why I hate dealing with recruitment agencies

[waider]

I will readily admit that my resumés are sparse, plain-text efforts, but this hasn’t stopped me from getting a quiet trickle of cold-calls over the years. The agency that the boss put me in touch with, however, feels that I should make it a Word document, put in lots of bold text, and pad it out with crap relating to what I’ve actually done. I can see some reasoning behind this, but to be honest, from my own experience with interviewing, padding is definitely one thing that made me put an applicant on the bottom of the pile or in the round filing cabinet.

update: and, I was sufficiently peeved by the above that I neglected to ask directly, but from other comments she made I am guessing that she has completely ignored my requests to be considered for developer positions as well as admin positions.

updated update: Yes, I was right. When they told us on Thursday that there was plenty of development work out there, apparently they meant "no Perl or PHP jobs" because that’s what "my" recruiter said to me. Or maybe she’s only got sysadmin jobs to offer me, because there are certainly plenty Perl/PHP jobs going on the various recruitment websites.

Comments

[opadit.livejournal.com]

The last time I was out of work, I got no bites at all on my resume until I stripped it down to its current state. I've found that the biggest concern addressed to younger people (that is, don't ever, ever, ever show gaps in employment) is not a big deal once one is over 30 -- it's assumed that you'll take time "off" to pursue child-rearing or some kind of significant volunteer gig, or maybe you just went on a vision quest. Also, a lot of people have to take grunt jobs here and there to pay the bills. Listing them all clutters the resume without adding any useful information and it's hardly a sin of omission to leave out a five-month stint at a coffee shop or, um, a local historical site.

[waider.livejournal.com]

To be honest, and as I admitted to wisn, I'm mostly just irritated to have to deal with recruiters again.

[waidesworld.livejournal.com]

Padding the resume actually is a good thing. I had my resume looking good as I saw it and Jaime (who interviews people like me) sliced and diced it to make it look better. Result was a few interviews within a few weeks and a new job. Sometimes the layout as crappy as you think it is, makes the difference. Remember it isn't always the geek who reads the resume and does the hiring. Now that is not condoning pastel colors and scented letterhead you know.

[waider.livejournal.com]

Oh aye, see my other comment above. The thing is, this particular recruiter I've dealt with before, and she's not improved any in the interval. Case in point, she phoned me twice today and asked a question in the second call that she'd already asked in the first call (do I have any experience with WebSphere). And the calls were no more than a few minutes apart.