tomisthemovie

Hi (thanks for the welcome. Long time listener first time caller and all that!). Tbh, your experience is symptomatic of many places in the industry. The consultants know next to nothing about the tech industry, cant tell their C from their C++ and think Ruby gems are literally precious stones. As for your point about not recognising seniority levels, I can't begin to tell you how many times this has come up in conversation, especially with my manager. It is keyword/buzzword recruitment at its finest. If the words on the job spec don't match the words on your CV, most people will just disregard it.

I'm on a literal quest to try and get people in my company to be able to at least recognise code on Github, or recognise the importance of things like Stack Overflow, but they don't want to. The harsh point is that really good technically able people who would suit a role we come across won't be on the job boards, or have their CV registered with us. They'll be on online communities like these, or at tech meetups etc. A lot of the CV's we get through aren't the sort of CV's that our clients want to see. Hell, they don't even want to see a CV. They want to see code samples, HN profiles etc. But it's an uphill battle for me.

I think that if consultants DID do this, they'd be a lot more reputable and respected in the market. As it is, more focus is put on speed rather than quality/customer service unfortunately.

If I were you, if you don't think they'll represent you properly, I'd cut and run, and make a point of NOT recommending them on further. Anything you say in complaint will most likely be ignored. Just ensure that they're not putting you in front of companies you might actually like to work for, as they obviously won't be doing a very good job.

Yeah, upon reflection, realising I was the only person who knew the difference between Java and Javascript was one of the more horrifying moments....

I've read your blog and agree wholeheartedly with the points you've made about the industry. I think it's a case of being the underdog if you want to do the job properly. In an ideal world, I'd be recruiting for one of the clients I deal with. That'd be the perfect solution to the problems I have with the job right now. I'd be building my tech knowledge without (I assume) such aggressive targets and the constant barrage of failure (to put a bleak spin on it).

Alternatively, I'll just continue to learn to code until I get a job doing that with wherever I've made a placement. That's been a serious consideration of mine for a while now, but we're looking at another couple of years of working at it, and I don't think I've got it in me to stay in this job for that long!!

I completely agree. The industry itself has become more and more corrupt over the years. However, I think it is a case of the acts of a few tarring everyone with the same brush. There are people within the industry who are genuinely well versed and technically minded, and benefit from this. That's what I aspire to be like for however long I'm in this job for. But it's an uphill struggle.

We're salespeople. No one grows up wanting to be a salesperson. I've got a degree in Classical Civilization. I have no idea why I've ended up as a salesperson. But I don't think that should make me a bad person just because I put as much effort as possible into my current job. I'm not looking to completely change the view of the industry, just to show more of a human side to it. Besides, I've built relationships with managers who I now consider friends, and I've made placements with people who have ended up absolutely loving their jobs. There are positives to it, and that's what keeps me going.

I feel the need to chip in here, as I've been a lurker for a year or so. I'm a recruitment consultant. I recruit for front end web developers. In my spare time I've been teaching myself Javascript and (with the help of my flatmate, who is a software developer) C#. I do this because I enjoy it, and consider it a valuable skill to have as technology becomes more and more integral to my life. But I also do it because it makes me better at my job. If I can understand a company's requirements better than 90% of other recruiters ringing them up, then that benefits them, the candidate whose CV I'm representing, and me.

Now, I know that a lot of developers have had bad experiences with recruiters. I've had bad experiences with recruiters, when I was looking for a job out of university. You see, in the UK at least, a lot of recruitment consultants are graduates like me who couldn't find a relevant job in their field of interest, or one that bore any relationship to their degree. So instead we got caught up in the recruitment industry, which offers a salary, office experience, and the potential to (allegedly)earn some money. The majority of us are as confused as you are as to why we're here, but those of us who are still doing it after 3 months are probably doing it because there's something in it they enjoy, or they've been lucky enough to keep it.

I get that there's bastards in the industry. There's bastards in every industry. And the tech industry isn't the only one beset by recruiters. I used to work in social housing recruitment, where we were actually liked by those people we were trying to find jobs for. To go from that, to an industry where we are seen as 'the scum of the earth' (which I saw on this site), 'evil bottom feeders' and 'fucking idiots' came as a shock to me.

I'm not asking you to all suddenly start getting lovey dovey with us. This won't change many peoples mind. But be aware that on the other end of the phone is probably a young graduate, terrified out of his mind, who has been thrust into an industry he doesn't know anything about, and expected to hit some ridiculous targets in order to keep his job. A lot of the time, his only mistake has been accepting a job when he didn't have one. Recruitment preys on the desperate, lost demographic of graduates.

So yes, every industry has its shits. But for the most part a lot of recruiters have nothing but respect for developers and designers in the tech industry. Hell, we're scared of you most of the time. You guys possess talent that we can only dream of having, and pretty much make the world go round. All we're doing is helping you find a job.

tl;dr Recruiters are people too. Not all of us are the 'scum of the earth'. Some of us are just trying to get by until we either get better at this job or find another one. We're not all out to screw you over.