Are IT Recruiters Worthless (Part 2)

A couple of you left comments after my last article on this topic, and you were just amazed that I would dare show up to an interview in sweats. You have to understand a couple things. First of all, we’re talking about an 8am meeting 40 miles away. She’s lucky I wasn’t in my bunny slippers. Second, that’s the favorite game of every recruiter on the planet. They live for making you drive all the way across town t

A couple of you left comments after my last article on this topic, and you were just amazed that I would dare show up to an interview in sweats. You have to understand a couple things. First of all, we’re talking about an 8am meeting 40 miles away. She’s lucky I wasn’t in my bunny slippers. Second, that’s the favorite game of every recruiter on the planet. They live for making you drive all the way across town to meet you so that they can judge whether you’re worthy to send on an interview. This is another one of those things that makes looking for a job so incredibly unbearable. It’s pretty common knowledge that the only thing you’ll be doing for the first 2-3 weeks you’re looking for a job is running back and forth across town meeting with one recruiter after another. Sometimes they have an actual job for you and sometimes they don’t. And what’s really the point of the meeting anyway? Like recruiters have been given special powers that allow them to see what kind of person you really are for the 15mins you’re with them. It’s a pathetic exercise. I’ve turned down so many interviews because the recruiter insisted on me coming into his office just to inspect me beforehand. It’s like we’re children. Did you brush your teeth? Did you wash behind your ears? Did you bring your list of stupid questions to ask the hiring manager? Did you put on clean undies?
I’ve always wanted to show up at the recruiter’s office in a nice suit looking like a million bucks, and then change into cut-offs and fishnet stockings on the way to the interview. It would be nice to show them that their little 15min meeting didn’t tell them anything about me.
My point here is that recruiters have the job listings so they’ve pretty much got us by the shorthairs. They can demand that we jump through any little hoop they like and we have to do it because we need to get to that interview. I’ve actually had recruiters try to insist on driving me to the interview. I had a couple who insisted on me telling them what I was going to wear. They actually wanted it described in detail to make sure it met with their approval. To be fair though, they both worked for the same company. And I’ve had several who actually met me in the lobby of the company. This was presumably to make sure I was on time and wouldn’t wipe a booger on the hiring manager when I shook his hand.
It’s this level of babying from people who are often times quite a bit younger and less experienced than us that makes a lot of IT professionals resent recruiters.