Recruiters: why I’m kind of rude to them, why they deserve it, and how to fix it

His associations with the so-called "good recruiters" is enough reason not to slam all recruiters with a "how crap are recruiters" article. Also, there's millions of more interesting things to write about.

He's complaining about receiving emails. Emails about jobs, from recruiters who have his information because he gave it to them. What's the problem again?

He should set up a filter, send all recruiter mail to a folder in his email, then search through it from time to time. You never know, that 27k Rails job in NYC he never wanted to hear about, might have some killer flexible hours or ocean views, or a chance to work on that xyz project.

oh crap, now I want that 5 min back.

Keyboard, browser, internet connection: sum total of the barriers to entry for the recruiting industry.

I'm an architect. The sort with NCARB certification. Last I checked, data warehouses don't require building permits. It takes a certain level of cluelessness to hit my resume with a keyword search...or maybe just ignoring the relevance ratings at the bottom of a mediocre search since I regularly get recruiting emails completely at odds with my resume.

I could run through the list of war stories about recruiters with relevant positions in my industry, but one will serve my purposes.

I was looking, because, like tech, switching jobs during the boom is the best way to boost salary in AEC. We were on our third phone conversation. The position sounded interesting. An interview was dangling. He was about to reveal the name of the company.

Even in big cities, architecture firms are all interbred. There just aren't that many. "It's Harvard Jolly," he said. "Have you heard of them?"

"They're listed on my resume. One of my references is an Executive VP."

"Oh."

Most recruiters have no ongoing relationship with the potential employer. They are hoping to insert themselves between the candidate and the job and extract a fee. In many cases this reduces the candidate's odds of landing the position. If the firm was advertising the position, they weren't planning for the fee. The candidate is tainted with sleazy association. And if the company doesn't want to pay up, the recruiter cuts the candidate off.

However, I landed two career advancing jobs via cold calls from professional recruiters. On two other occasions, recruiters have introduced me to interesting positions which at the end of the interview process didn't fit. It is easy to sift the good from the bad.

"Do you have a contract?" is all you need to know.