Breaking up

Oh, my ears and whiskers—the whole recruiting system!

I’ve noticed that, since I started my new job last month, I’ve suddenly become more attractive to recruiters. Real recruiters, I mean, not the Bangalore-based contract spammers who tout sysadmin or dev jobs in various places 1500 miles away from me.

No, these are in-house recruiters for actual product management jobs. Although some are 2500 miles from me. (I turned down a technical product manager job in Los Altos, California, last week by saying I didn’t meet their criteria. The recruiter came back with another TPM opening in Baltimore. She said their VP of Product personally said he wanted me to apply because I’m such a good match. I’m not.)

The one that cracked me up, however, was from another infosec company. I applied for a product marketing manager job with them in [checks notes] June. And I had an internal referral, which is supposed to mean you get more attention that tossing your résumé in over the transom. It was in Boston, but still worth a shot.

Aside from the system-generated “we’ve received your application” email, I heard nothing. Until last week, when a human recruiter emailed to set up a time to talk about the position.

Well, after laughing some, I replied thanking her for reaching out, but said that in the intervening time I’d accepted another position. I did not specify where it was. She thanked me and it was too bad the timing wasn’t right (yeah, hon—like it took four months to fire up your email?) and we should stay in touch. Yeah, whatever.

But yesterday I got a system-generated email from their applicant tracking system (ATS) saying that they’d decided to pursue other candidates that would make the most immediate impact for the business needs.

Dudes—you did not fire me; I quit.