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Subject:RE: Recruiter Question: Clear Point From:"Jason A. Czekalski" <topsidefarm -at- mva -dot- net> To:TECHWR-L digest <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 30 Jun 2000 16:54:06 -0700
"Jim Lynch" <jim -at- jimlynch -dot- com> wrote:
<< I'll be in touch with the other recruiter (Clearpoint) next week.
Same deal
goes for them in terms of the price, I'm not going below that here in
Boston. >>
If you have the experience to back you up, you'll get it. I wish I could
command that level of pay. The fact is I just don't have that kind of
experience. However, my base rate is firm, and I will never take a job
below that rate. So far, I've been able to stay fully employed.
The one problem I have with this whole thread is the very idea of
recruiters. So far, I have not landed a single job through a recruiter
(I live in southern NH and work in MA, so I know the local market Jim is
talking about). My general assessment of the profession is that they are
either incompetent or sleazy, or some combination thereof. And before
Andrew jumps on my case, let me explain.
I generally avoid software jobs. I don't care for documenting it, it's
that simple. I'm an engineering TW, things like machinery, industrial
processes, etc. I will do SW documents if they are put of a larger
non-SW project (I'm working on just such a project right now, about 15%
SW). I make sure that recruiter know this. But just about every job a
recruiter tries to set me up with is SW. I can do the jobs, but the
client is not going to pay my rate for someone with marginal SW
documentation experience. So why do the recruiters try to send me for
these jobs. Of all the jobs that recruiters have run by me this year
(about 80 on my e-mail alone), only 2 have fit the description I gave
the recruiter. This gets to be quite annoying after a while.
The next issue is honest representation, for both me and the client. If
the recruiter tells me up front that it is a SW job, I just refuse to
even do the interview. So how do I end up going on interviews for SW
jobs? The recruiters give me a different job spec from what the client
gave them. It has happened a number of times now. The flip side of this
is the altered resume. On just about every interview I have done that
was arranged through a recruiter, the resume the interviewer had was
different from what I submitted to the recruiter. It had been altered to
fit the job posting. This gets both the interviewer and me pissed off.
So how did I get the job I have now? On my own, along with the last
three. BTW, many companies are getting just as fed up with the
recruiters as we are. The last two companies I have dealt with will no
longer talk to recruiters at all. They feel that they get nothing for
the extra they pay. The recruiters may well be putting themselves out of
business. As for companies that insist on working through an agency, am
I the only person who has noticed that many of those agency jobs on the
online services are the same jobs that were there last week, last month,
last quater, even (in a few extreme cases) last year.
