Monday, March 30, 2009

An Annoying Trait of Character

K.DE. of Burlington, MA called me about a contract at a company (A) that had called me before. Last time A was looking for a Principal Eng. but was quite unwilling to pay the market rate so I did not waste time engaging them.

So I knew what to expect of A.

The recruiter e-mailed me than talked to me and promised to submit my Resume to the company. All fine. Early next day he calls asking if I am "sure" about my pay rate. As a matter of fact I am and I am charging exactly the amount required for my skill level and experience.

Don't you find that recruiters keep bugging you asking whether you are "sure" about your rate? Maybe you have doubts and are willing to work for less? How about 60% less?

I find this to be a very annoying flaw in the recruiters' characters. What irks me is that after I secure the contract the recruiter becomes a humongous parasite that makes $15-20 for each hour I work. So for a week this guy makes $800. For six months say $19,200.

Not bad at all I say. And as he's pushing you to charge less he will get more which in my book is unacceptable.

-ulianov

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Being on the Other Side of the Fence

My current employer uses us chickens (aka. contractors) to evaluate potential new hires [other contractors].

So I got to see how hard is to recruit a new hand. The fact that the company is located in a forsaken hole in Upstate NY does not help either.

So I got to talk over the phone to "embedded Linux" programmers. About four of them. Three were beyond hope, having no idea about the topic at hand.

One of them was such a retard that was not able to parse our technical questions an kept droning on and on and on how "we" (i.e. people at a former company) did this. His blabberings had no bearing on the current question being asked of him.

And I find that when a candidate says "we did this and that" he actually did not do any of that and is taking credit for some other people's work. This is just WRONG because a candidate is evaluated based on his own skills and accomplishments.

Coming back to the fourth potential hire: they guy gave half-decent answers to technical questions but (and this is a big one) his past six positions read literally "Some Company in Some Place in MA or NH".

This just does not smell right to me. Queried by the hiring manager he stated that he did that because recruiters would keep calling him and asking about openings at past companies.

In my experience this is a lie: a recruiter would not waste his time this way (as he knows contractors come and go and don't maintain links to the powers-that-be at past companies). Also in my experience a recruiter asks only about whether the current company is hiring [which stands to reason].

On a different note I started asking questions and challenging a candidate's answers. I must admit that I was a bit unprepared at first (I did not have a mental list of things to ask) but lately I quite enjoyed it.

-ulianov