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Admin
This actually happened to me - I was the "best candidate" for the datacenter job at Chase Bank. Robert Brooks from KForce Staffing did EXACTLY the same thing in this article. I was promised a job there starting out at $78k, the $95k after being hired and $115k if I was a really great tech! Desperate for a job, I allowed him the knowledge of only the last four digits of my SSN to begin the necessary paperwork. Robert Brooks can be reached at [email protected].
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I had one recruiter who gave me a list of known questions that a company asked in the interview, negotiated a pretty good salary for me. I guess that makes him a nice guy from my perspective, but I can see how giving candidates a heads up on the questions would be a bad thing from the employer's prospective.
I've also interviewed a few people who had blatant lies on their resumes. Took a while before a boss told me that headhunters will flat out lie.
If you go with a headhunter, bring hard copies of your resume. Give one copy to every person you talk to, just in case.
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"If anything, it's the exact opposite of libel."
Yeah, it's lebil.
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Abuse isn't libel though.
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If such losses occurred in the future, you may well have recourse for a suit. Still wouldn't be libellous, though. No matter how much conjecture and "what-if" you nail onto this, the fact remains that simply saying something untrue about another person is not of itself defamatory.
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What my experience is, is companies that use external recruiters/head hunters extensively have a totally incompetent HR department. And any company with an incompetent HR department is going to have that reflected in the people that work there, usually leading to much material worthy of this site.
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IMHO; TRWTF is that Jon never even considered having the recruiter send him a copy of the "tweaked" resume. I always insist on seeing whatever info a recruiter is sending out about me before they send it out.
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I love all the bitching about contracting - did somebody trick the guy into taking the job and he didn't actually know what 'contractor' meant?
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Ah, recruiters. A world apart. For two years straight after leaving Belgium for good I received offers and requests to update my CV, to which I usually kindly responded with "I don't live there anymore, please erase my profile from your database". To which they promised they certainly would, and a week later sent me another GREAT OPPORTUNITY!!!! starting this Monday. But then there are the masters of keywords. I once received a job offer in metallurgy. It took me a while to understand why on earth would someone want a guy who worked for years in IT to do stuff with liquid metals or something. Then I found it. My résumé included an education curriculum, which mentioned the University of Mining and Metallurgy. It's like asking a Cambridge graduate if he could make bridges or if he were good with a camera. I'm still waiting for a job offering in a coal mine.
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I knew someone who was completing a PhD in aerodynamics. The local job centre helpfully tried to send him to a job as an aircraft mechanic. Strangely enough he wasn't interested.
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What value do recruiters provide to employers?
It's a serious question, I don't know the answer...
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My response to this sort of mismatching is usually along the lines of "would you ask a Formula One driver to change your fanbelt?". They both work "with cars", after all
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When dealing with recruiters, make the groundrules clear and reject any recruiter who does not want to play along:
When they want to edit your resume, they have to send you a comy for your approval. They may not use any version you did not green-light.
Before they send your resume to any company, they must ask you for your permission and tell you where they are sending it to. And they must show you the documents they are about to send.
Simple as that. If a recruiter does not understand that this is neccessary for you to protect your reputation and to prevent double application, they can rightly go to hell as they are unprofessional and dealing with them is a waste of time.
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But I'm allergic to comies
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Plenty of time on the train to have learned the basics of lotus notes to pass the interview. I have a contract with a posh bank where I was hired to do ASP.NET C# and Sharepoint Development. I only had sharepoint experience but a few years of java. In the time it took for them to get my login set up and find work for me to do I had subscribed to Safari and learned all I needed. My motto is know about 10% and know where to look up the rest (Safari). Now I'm the MSSQL expert on the team too. I had no DBA experience prior to coming on the team, but I wasn't afraid to tackle mirroring and integration services. Off-shore companies have been working this way for years.
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So you don't have any actual experience of anything and just rely on books to fill in what you don't already know? Awesome.
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Then this is probably why my job largely consists of fixing the crap code produced by contractors from other countries. I once caught one of them asking very basic questions on an Experts Exchange type forum.
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We brought some in-house for a while. Imagine my dismay as I sat watching 2 of them - each being paid considerably more than me - scratching their heads over why running init in the following code printed out null:
class Dumbass {
String a = null; String b = null; String[] members = {a, b};
public void init() { a = "something"; b = "something else"; System.out.println(members[0]); }
}
There wasn't even a "oh yeh stupid us!" moment when I explained it to them. They literally hadn't ever known how references work until then.
Presumably they learnt 10% of Java fundamentals, and relied on "Java for Bluffers" for the rest.
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Headhunters are awful to deal with.
That said, my day job puts me in contact with one on a more personal level, and here's the deal:
In the US, third-party ones are generally getting a percentage of your salary on the order of, oh... half your tax rate?
They need to get this much per hire to support their mid-six-figure lifestyles because the success rate is so weak and corporate turnover is so high.
Conversely - since they aren't really sure what they're doing, and don't get a lot of feedback from their client corporations beyond the list of openings HR farms out to them, they only count on each hire they broker to last one contract period. This means they're trying to keep their volume up enough to live, and the fraction of contracts that do renew pushes them out of 'just scraping by' and into those six figures.
They're not all complete sociopaths, but the vast majority are completely nontechnical. What's more damning to the whole relationship is that they have a completely different perspective; our proletarian view of our roles involves actually getting shit done [properly], while their business is making money and the logic runs - 'c'mon, work with me on this, I'm trying to connect you with money, that's what I do! If you get in, we both make money. You want to make some money, right?'
So - to keep up volume, they spend most of their time crapping out ads and shuffling resumes back and forth to see what sticks (the more desperate/idiotic ones rewriting your resume, the better ones phoning you back to tell you what the 'trigger' keywords HR demands for the seat are).
If you can actually get in touch with one directly - particularly if you can be a bit conversational, show off some sample achievements, and not come across like a nerdy sociopath to them - you might be able to hammer in an understanding of what your keywords really are, and maybe get them to flip through their inventory and find something better than that one ad you pounced on. Of course, their entire inventory is probably already on [JobSearchSite].com, but you never know.
There are 'faces in the crowd', and then there's the short list of "reliable" hitters they keep on their short list, know they can carry on a conversation with, and really play 'agent' for (for the Important positions). For those, they can relax and assume you might get two contract periods out of it for them. ;)
...
Downside: To get anywhere, just as with corporate HR directly, you need to come bearing a degree and Certifications. Nothing personal - though certainly aggravating - but these social creatures have no other way to sift a sea of applications down to a dozen interviews. So if you were hoping for low-rung IT or cable-monkey work to finance a degree or certifications, you're going to be flipping burgers (or stocking shelves, or ... doing numerous other things that actually offer better benefits and shorter hours than low-rung IT work!).
It's actually easier to break into legal [know the right people; be able to type and read your language; be able to look up the procedure for everything in your local Rules of Practice], though that won't take you very far above the poverty line unless you actually go for a full JD and bar admission (or slip into a seat at a big firm with IT in-house and get them to notice your skills and offer you a slot).
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They mostly soak the cost of running advertising and providing first-level filtering (saving HR time by being the ones answering the phone to tell you not to bother without The Certifications). This was probably more of a Thing when it wasn't possible to reach Everyone through a short list of worldwide job-listing websites. And there are still people who can't be bothered to read those, or are following some college career counselor's advice to attend the job fair and Talk to the Nice People...
They probably make the hires more expensive in the long run, but once the corporate hive-mind has an established relationship with one that produces interviews at a 1:10 wheat:chaff ratio, Where Else Would We Find These People?
Wasting 10% of HR's time requires 10% more HR staff which probably costs about the same as the premium across all the contracts (when you consider how big HR is likely to be already, at a Fortune 500).
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Last time that happened to me, I took my PDF, rasterised it into a large B&W bitmap image, and pasted it into a Word document. Next thing, I got back an angry note saying there was "something wrong" with my file as they "couldn't edit it for some reason".
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A few years back I was on a grand jury. A case was brought before us of a man accused of "harassment". Apparently he went to a restaurant for breakfast and asked the waitress out on a date. She said no. He went back for lunch, got the same waitress, and asked her out again. Again she said no. The next day he went back to the restaurant, she wasn't on duty, but he left his phone number and asked someone to tell her to call him. At that point she called the police and accused him of harassment.
(Full disclosure: The police said the man had recently been released from a mental hospital. At the time they didn't know why he was in. The woman didn't know this when she made the complaint, so that fact itself wasn't a factor. Maybe he was acting strangely.)
I questioned how this could qualify as "harassment". The waitress never claimed that he followed her home or threatened her or did anything other than ask her out on a date two or three times. Annoying, perhaps, but a crime punishable by five years in jail?
I found the answer far scarier than I ever imagined. The prosecutor explained that the legal definition of harassment has "nothing to do with the actions of the defendant, but only the feelings of the victim". The prosecutor went on to explain that as the victim was frightened, that made it legal harassment.
So if I said, "When that person walked past me on the street, yeah, he never said anything or even looked at me, but the way he walked was just scary" -- I could have legal grounds for charging him with harassment. It doesn't matter what he did, just how it made me feel. Like, wow.
You know, people who program in Javascript scare me sometimes ...
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In the United States, the piece of paper you send to a potential employer describing your qualifications is called a "resume" (with or without the accents). A "CV" is an aircraft carrier. (Unless it's nuclear powered, in which case it's CVN.)
I recommend against sending an aircraft carrier to a potential employer unless you are applying for a job as an admiral.
http://navysite.de/carriers.htm
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Isn't that why we have books? Maybe you're not much for book learn'n?
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The prosecutor is responsible for making that argument, he represents the state.
As I recently discovered/was reminded when called up, the jury is asked to stand as a "trier of fact;" you're really supposed to focus on what evidence you believe and whether you think it applies to the charge(s); then the law is supposed to fall into place around that finding (in logical fashion; anyone faced with the same jury findings should come to the same outcome of law, subject to any minor discretion in sentencing guidelines and stuff).
If the law is actually written as the prosecutor describes, then.. technically you're supposed to be deciding whether the events actually happened as they were told, and if they did in a manner that triggers the law, jurors have no say in that until the next time you vote for your legislators.
It's a bit esoteric and messy. We haven't really endorsed jury nullification in the US (well, it still varies by state but some actively make it a mistrial) - "This law sucks, let him walk" - since the 1800s, since it was way too discriminatory, and a one-off thing per case: since the jury is charged with finding the facts, saying 'screw this' is like leaving this lying around (pseudocode):
{ bool condition_exists; bool facts_prove_condition;
facts_prove_condition=trial();
if(facts_prove_condition) then condition_exists=true; condition_exists=false;
if(condition_exists) then law(); }
...instead of fixing the code elsewhere.
That said, if this bothers you and you can think of a good system to let juries find a law unjust, pitch it to your legislators and see if they can codify it - adding an exception to the psuedocode above that "permanently modifies the database." Precedent set by juries can't really be any worse (if not much better) than precedent set by judges or by the legislators.
[Reasons we haven't tried to do it: It doesn't benefit the legislators any; it only encourages the legislators to write even dumber laws to pander to constituencies, maybe even personally hoping they get shot down on judicial review - see every attempt to combine church and state ever; and average citizens have a tendency to want to repeal things like tax code enforcement without considering the consequences, leading to California.
Captcha: Abbas?
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Southeast England (Brighton, for the sake of argument) to Aberdeen is only 10 hours by car according to Google. 10 hours there and 10 back still leaves 4 to work. What's the problem?
Seattle to Atlanta is 41 hours one-way, though. Now that's a long day's drive!
It's so cute that they can go all the way from one end of their little island to the other, and still get there in time for tea. :-)
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Mainly because I use OpenOffice, but also because PDF has a much smaller chance of being munged while being looked at.
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However, as described, this scenario is pretty obviously harassment. The woman clearly turned down the first request for a date, and the man returned to her place of employment twice more in a short time. Coming back a second time, after the first refusal, was already threatening. Coming back the next day, after two refusals, shows a determined refusal to respect her wishes. Furthermore, he's interfering with her ability to perform her job, so by day two, she'd have to consider whether to go to the police, or leave her job.
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I did this as well, and never understood why some recruiters got so worked up that it wasn't in Word format. This explains so, so much.
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Dunno how it works in various countries. Around here, if the headhunter submits your resume/CV and it has your contact information on it, there's little more than the employer's code of ethics that prevents him calling you directly, and therefore screwing the headhunter out of his cut.
So the headhunter simply removes your contact information from the resume/CV/rirekisho. If the employer is interested, he has to contact the headhunter to set up the first meet. You could still together (you and the employer) decide to screw the headhunter out of his cut, but it makes get caught a whole lot more likely.
I've dealt with a couple of headhunters in this way, and they've never "fluffed" my resume/CV/rirekisho. Just removed the contact information. Perhaps I've been lucky.
And I always bring my own copies to the interview. And the headhunters (I really have been lucky) have always contacted me before flogging my resume.
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not quite so obvious. i think we can probably blame most of these instances on movies, books and women in general, don't you think?
"no means yes" and "the guy who keeps trying always wins" mindset is part of our current culture i'm afraid. in many circumstances the guy would just be labeled as 'driven' or 'stubborn', here the dude is facing legal charges.
well, i guess the movie police can start arresting pretty much all leading characters in romantic comedies? wouldn't make much of a movie with so much restraining orders and prison sentences. :)
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It is this exact attitude that has led to playground fights - a fact of life in years gone by - now resulting in criminal records for all concerned.
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Google "false dichotomy". Read, digest, learn. You may use books if you desire.
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There are several WTFs along the way, specially for the "victim".
You always, always, always ask the recruiter to show you the "tweaked" resume before sending it to the client. Also, you always, always, always ask for a full description of a job position.
I've avoided some snafus by always insisting in the later point. Over eager recruiters can (and will) put you in for a position that you are not qualified for. Sometimes by accident, or by stupidity or just lack of ethics. It can happen - so you must be candid and forceful about where you are willing to be sent.
I've had my goods and bads with recruiters. There is no point in vilifying the entire sector just because some apples got sour. Doing so is "weakly orthogonal" to vilifying women because they don't like nerds... wait what? Anyways...
Vilifying them is projecting the problem somewhere else. Work the problem instead and, through your career, develop a working rapport with recruiters that, more or less, have worked with you and have been willing to listen to your concerns and who demonstrate a sense of ethics.
And for those who might give you an icky feeling, just use them. Who knows, even if you have to insist a thousand times not to get misrepresented, you might end up getting a job through them.
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"Sounds like a case of libel to me. Make up your train ticket that way."
So if he wasn't screwed over enough by the recruiter, he can give the rest of his money to a lawyer!
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Often because a couple of buzzwords on the job spec also appear on your CV.
Happened to me. Worked out nicely.
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A Shoe-In is also a referral to being repeatedly kicked in the head.
"Shut your mouth or I will shoe you in."
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I very nearly fell for this last week. Having spent most of my career working middle tier to back end and doing maybe a year of ASP.Net I was rail roaded by a recruiter into going for an interview for an web developer analyst. I fell for all the schmoozing along the lines of 'Don't worry, they want proper developers, not just web developers - I've put you forward for development lead ..' Having spent most of a contract in a similar position I had convinced myself I could do it. Two nervous days later I had the pep talk from the agent. More schmoozing and a casual 'Just gen up on your asp.net and er, CSS. There will be some tough questions on that. Don't worry though, the last candidate I sent was rejected because of the culture fit - he was technically perfect.' It reaffirms the fact that IT recruitment consultants FIND PEOPLE FOR JOBS and not jobs for people.