Archive for category Rants
Laser Hair Removal Technician Spam
Being an IT guy (with heavy web development under my belt) I rarely venture out to other fields. However, my personal life brings insights to totally different fields.
As my girlfriend wife is looking for a aesthetician / laser hair removal tech position and professional makeup gigs, we constantly check for job ads on craigslist. Yesterday we stumbled on pretty decent ad that promised (obviously exaggerating a bit) a nice spot for someone with similar background. Naturally, we responded to the ad.
Next day there was an answer laying in my wife’s mailbox, stating that in order to proceed she needs to fill out some form on the web. While such practice is not uncommon for really large companies, going through same routine to get a job at a local doctor’s office or spa smelled fishy to me. The link - quickstrikecareers.com?(numbers) – added to pile of suspicions. I checked whois for this domain (I’m a techie, remember?) and the pile of suspicion (domain uses anonymizing service from Network Solutions, not a reputable organization by itself) got so big I couldn’t see the reason to continue investigation behind it. I did, however, google search for this domain. Out of six search results four were clearly stating that this domain is involved in some sort of scam that gathers applicant’s data and then annoys them with unsolicited calls about various career-related services.
While this bait-and-switch technique isn’t right all by itself, playing people, who (due to recent economy evens) may be desperate trying to get a job and pay their bills is pure thievery.
By the way, the ad has already been taken down by craigslist. Good job.
Calls of No Return
One of the funny things about recruiters (not those located in India, that’s whole another story) is when the number they are calling from is blocked. So he/she calls, but you can’t pick up the phone. Maybe you’re on another line. Maybe you don’t want to break it to your environment that you’re looking for a job. Or you just weren’t fast enough to dig your phone from the deepness of your pockets or your bag. So recruiter leaves you a voicemail message.
Which gets garbled. Or he/she didn’t enunciate enough and their phone number gets mumbled out, and you can’t make a number or two in the whole sequence. Or they are calling you during their lunch. Or your phone company makes it a half-hour task to retrieve your voicemail (which is mostly the case with American providers).
This is where that caller ID comes in handy. Usually, if I miss someone’s call I just double-tap phone button and voila! – I am calling back last incoming number.
Additionally, when I see “Private” or “Unknown” on a caller ID screen, my first thought is that it’s that annoying guy from India who’s looking for outsourced projects and calls me every week. He doesn’t speak English very well, so he doesn’t quite get the message of “NO!”. It could also be some brave-ass marketeer cold-calling. Or someone who doesn’t want me to call him back.
Now, if you are recruiter – why would you hide your phone number? Do you get harrassed? Do you get calls from marketeers or candidates? What’s your reasons?
Personally, I don’t see any.
Anti-Recruiters
As you may have guessed – given the current economy situation – there aren’t that many recruiters calling. Well, not quite so. They call me to place other candidates, even though I have nothing to do with HR or hiring – I don’t even participate in the interviews.
So what’s the story?
The company I work for just happen to have couple of IT positions open. My resume indicates that I work for said company. The rest is simple – they call me to get around of HR and to get the direct line of hiring manager.
This morning I got a call from one of such recruiters. She stated that one of her colleagues spoke with me couple of days ago. Wrong move, I don’t like when conversation starts with a blatant outright lie. Then lady proceeded to how we’re hiring an Oracle DBA (we don’t) and she wants to speak to my manager (she can’t). In my response I stated that she has to dial the main number and try her luck with receptionist (which is a company policy, actually). The lady on the phone persisted. I declined to talk about anything – again, citing company’s policy. Recruiter on the phone kept going on and on how she’s not going to disclose my name to my manager – as if he couldn’t hear me from two cubicles behind.
After she went on her fifth attempt to extort my manager’s phone number I hung up on that pushy and arrogant person.
Now, here comes a bit of double-standards. If I was that candidate, I’d like that my recruiter would knock on every door as many times as possible to get me a job. However, being already at work, the last thing I need is my manager listening to the conversation with recruiter over my shoulder. Especially if I am busy breaking company’s policy.
Obviously, the recruiter couldn’t care less about me. Even worse, it is in her interest that I would get into trouble – so she could place another of her candidates into my place and make more money. Nothing personal, strictly business. Considering that – I am definitely not cooperating. Again – it’s nothing personal. Strictly business