Yep, it’s job hunting season…that special time that comes around every so often when one works as a contractor in the tech industry.
Once upon a time, my husband and I were both FTEs – full-time employees – for that software company that starts with an “M” and ends with a “soft” located in Redmond, Washington.
More accurately, he was an FTE for many years before I got there, and he was an FTE for a couple of years after I was gone (from the company, not from the marriage). After almost a decade of doing a job he loved, working with people he liked (for the most part), he finally got re-orged into the group from hell with the asshat lead – you know the one. Late into the second full year of a group-wide death march, his lead told my husband, “The rest of the team is working 80-hour weeks. If you’re not willing to do the same, then we’ll find someone who will.” With 5 children at home between the ages of 7 and 13 who ate dinner with their father every evening, my husband told him, “Go ahead,” and submitted his resignation. Good-by blue badge; hello orange badge. Thus began our now 18-year love/hate relationship with recruiters.
A world-class individual contributor – the most solid of draft horses in a field of high-maintenance race horses, my husband – the consummate team player, head down, get the job done data guy – doesn’t do drama, doesn’t care about career advancement, doesn’t like the wrangling about rates and benefits and such. I, on the other hand, am well-suited for such endeavors, and it is not uncommon for the initial contact between “my husband” and a recruiter to be handled by me, communicating as him.
Back In the day, jobs were plentiful in Craig’s List; however, today LinkedIn is the place to be, and be seen. When one is “open to work” on LinkedIn, one almost immediately begins to receive contacts from technical recruiters. With the advent of LinkedIn, however, the collective IQ of the technical recruiting profession has declined precipitously.
Based on what we have been receiving, it is crystal clear that reading is not a requirement for someone to hang out one’s proverbial shingle as a technical recruiter.
One of the most recent inquiries he received reads:
I’m a recruiter with <company name redacted> and your experience is exactly what I’m looking for to fill our Full Stack Developer role (Full-Time).
• Strong command of Java 8+ with 5+ years of application development experience.
• Experience with Spring framework (Spring Boot preferred).
• Experience with Angular, HTML, CSS and NgRx
• Be familiar and able to contribute with Angular/HTML/CSS and NgRx (reactive state management)
Sounds great, right? The only problem is that none of that is on his resume…not a single thing. It would actually be funny if this were a one-off, but unfortunately this is more the norm than the exception. Looking for a fully remote data engineering job as an individual contributor with Microsoft? I’ve got just the data architect position onsite in Dallas, Texas, managing 25 data engineers – you’d be a perfect fit. Comparatively speaking, it’s like calling up a gynecologist to have your prostate examined. Similar concepts, but you just can’t get there from here.
The other big problem is the total lack of professionalism from most technical recruiters. Emails that have the same paragraph twice, because copy/paste just got away from the sender; spelling that wouldn’t pass elementary school; and grammar that rivals that of the Nigerian Prince who wants to send me a gazillion-million “US dollar – please send bank account inf0 by replay male.”
There is a plethora of advice by this blogger or that career coach out there on how to write, organize, and manage one’s LinkedIn profile. Ditto on the resume – include this, but don’t include that. Focus on A, but minimize B. Use this font, bold that heading, make sure this is in all caps, make sure to bullet point this section correctly. And why not? I mean, these are six-figure positions that require a college degree and a significant amount of technical experience. Details are important, right? Likewise, one would expect the process of recruiting for such a high-end position to be carried out with the same attention to detail, Wrong.
Yes, it is true…there are a few technical recruiters that clearly demonstrate that they are entitled to the “professional” descriptor. They are, however, very few and very far between. Negotiating with the rest of the herd – especially over the static-filled “phone” line that cuts in and out on every other word – reminds me of bargaining with a vendor at a booth in a third-world bazaar while bootlegged techno funk blares through speakers that were brand new during the Clinton Administration. Yep, we’re ready to take on this great new contract…just as soon as we scrape the goat dung off our shoes. But alas…gotta’ run. A recruiter from <company name redacted> just sent a message through LinkedIn. “I’ve got a full-time UX/UI designer position onsite in Minneapolis. I can tell by your LinkedIn profile, you’d be a perfect fit.”