We recruiters tell candidates to do their homework before contacting any potential employer, and what a bunch of hypocrites I am finding out there.
“Being busy” is not an excuse for laziness or poor sourcing habits. As a senior IT recruiter in Seattle, I list out the technologies I work with on my resume. I have many years of experience at Microsoft on various recruiting teams. So it’s fairly natural that I come up in keyword searches that have “Microsoft” or “.NET” or “C#” or “HTML” or on them. I’ve pretty much recruited for every type of software development position out there.
However…
My profile title is “Senior Talent Acquisition” or “Senior Recruiter” depending on the board. And I have an “objective” statement to weed out those things I’m not interested in and what I’ll consider. These are the *first things* on my resume. So I cannot begin to tell you how annoying it’s getting to be contacted for software engineering and SDET (Software Design Engineer in Test) contract openings at Microsoft (or anywhere else). Now, my resume is up on all the major job boards, mostly because as a contractor, you never know when your job is subject to budget cuts. I also like to see who is out there hiring. And it’s up there in confidential mode so I don’t get a ton of agency sales calls (I get enough of those from LinkedIn and my consulting site.) And, I use one email address for Dice and Monster and another for Careerbuilder.
Usually, my standard response is:
“What is your split policy? I usually charge 50% for a direct placement or 5% residual on contractors. I am happy send you my standard recruiting contract.”
But today I really got rubbed the wrong way. I got an email WITH MY NAME USED by the recruiter. So, obviously this person did enough due diligence to figure out who I am or they had my resume “on file”. But they were contacting me for a Web Developer (subject line) position in California. (My “objective” includes the cities I am willing to discuss). I admit I got a bit snarky.
02/23/11 4:29 PM
Dear Kristen,
… Our records show that you have experience in .NET. This experience is relevant to one of my current openings. It is located in Santa Clara, CA.
My response:
(Recruiter), obviously you didn’t read my resume fully or you would know that I am a senior technical recruiter in Seattle.
OK, I don’t know why this one set me off more than any other. But being someone working with an OFCCP-compliant organization and being someone who believes that part of our job is to actually read resumes, I’m getting sick of this laziness being fobbed off as “busy” with far too many resumes to review.
First of all, I’m a master at writing and running a Boolean search, especially in tech positions. Second, it doesn’t even require extra effort to read the title of the resumes you have sourced from a job board.
DO YOUR JOB. Sourcing is something you commit to when you accept a job as a recruiter. And let me tell you, your branding is suffering severely when you pull this kind of half-**sed job with your industry colleagues. Believe me, I know who the major offenders are in Seattle, and I pass that information along to candidates who ask. A staffing company’s reputation is only as good as its recruiters. The candidate experience starts with that first email or phone call.