...]".
We should just moo-in by sending all resumes to them. It's kinda depersonalizing, you know? What about having a regular posting for the job and selecting how many people you needed, afterward? - All the companies they're recruiting for are presented as they are the latest shit on the market, next to Oracle or Microsoft or whatever you consider it's a big shit these days (pun intended :)
Buzzwords include: "thriving environment", "exciting", "world leading", "voted as number one expanding", "global footprint", etc.
Have you thought that I just might prefer a regular sized company that would have obviously many advantages over the corporate, impersonal ones?
- You need to be psychologically abnormally addicted to work to please them. I mean, why would anyone choose to "dream in LAMP", "eat and breathe Perl", have an "Unquenchable thirst to automate mundane tasks" or be a "Perl junkie" instead of being a regular work-life balanced individual?
Unfortunately there are so many companies that act the same through their HR department.
I have a real example, one that is these days on the jobs.perl.org: Heart Internet, UK. They think is ok to cut all communication with me, *after* I spent few good hours on their programming test. I don't care if my solution was dumb or not to their liking, I just consider I am entitled to an answer, at least as a sign of courtesy after wasting my time.
This job based in Nottingham is present on jobsite.co.uk also cloaked by an agent: Simon Harris, Applause IT (see above about cloaking).
Same communication skills from this guy too. I sent them together about 10 emails until now asking for feedback, no reply.
Say, what about a database with agent names and star rating/feedback? Something similar to yelp.com but focused on recruitment agents/companies.
Also, it could be extended for any job recruitment agent, not only for Perl.Anyone?
No comments:
Post a Comment