Recruiters the job market could live without:February 17th, 2004 - It has been a rough couple of years for the computer technology sector in the United States. First, the artificial bubble known as the 'dot-com boom' started to pop in 2000, taking with it a lot of the respect that experienced computer professionals had earned when their talents were nearly priceless. Then off-shoring work to India became the rage for companies who were already losing money, wanted someone to blame, and could distract their stockholders with promises of reduced costs. (The joke has been on them, with rising costs of tech work in India, and subcontractors who are not bound by US law threatening to leak confidential medical records.) Even after the decline of tech work, and in spite of the glut of unemployed system administrators, I get a few cold contacts a week from recruiters. I generally find it a nice break from the monotony of my remote system administration work. Until Saturday…
I admit, I have not taken a technical writing class since college. While I aced my writing classes at the time, email was not an accepted form of business communication in 1989. Yet, I imagine Professor McGraff would throw a flaming fit if a student turned in a letter like this in class. I imagine he would instruct the (failing) student that:
I found the letter to be a rude intrusion upon my day. This person did not consider it worth his time to provide a description of the position, and yet was asking me to provide a copy of my resume. Making a good impression with a potential contract employee was so far down this person's list of priorities that he didn't even bother to sign his ill formed email, he just left in his standard footer. I would like to side-bar for a moment to point out that half of a successful identity theft is knowing the details of the life of the person you are impersonating. A resume is a great place to start. With a resume you can identify the general area in which a person lived, when and for how long. You can identify their employers. You now have a list of companies to call who might give away important information if you can convince them you are with the IRS, checking a reference or trying to collect child support. The human factor is the weakest link in a security system, and a complete resume gives you a lot of links to work on. That said, I don't generally respond to cold-contact emails by just forwarding them a copy of my resume. I prefer to reply via email or call, feel out the position, and let my intuition guide me as to whether or not this is a scam. Sometimes I'm wrong1, but it is better to be safe than sorry. This person did not sound like a legitimate recruiter. On the slight chance that this was a legitimate contract opportunity, I responded. OK, I'll be honest: I responded because I wanted to let this person know his approach was annoying.
It was my belief that if the person was promoting a legitimate position that they would respond with the job description. A recruiter with any people skills would lie and say that they thought they had attached that information. They would try to friendly-up the situation. This person is not your average recruiter:
This is by far the least skilled recruiter that has ever contacted me. He certainly lacks the people skills I am familiar with from my interactions with other professionals in his field. He also apparently lacks the ability to construct English sentences. Because he tacked on "particularly today" I wonder if he has any respect for the people he tries to place with employers, or if he thinks he is doing us a favor and that his rudeness should just be an accepted facet of the process. I don't need any favors, and I don't like being insulted by a stranger who initiated this dialog in the first place. I decided to very plainly state what it was that bothered me about his email, and to include the founders of his company in on the exchange so that they could see what a wonderful job he was doing:
I don't think I could have been any plainer than that. I really wanted this person to understand how bad of an impression they were making, and why I would never work for them if this is the way that they treat prospective contractors. Did I think that this person would have an epiphany, realize their mistakes, and write back an apology? Not a chance. But I certainly didn't expect this: This guy just doesn't know when to quit. He is determined to have the last insulting word, even though he is doing it as the representative of a company that claims on their web site: "It is our goal to assist you with all of your technology needs. Our staff members are composed of technologists and engineers that are excited to help with[sic] you with all apects[sic] of your technical needs." Someone needs to run a grammar, spelling and fact checker against their web site. If there is any excitement being felt by Mr. Ric Gwin, it certainly isn't for his job. People who like their jobs are happier about it, and take joy in doing a job well. They don't send emails like the ones this person has sent me, especially when I am quite plainly copying his employers in on my responses. Well, I've decided to take on a new job myself, and I am rather liking it. I have decided to make it my job to get this guy fired2. This time I am not going to write him and cc his employers. I am going to write them directly, and cc him; and explain my unhappiness at the situation. Here is the body of the message, sans the attached email thread that I included for their enlightenment:
It took a week, but I finally received a response. It came in the form of a very polite apology from Ric's employers:
It would appear that Ric's employers have a higher standard, and I wish them well in getting Ric to live up to it. -Chris |
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Update: 2004-04-20 I have a lot of respect for Mr. Gwin's now ex-employers. I just received a personal phone call from one of the owners of the company. He apologized, again, for the way that Ric behaved. He also informed me that Ric was no longer with them. While I felt a slight bit of guilt regarding this, he informed me that I wasn't the only one Ric had treated poorly; and that Ric was ultimately responsible for their parting of ways as I had only brought it to their attention. He also asked me to sanitize this page. While he felt the page itself was useful to employers and employees, he really didn't want to be directly associated with the misbehavior of one person. Not only could I not blame him, but I really appreciated that he called me personally and made his request. Now that I have a lot of respect for them, I can't tell you who they are. This Universe is full of little ironies... -Chris |
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1 Late in 2003, I received a phone call from a recruiter who
was trying to fill a position at AT&T in Tampa. They needed a system administrator
with strong Linux and Solaris skills who was also good with Weblogic. There
were a few other skills such as perl that were desired, but not requirements;
I had them all. It sounded like this
position was written for me. |
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2 I used to resist complaining about bad service for fear of getting the person fired. I didn't want to feel responsible that this person wasn't going to make rent. For all I knew, they might have a family to support. My attitude in this area has changed. I know too many good people who lost their jobs, their homes, and sometimes their families in the dot-com crash. Good and honest people who need work; any one of which who could do this guy's job better. Let him flip burgers, and let the next person to fill his desk know that being rude to cold contacts is not the way to keep that desk. |
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