Recruiters 11

I was heading out the door for a writing date yesterday morning when the phone rang—Shruti, a recruiter for one of the 374,533 IT job shops in this country, gabbling like all her counterparts as fast as she could about a contract product manager position in “San Joz, California” (I’m not making that up. She’s located in Jersey City—and I’m not making that up, either—but you’d think that if you do any amount of recruiting or managing contracts for the Silicon Valley you’d be able to pronounce the name of the linchpin city; evidently you’d be wrong), and was I “comfortable” with that?

She was well on her way to bludgeoning me into committing to her representation right then when I interrupted. First, I asked her to call me by my actual, you know, name. There is nothing guaranteed to get up my nose faster than putting an N in my first name; if you can’t read what’s in front of you, especially in a people-oriented business, you get nothing but well-earned contempt. Then I said that if she emailed me a job description I could then discuss details.

She said she was doing that immediately and wanted to know when I’d reply. I said that I was just leaving (not yet 0800) but I’d get back to her later in the morning. She was clearly dismayed.

“Later?" Voice drifting off into disbelief. "Not in…30 minutes?”

No.

Oh, okay.

Well, here’s what she sent me:

“We have an urgent opening with one of our client. [sic] Kindly let me know if you are comfortable with the requirement. Send me your updated RESUME along with following details ASAP:

“Full Name (as per passport):
“Current Full Address:
“Contact Number:
“Email:
“Availability:
“Availability for Face-to-face interview (Yes/No):
“Any Relocation “Issue:
“Visa Status:
“Employer Details:

“Location: San Jose, CA
“F2F interview will be there.
“Product Manager - Contract to Hire“- Front line product manager - owns a particular product line, but doesn't necessarily set strategy“- Must have: Experience with Enterprise and SaaS software product offerings is required“- Familiarity with Energy domain a major plus”

Now, even for a job shop recruiter this is paltry and certainly not enough information for me to decide whether I’m “comfortable” with discussing it. I replied to her email asking for some level of detail, but of course I’ve had nothing back from her.

(I did, however, find the same email from Shruti later in the day in the queue of the email address I use in my Dice.com profile. My name, with or without the N, is unique; Shruti just isn’t paying attention. I know that, even if she actually types in the email address manually instead of having an algorithm that matches up addresses in her database with email content, it’s not much of an effort. But this duplication is sloppy and not a recommendation for her company as being able to manage a contract employee out of a paper bag.)

Then, late in the day I received an unintelligible voicemail and an email from a recruiter from another job shop with the exact same four-line description. She didn’t inquire about my comfort level. Just for the sake of messing with her, I sent the same “give me details” email.

Guess whether I’ve had a response.