Actually, I do have a friend who just graduated, and got a job at one of those "enterprises".
They put him through a quick Java course, and off he went to a client... and Java's nowhere to be found.
Aparently they're rebuilding some internal aplication. He's doing the testing...

I agree with the premise that recruiters are scum, but the comic doesn't really do a good job explaining why they're scum. I think it might be a little confusing for those that don't have experience with them, but *shrug*. Good work, anyway.

Here goes my evil recruiter story. I was just out of school (with a BS in Comp Sci no less!) and was having a hard time finding a job. A guy from a huge recruiting agency (initials RHT) calls me up and says he'd like to talk. I show up, ace the 2 programming tests that he gives me, and I'm psyched about all the phat loot that he's promised me. Only...he never hooks me up with a client. He doesn't call me once in like 6 months. Of course, after month 1 I recognize the guy is a snake so I keep looking for another job. And when do I hear from him again? Yup, the first day at my new job!

My question is, who gets screwed more: the fresh-faced graduate, or the company he gets sent to "consult" for?

You know, as much as those jobs suck, they are usually the only way to get a real first job on your resume. Bonus if you stumble into a good situation and get picked up the by the organization after proving you have a brain.

Prior to that, interviews went something like this...

"So a degree in Mathematics & Physics, that is quite impressive. But what relevant work experience do you have?"

"Uh, well... " Lots of humming and hawing follows. Truth be told, you were getting a degree in Math and Physics. Any spare time you had was spent getting drunk and a few other things so you could recover from partial differential equations.

My own first post-college job was as a consultant, working, as you say, for a Certain Company.

Being a career student with no experience, and being a consultant, made a lot more sense when I realized that it was only the technical side of the Certain Company that called them "consultants". In this company's other (and older) business area, they used a different term for employees in the same class as myself.

They called them "temps"

My first and only experience with recruiters was in 2002, after the bubble burst and I was laid off.

Got a call to come in and "interview" with them. I had only worked for one company and was still pretty green at the time so I didn't see the signs. They made it sound like it was a job interview.

Turns out it was a recruiter. He made me take a Perl test which is aced and then continued to find me work that was in a city about 40-60 miles away from me. No thanks.

If I ever got a call from a recruiter again, I'd just laugh in his face and hang up

I've been a recruiter, back when I was looking for anything and needed a job (I now develop web applications).

Here's the deal: new recruiters are given the horrible candidates from other recruiters' databases in the same company. They usually don't have jobs right away for the candidates because they're really just trying to network around to find the best candidates and clients they can find. There's a process involved... candidates yield potential clients and candidates, who in turn can yield more potential clients and candidates. Recruiters don't actively search for specific positions. Instead, they network the client managers they're in contact with to see if there are any positions available. They then go through the pool of candidates they have to see if they match.

That's pretty much the way the business HAS to be. They have to get the candidate in front of the client before the client puts the job up on Dice or Monster, or they're likely to lose out on the 20% markup.

The key to working with recruiters is to only work with the guys who sound like aggressive superstars. They WILL call your references and attempt to network them because it's standard business practice, so protect your references and only give them out when you have a job waiting. The more polished they are on the phone, the more polished they are talking to the client, the more likely they're going to find openings for you.

And hey, shit happens. Jobs fall through because of all sorts of problems. Sometimes the best clients can have issues.

Bottom line is, don't go bitching about recruiters unless you're doing your own legwork on the side. When a recruiter finds you a job, you should look at it as a bonus, not an expectation.