After being burned by The Old Switch n’ Bait, RJ was at his wit’s end with the recruiting firm his company forced him to use. The recruiter he had to work with, Brandon, was the HR Director’s brother-in-law. She insisted Brandon did a great job and he deserved another shot after such an honest mistake. “Brandon can be a little scatterbrained but he knows how to find good people! LOL!” she sent him in an email. “He wants to pass along some more resumes for you and apologizes profusely for the Jiang ordeal.”

They now had two senior .NET developer positions open. RJ needed them filled, so he decided to see what Brandon had to offer. As it turned out, Brandon had lots of email messages, but no resumes. Brandon’s email didn’t have any attachments on it. RJ decided to give Brandon a call directly to ensure he did something right for once.

“Hi Brandon, this is RJ over at Intertrode. I was sent an email of resumes from HR that came from you. It looks like the attached resumes aren’t there though.”

“Oh, shoot!” Brandon said. “I always do that, haha. Don’t worry I can get those sent over right away!” RJ hung up the phone still pessimistic that he would ever see these resumes. Half an hour later, they did finally reach his inbox. The stack of fresh college graduates didn’t have any of the qualifications he was looking for so he gave the email a quick SHIFT+DELETE and prepared to go home to question his existence.

Partway through a fifth of scotch, RJ finally admitted to himself that he was fed up with his life at Intertrode, and it was time for a fresh start somewhere else. There would be no more looking at pointless resumes to fill positions that would never be staffed. The time had come to take control of his life and move on! RJ poured himself another scotch, and updated his own resume. Within the hour he had it out on several job sites and even created his first LinkedIn profile. Now it was time to sit back and let the job offers roll in.

RJ dragged himself to work the next day, weighed down by a six-ton headache and dreams of a new, better job. He pulled up his email to find a new message from Brandon the Recruiter titled HOT NEW PROSPECT! MUST READ!. RJ did want to read it, but more for his own amusement than interest in finding a candidate. Predictably, Brandon failed to attach the resume. “Whatever…” RJ muttered as he sent the new email into electronic oblivion.

An hour later RJ’s personal cell phone started ringing with a strange number showing on the caller ID. Since he was bored, he decided to answer. “I’m looking for Robert?” the voice questioned on the other end.

“That’s me. But you can call me RJ. It’s short for Robert Joseph”, he replied.

“Hi RJ, this is Brandon and I’m a recruiter. I saw your resume online and I have a GREAT new job lined up for you! It’s an ideal role for someone with your vast talents! A senior technical role with a growing company and a very generous salary package! I sent them your resume this morning!”

RJ’s head wanted to cave in on itself as he realized that his least favorite recruiter not only found his resume online, but sent it to Intertrode to fill the position RJ himself had been looking to plug.

Not wanting to yet reveal his realization to Brandon, RJ played along for a little bit. “I see. So has the company responded to my resume yet? Are they interested?”

“No, not yet. But I’m sure they will soon!” Brandon assured him. “I’ve been in contact with the development manager RJ before and he is pretty desperate to find someone to hire.”

“Oh, well what a coincidence. Since my name is Robert Joseph, and I go by RJ too, I’m sure we’ll get along great together when I leave my job here at Intertrode to go work at Intertrode!” RJ abruptly hung up on Brandon, ending their recruiting relationship once and for all. RJ did have to give Brandon some credit this time though. He finally found a viable candidate for a senior .NET developer position.

Image by Vahram Mekhitarian (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
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