Features

The Recruiting Nightmare #10 – People Hate You

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I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the pains of recruiting.  But there’s one result of all the pain that’s  . . . well painful . . .

One of the things I experience in coaching, writing, and speaking on jobs is that people are rarely happy with recruiters and HR in general.  They’re upset they didn’t get jobs, they aren’t happy (understandably) with the system, and this often gets taken out on the poor sod who has to tell them they didn’t get the job.  In short, people often have some Hate Rage for recruiters.

It’s easy to blame the economy, but that’s abstract.  Politics is the same.  Hating the companies themselves is old hat.  But when I’ve talked to people about recruiters and HR, I get a lot of negative feelings about them, expressed quite verbally and colorfully.

Recruiters?  They know this.  They know people aren’t happy.  part of their job literally involves doing things that will get them hated for no good reason.

Try that on for a giant pile of annoying.

It’s not fair to them, but really, it’s not easy.  A huge amount of their job is rejecting people, not hiring people, and finding more people who are, by the odds, not getting hired.  A lot of the job of a recruiter is rejection.

People don’t really cut them enough slack as far as I’m concerned.  But they live with it.

JOB SEEKER TIPS:

  • Just be nice to the recruiters.  Really, because there’s enough people probably being jerks to them.

HELP OUT RECRUITERS:

  • Part of a recruiter’s job is rejecting people.  you may be able to help them communicate better with the rejected if they’re rejecting people in your profession or similar professions.

GEEK EXTRA:

  • I’d like to see a website about “recruiter confessions,” including how recruiters take rejecting people.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

The Recruiting Nightmare #9 – Spamming Speed!

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OK all your hard work as a recruiter, all that effort, all that time . . . and then you find a lot of potential recruits are getting spammed by bodyshop agencies or less-than considerate recruiters.  So of course your responses can get lost in the mail, and you’re competing with these bozos.

It’s gotten ridiculous and it’s getting more ridiculous over time.

I get spam in my inbox for things I haven’t done for years – like programming and engineering.

I get spam from people for geographic areas I told them I’m not interested in.

Lately I get spam on jobs that are so unrelated to what I do, I think someone twigged onto one keyword in my resume.

I’m not alone. A lot of my friends get strange things, and if you did a wide-ranging job search, chances are your resume ended up a lot of databases.  A lot of databases poorly matching you to jobs.

Recruiters have to compete with this.  They can be made to look bad.  They can get real requests lost among the BS.  They have to just plain go up against the spammers.

It’s almost a joke in a way, because of the way people dump resumes left and right.  Now they’re getting spammed as well.

It’s not the worst thing recruiters face, but it’s annoying.

JOB SEEKER TIPS:

  • Make an effort to get “spam recruiters” to back off.  It’ll clear your inbox.
  • Learn to recognize recruiters you trust.

HELP OUT RECRUITERS:

  • Helping recruiters find people via networking is a good way to dodge spam-recruiting snatching people.
  • Also help recruiters craft good response letters so they don’t get written off.
  • Try not to use less ethical agencies where you work.

GEEK EXTRA:

  • I’d like to see a list out there of spammy recruiting companies that people could pass around.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Ask A Progeek: Cover Letters And Formality

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Ah, cover letters.  So important, so often forgotten.  So let’s see what one of our pro geeks out there wants to know about them:

How casual are you allowed to be in your cover letters?  I want to sound like a person, not a term paper, but I don’t want to seem like I don’t care about formality.

Cover letters are the first thing most people see in my experience – resumes are second – so it’s natural to worry about them.  A cover letter is often the “first impression.”  So the real question is what kind of first impression do you want to make.

There’s where you start.

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