A Polite Recruiter Being CAN-SPAM Compliant?

The phrasing is exquisitely dated & convoluted reminding one of Victorian English...

-ulianov

You may have received this email previously because we
have been challenged by our client to find highly
qualified candidates who are interested in this
position. Our intent is not to impose upon your time
and apologize in advance if you do not believe this
is a good fit, or if you are currently unavailable. 
 
If you are not interested in this opportunity, I
kindly request that you reply to this message with
'DECLINE' in the subject line, or body of the email
with a brief note as to why, so we may better serve
you in the future.
 
If you are interested in finding out more about this
position, please reply to this message with a current
Word version of your resume and the hourly rate/salary
that you are seeking [...].

M0nster's Idiotic Ideas

Monster nowadays wants recruiters to contact me via their in-house/in-portal "Message Center" which derails my recruiterwall (spam filters aimed at tormenting recruiters) as the Reply-To address is some bounce@monster crap.

I updated my Resume to say "Don't use the Message Center". 95% of the creeps who use it haven't read my Resume anyhow and spam me with Windows Sysadmin jobs. I block them.

Also another Monster dumbshit idea is BeKnown which I think is their DOA answer to LinkëdIn. Another gem is the "Apply to FlyByNight College X" page which manifests itself on their US site.

-ulianov

Canadian Recruiter Dumbness Prevails

I've applied yesterday to a job on Workopolis which dealt with network virtualisation (space I am in at the moment). The posting was not specific as to the location (1st red flag).

Today I've got called by the recruiter who posted the ad, and he was based in Ottawa. He asked a few questions and wanted me to customarily embellish my Resume to look good to his client. Also he indicated that the job was in Ottawa and f/t (2nd red flag).

Then he says "Let's set up a Skype interview tomorrow".
Me says "Sure, with whom? Who's the client?"
He says "With me. I need to build a profile of yours." (3rd red flag).
Me says "I am on the phone with you let's chat".

The arsehole insisted that he must, he must Skype me which for a recruiter in general is a weird thing to do, however Canadian recruiters haven't got past the 1st chapter of "Being a Recruiter for Dummies".

The only thing I could do was to indicate it's a waste of time (having dealt with 100s of recruiters in my time) and bade him farewell. I was lucky he did not want me to move my carcass to Ottawa for a face-to-face with him.
-ulianov

"Special Request from G00gle"

I have had a whole e-mail thread with some in-house G00gle Canada recruiters. It starter on a springy note:

Hope you're having a great day in beautiful Toronto!

I recently reviewed your previous conversations with G00gle recruiters including previous interviews with us. I'd love to check in and learn how everything is going with your current work at XYZ.

Are you available for a quick call this week or next? No pressure - it's totally informal! (I'm part of a specialized group here at G00gle which focuses on speaking with engineers and scientists who are top performers and happy in their current roles, therefore not necessarily looking for new roles.)

All nice et flattering but I started asking the basic-trio of questions: jd? pay? location?

This seems to have thrown them for a loop [got ping-ponged between two internal recruiters], especially the jd as apparently they feed the candidates to some sort of recruiting pool.

Being that I am employed and have no particular burning wish to become a G00gle minion I insisted on jd and the trail got cold. I expect to hear from them in 5 years.

-ulianov

"New Jersey" Recruiter Strikes Back

Some recruiter apparently calling from NJ [favourite DID termination for offshored agencies] calls my Canadian recruiter line [not protected with the usual anti-recruiter spells & enchantments] and says that he's got an opportunity [they always call it that] in San Diego, CA with Q*alcomm.

So I started to reel the usual info out of the dunderhead: salary? "80 thousand a year is the budget". Status? "f/t".

Right after my name the masthead of my Resume has spelled in big bold block red letters in the language known as English the warning "only call for contracts". I tried to keep it as simple as messages found in airplanes or subway carriages. Also my Resume on Monster.ca carries in the masthead the message "do not call for US jobs". Hmm.

I should have cursed the heaten at this point but I just hanged up. Must apply enchantments to my Canadian line if calls come from outside Canada but my VoIP provider is too thick to provide such a filter.

-ulianov

Ode to a Failed Perl Interview

I've been put in touch with S*mantec network ops by a nice local agency and they set me up for a phone interview for today (very considerate of the agency as I had no wish to trek around the metropolis to Markham for a screening).

The interview was geared around support of network monitoring systems in a network ops environment. The have mountains of Perl code that need maintaining/fixing and that was cool. All well except at the end I queried them about how much Python they want and they said perhaps & possibly a lot and that was the end of it as that's a "P"-word for me (Python).

The other steps that I did not take were solving a non-trivial problem in Perl and a face-to-face with the team.

This is a comical situation: they have a pressing need for a Perl guru (which are not as easy to find as people may think) to keep their code base alive and they go thru a lot of trouble to probe a candidate's Perl knowledge yet they forfeit that for a nebulous future need of a Python minion.

-ulianov