Slashdot Mirror
Resume Spamming Redux
wiredog writes "Remember this story about the guy who spammed his resume? Well, now the Washington Post is reporting that resume spamming is a trend. Enough of a trend to have generated a backlash!"
Amusing fallout from an amusing story, and hopefully a lesson for
others too.
Anyone want to hire me? I can do ... Oh nevermind.
Nope, no sig
Where's that guy with the sig about his website, resume, and skill set? He should post to this discussion. Quite appropriate. ;)
Heard about this one on the radio the other day. Same type of thing, for a fee.
Also, my roommate in college shotgunned about 1,000 paper resumes out to IB companies shortly before graduation.
He didn't get any offers.
1. Free Viagra
2. Hi, I took naked pics
3. Programmer For Hire
4. University Diplomas Cheap
5. MCSE seeking Job
I think I'll delete #5 first.
I remember when I was in the process years back of trying to organise a startup. I would get spammed endlessly for jobs.
I don't mind people sending me an unsolicited résumé, but the key is to know the company. Form letters can work, but make sure that what's actually in the form letter pertains to what we do.
Currently I work for a company specialised in doing mobile entertainment using a Java platform. Don't tell me about your mad web skills with PHP and MySQL, because that's not what we do. Of course, if you hand-crafted a letter properly...
At any rate, I can't figure out why these people think they'll get jobs. I'll buy a ThinkGeek T-shirt for the first person who can prove that they really got a job from résumé spamming.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
.... if these resumes qualify as spam it wouldn't be hard to prosecute. We have the name and phone number of the person responsible.
By spamming everybody with the CVs (and any other doc, for that matter) in the "My Documents" folder... or was that another virus...
It's just a BloJJ
I can attest to resume spamming becoming a trend. As of the last month or so I have seen many people, from all over the world spamming resumes to internal Sun mailing lists and personal addresses. Personally I would NEVER hire someone who used this tactic, reguardless of how qualified they are
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
Job sites like Monster really encourage spamming prospective hirers as well.
You set up an online resume, and can 1-click send it to the employers of your choice. I was laid off in September, and I sent out 200 resumes in 1 day in this way.
How many callbacks from those, and from all the resumes I sent out over the next month? NOT ONE. And I am not surprised, I can only imagine the number of resumes they are recieving.
Although this isn't the same as all-out spamming, employer spam via job sites online is running rampant and is only going to get worse, which is bad for potentially good candidates as they are lost in the sea of Monster.com email notifications...
Mark
Does it strike anyone else as just a little bit foolish to send a message out to hundreds of strangers containing (presumably) your full name, address, phone number and valid email address ?
Identity theft, anyone ? Not to mention that you set yourself up for reverse spam...
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
There are some websites that offer to send your resume to interested parties. Some of them send your info to employers that have signed up with the service, in standard headhunter style. Some send your resume to newsgroups in the *.jobs.* hierarchies. These ones almost always seem to have bad aim, as regional jobs newsgroups are flooded with postings from other areas. I wouldn't be surprised if other services spam your resume without your knowledge. Although this should reflect badly on the posting service, it is more likely to reflect on the person whose name is in the message. That would be the job seeker whose resume was spammed without his/her permission.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
My friend who graduated from college last year spammed his resume and was hired by a Department of Defense contractor. He didn't email his resume to random companies, but instead he submitted his resume to every job search engine/website. It worked and now he has a sweet job.
I asked him about the job listing that he was hired for, but he doesn't even remember which website had the listing. People are just trying to find honest work when they send their resumes out. There isn't really a reason to take someone to court just because they sent you an unsolicited resume.
Rangers Lead the Way!
What would be the point in spamming corporation's with your resume???
Any company that has management that is so gullible as to not only read spam (as opposed to simply deleting it...), but to ultimately hire someone as a result of it is definitely going to die a quick and painful death...
Even beyond that, who among you would want to work for a manager who not only reads but responds to spam with serious interest!!!
What is this world coming to, seriously!!!
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
Why is the icon at the top of the page an Einstein, but the one that follows the story down the main page a pig? Is that supposed to mean that the guy who spammed his resume a superintelligent swine?
Sure, he might have some problems with prior art, but he could go ahead and file "A Method of Mass Distribution of Personal Work History to Various And Diverse 'Human Resources' Departments for the Purpose of Eventual Employment and Enduring (In)famy," and see what happens. Think of the licensing potential if it was granted.
If someone desired to work in the spam industry, this would seem the most efficient way to get in. When in Rome, do as the Romans do :)
The worst fallout I have experienced from such a tactic is head hunters calling you non-stop: "Hi, I am so-and-so, I have the perfect job for you - call me" IF you call them, they are full of BS and waste your time trying to pimp you out to job positions that you don't want jsut so they get paid. And they never stop. They "follow up" every few months, snail-mail, e-mail - it never ends!
;)
I don't think this is isolated, but if I (and the few other people I know) am in a unique situation, please let me know
... and actually recipients usually like it. I know of several people who have found work this way, and apparently they got no complaint.
IMO it's not as illegitimate as the previous stories seemed to imply, provided you use a sensible list of address (jobs@company.com for example), and not a grep of Usenet addresses.
There's really no comparison between batching a few dozen resumes to somewhat relevants, and sending hundreds of thousands of porno mail ("Do not open this mail if you've below 18!" -- still laughin about this one) to completely random addresses.
The problem with the poor dude that was derided here was that he was a fucking moron; he would not have had any problem had he apologized or just even shut up after being told not to send more mail.
Any sensible employer should refuse to hire a person who chain-guns his résumé to a hundred different people precisely because doing it that way is the easy way out! If you want to be employed, demonstrate that you are willing to go to all the trouble of actually doing it right. Otherwise you're simply telling people, "I'm too lazy to get off my butt and put a little effort into being hired."
--Ford Prefect
Isn't "resume" a verb? If you want it to look like a noun, use é to get the accent on the e, or copy-paste the accented version of résumé from someone else's post. Thank you.
After the first guy was publicised on /., I had more than one new entry in my e-mail box from someone spamming their resume.
Now.. I see three possibilities here:
(I'm using "he" as the subject here. Women, typically, are not this dumb.)
1: He formed the idea himself, out of extreme desperation for a job (Been there, done that.. just didnt spam)
2: He got the idea from the original guy.
3: He got the idea from slashdot. THANKS SLASHDOT.
:)
Carrie doesn't even mention the fact that when Neil complained to Bernie about his spamming, that Bernie threatened to sue him for complaining!
Yeah, spam is terrible - I hate it. But, it's also kind of scary that an allegedly esteemed publication such as the Washington Post would miss the really important details.
The Montreal Gazette article that's linked off of Neil's site is a real hoot.
Don't like it? Don't hire them.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Hmmm...this resume dumping looks like a great way to...ah...unload some of those prickly co-workers or PHBs in my workplace!
I can think of several people right now that I'd rather not have here. I could polish up a resume for them and post it to every Usenet group I could find. Mebbe even a few of the alt.sex sites just for the entertainment value!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I can testify to the reverse spam. I read an article a few months ago about how spammers get your email address. They addressed a number of ways but the missed the one that got me.
My publicly viewable resume.
I was job hunting and put my resume - full name,address, phone removed - up on Monster.com, hotjobs, dice, ect. I created a new email account, just for recieving responses. Well, the online resume only got me calls from head hunters, but withing a couple months that address was recieving spam like crazy, while my other more guarded address, even the ones I use for online registration and other "unsafe" purposes were still relativly spam free.
This leads me to believe that places like HotJobs and Monster are harvested by bots/spiders for email addresses on a regular basis... If the sites themselves aren't selling them.
Moral of this story is if you post a public resume, keep a seperate mail account for it.
While the true definition of spam is a tricky question that probably few people agree on, I think most people would agree that spam is "unsolicited commercial email" (see the CAUCE FAQ for more info.)
I don't think (at least according to the above definition of spam) that emailing your resume to a couple dozen people constitutes as spam. (It's a really stupid idea, though.) If you send your resume to a company through snail mail, they wouldn't consider it junk mail. If you send it through email (and you're sending it to just them, not to the whole world) they probably won't sue you for sending them junk mail. Just the same, it's probably better to send a real paper resume--it shows you put some effort into it other than point-and-click.
It's unlikely that any of these spammed resumes will make it beyond the trash, unlike Bernie Schiffman. The community's attitude toward spam in any form will deny these fool's employment in the community. It's not the survival of the most fit; however, it is a community holding ot it's own standard.
Shifman got no more than he deserved.
Best Slashdot Co
I'm surprised no spammer has included a Word virus that mails the resume to everybody in the recipient's address book. It could optionally email all their names, addresses, and phone numbers to the spammer's "legal team" so they can be included as defendants if the spammer sues for "slander".
Instead of opening these attachments, I suggest every recipient should just send this canned response:
would know better. How often do we (meaning people in the tech industry in general) receive unwanted junk email? All the time. How often do we look at it? I don't know about everyone else, but it goes right into the virtual trash for me.
I don't understand how tech industry people could have thought this would be any different. Perhaps they are fooling themselves about how this relates to physical paper resumes, since some employers will simply take mailed-in resumes and place them "on file" for future reference. As it is, unsolicited emails do nothing more than make the spammer look like a jackass.
Oh, a note to the poster who said they more or less spammed employers through Monster.com. Employers in that system explicitly signed up to receive such emails, thus it can not be spamming.
My sigs always suck.
I cannot belive the article did not do any background checking on Mr. Shiftman's claims that he got jobs by spamming? I highly doubt that. I almost think that may encourage more people to try regardless because I know some people like the last lady in the article...Any press is good press.....
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
It wouldn't be spam without using an overseas mail server to send it from.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
...between spamming and sending out LOTS of copies of your resume to employers.
If you email every email address on a potential employer's contact page with a form letter, THAT is spamming.
If you email the HR email address, and/or the department head address of a particular department you are interested in, that is 'trying to find a job.'
This Shifman guy farms addresses and sends form letters to every address he can get his hands on. There IS a difference.
GIR: I'm going to sing the Doom song now. Doom doom doom doom doom doom de-doom doom doom doom doom doom doom...
The same applies to this Slashdot discussion. The people who have the technology openings people want are probably Slashdot readers (<SARCASM>who would want to work for someone who wasn't Slashdot-aware?</SARCASM>). Or perhaps you've already hired some outstanding candidate who found a way to get your attention without resorting to spam.
So let's put the question to you:
The unsolicited contacting of innocent corporations by unscrupulous individuals attempting to establish a business relationship has to stop.
These insensitive individuals often email their resumes during the dinner hour or during Ally McBeal, when corporations are trying to relax from a difficult day and spend some time with their families.
It's nothing short of harassment and must stop immediately!
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
Spamming continues BECAUSE IT WORKS. Let's face it, the more emails XYZ Corp sends the more returns the usually get for their effort.
The reason it works is more or less because many people are mindless drones (thank you TV, Media, Internet) and will buy into whatever you put in front of them. Most people aren't like this, but then again most people hate spam.
Why would the same rules not apply to employers? They are simply a smaller population. Even if you argue employers are somehow more intelligent or better educated and thus less susceptible to such schemes, I find it improbable that there are NO employers will buy in.
sig
I know I've received spam resumes before.
If someone thinks they will get work via resume spamming.. I guess that's their problem. I guess Spamford Wallace might hire them.
I just follow my policy as with all spam: Do nothing. Delete it. Don't click on links, don't ask to be removed, and don't waste time complaining to someone. I just delete it.
I send you this file in order to have your advice resume.doc See you later. Thanks
You know, before I fell in love with computers and the many related disciplines, I spent a lot of years in the restaurant industry, in a variety of managerial and non managerial capacities. The one service lesson that came though again and again was that one bad impression can counter-balance easily a world of good impressions. You had to treat every customer like they were the most important person in the world; and I think that's a good maxim for any business.
That's why it was especially disconcerting to read one girl's comment in the article to the effect that if she got even one good offer, she was unconcerned about pissing off everyone else. If the first maxim is true, that one bad experience offsets a hundred or more good one's then how much exponentially worse must it be to create a hundred bad impressions on the low yield opprotunity of creating a good one. I suspect it might be alright to send someone a resume that is not necessarily solicited. After all, you never know until you try. But this means addressing a personal correspondence to a specific relevant person at your targeted company. I hope nobody gets any ideas from this.
Oops
Dear Mr. Shiffman,
I am very impressed with your resume and would like to interview you for a consultant position. You will be required to make arrangements to fly to our site in Sunnyvale, California on your own. However, our company will reimburse you later. Please let me know if you are available for this meeting in the next two weeks. Sincerely,
Richard Noggin
Senior Vice President
Noggin Inc.
If he's really stupid and you keep up the correspondence, he might actually fly to your bogus site. At the very least, he'll have to closesly scrutinize all the mail he gets from unknown people to make sure it's real. If it gets to the point where spammers get 10 bogus responses for every real one, I suspect they'll just give up.
When you're looking for a job, you don't think potentially getting yourself blacklisted, doesn't count as a penalty?! Even if you don't get blacklisted, you still make a bad first impression. Maybe you could have gotten a job there, but not anymore.
When it comes to resumes, I don't think spam is a problem, precisely because it does penalize whoever does it. When someone's selling a make-money-fast scam, they've got no reputation to lose. If you're looking for a job and your resume has your real name on it, you do.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Funny, but I can sure use #5 (or far younger) to help my mom who needs some help with her business. If a person has the time and wants some extra money, I'm sure my mom could use it. I do know young people are VERY talented with computers and have the patience to overcome most problems that would stop the more experienced.
Just wondering about the technically proper grammar.
As we don't use accents in English...
Should an accent be used in Resume? If I remember my French classes... it's "Resumé" to indicate the sound of the last E.
I mean, I could take it to be spanish.. in which case 2 accents would be, impossible.... as the accent only indicates the accented syllable.
And where is the accent supposed to go, in french?
Come to think of ot, Sircam and other viri could be used by human resources and headhunters... they would dig up CVs out of My Document folders, and send them to a predetermined address; when they reached it, they could be filtered, screened, and converted into job offers...
Some people would be very happy. "I just got the 'wunderjobs' virus, now I'm waiting for a phone call "...
It's just a BloJJ
As spam goes, this seems less pink than grey.
... so how can they evaluate it? Will somebody stick my name up somewhere as an example of serious evilness? (I'm especially worried about the company to whom I accidentally sent a second email 3 days after the first, because I was copying the resume from the email I had previously sent them. THAT sure makes me look like some doofus mailing to a list.)
I recently sent email resumes to the HR email addresses of about 40 companies. I found the addresses by searching miscellaneous job sites for work in a particular, highly specialized field. I didn't apply for any of those specific jobs, though, for a simple reason: I'm looking for telecommuting and/or freelancing work in this field, and no major corporation that I've seen advertises telecommuting or freelance opportunities on a regular basis.
I didn't send to any of the addresses without first going to the company's website to check out their business and their careers page, but I didn't do an exhaustive investigation of their business either.
So, was it spam? Will they think it was spam? There's no way for them to know what my approach was
Incidentally, each email included a link to a detailed online resume, and the first several of them did not include a resume-in-brief within the email itself. Site logs indicate that nobody has visited the resume links.
And let the angel whom thou still hast serv'd tell thee ...
Thank you for contributing to the /. community. Your comments have added to the conversation and I don't know where we would be without your insightful observations of others. This type of observation would normally be attributed to a person who thinks little of himself, but since it came from you there is no doubt this will add value.
Signed Stuey (Family Guy)
From the Post article:
Still, she's not bothered by critics of spamming or those who find the tactic bothersome.
"I really wouldn't care, if I could get somebody to see it," she said. "Maybe somebody'll see it and have a job opening."
Do we have another Bernie on our hands?
Man, people just don't care who they piss off anymore, as long as there's a chance that they get their way
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
A genuine, qualified, informed candidate will send a resume that matches the job description to the appropriate HR or Hiring Manager address, with a brief cover letter that accurately outlines why the candidate is both qualified for the job and genuinely wants the job.
HTH.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Experience:
2000-2002: Loki Games. Ported popular Windows games to Linux, which worked really well, in spite of the fact few bought any. Really. We did a great job. They games were starting to come out for Linux only 3-4 months after Windows.
"Ants will find a hole in the wall to get the bread."
hmmm...
ant = "any of a family (Formicidae) of colonial hymenopterous insects with a complex social organization and various castes performing special duties"
Thats to good for spammers... i think they sound more like cockroaches:
"any of an order or suborder (Blattodea syn. Blattaria) of chiefly nocturnal insects including some that are domestic pests."
Websters
-
Internet users, on average, received 1,470 messages from spammers in 2001, according to the research firm Jupiter/Media Metrix.
That's only 4 spam a day. I get at least that much that slip through procmail filters on an address that's relatively unpublished. My public yahoo account gets about 20 a day. Really, where did they get 1470 on average? I have friends, who aren't so 'net saavy and post their address everywhere that get much more.
I'm kinda curious now to see how much I'm getting. Probably less than 20 a day since it's unpublished, but I wouldn't be surprised to see at least 10 a day.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
That's the state something achieves when it is effable and scrutable by a wide range of viewers.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Spammers should be deported to Afghanistan, where they can share the nation's one surviving 300 baud modem, in their efforts to tell the world how to get rich quick.
If an alledged techie spams, I'd automatically assume that they were incompetent techs, simply because:
So people think jobs are hard to get, these days. I can remember, in England, when unemployment in some parts of the country was as high as 20%. It was about this time that Norman Tebbit (Crud Puppy's evil twin) made his infamous "get on yer bike" remarks.
So? So, why whinge at a pathetic 5.5%? It's barely noticable! Be grateful it's not four times as severe.
One thing I will say with techs - we CAN work our trade, without the benefit of a large-scale industry to support us. You can write perfectly good code, or design the ultimate in microprocessors with nothing more than a pencil and some paper.
The code, if it really is any good, can become a marketable product with nothing more than a 386SX and a CD burner. It might take a while, but it can be done.
The chip design can be loaded into any FPGA device, tested and sold to any company that produces chips on a commercial scale, or any University with the tools to press chips for their own use.
Steelworkers need some hefty equiptment to be able to do anything. Programmers need a brain and an idea.
Personally, I think it would be great if companies refused to hire technical workers who could not show their competency at core skills (design, implementation, testing and caving in to PHB's). A resume, really, is nothing more than bragging rights for something that everyone else has already forgotten. It would be better if such things were allowed to die.
Computing is both an art and a science. It is not a work of fiction.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Incredible. Simply incredible.
I got a resume spammed to my work address this morning from a guy named Thibault.
At first I thought that it would be a virus, but it was clean according to Norton.
Then I thought it was a scam, mostly because of the wording of this paragraph in the email:
So confident am I that I could be of benefit to any potential employer, I am willing to give them a complimentary demonstration of my abilities, with no commitment needed on their part.
(emphasis added)
Then I read this Slashdot story, and so I guess it is just some desperate guy.
The pathetic thing is, I would have read the resume if it wasn't a Word document.
sig is
I havent posted a resume online in nearly 2 years. Then only to two employment sites, I dont even remeber.
That said I get 1-2 calls a week, half of those from the principals, IBM has called directly, So has MS, they didnt READ the resume apparently, IBM became a nuiscance at one point, I asked where the hell they got my resume, they told me and I tried to track it down but to no avail.
Why are these people who spam resumes getting no response ? Is it lack of their skill sets ? I am a competent programmer on many plattforms and a competent sysadmin when I have to (I hate that part).
I worked at a "Dot-Com" from before they decided the Dot-Com route was the one they would take, when I started there were 10 developers, competent and a total of 17 people, some sales, some clerical. I bolted about 4 months before their crash and burn, it wasnt hard to see the writing on the wall with a burn rate like ours, we were over 100 people in a years time and STILL only had 10 ACTUAL PROGRAMMER, the rest were QA, PROJECT MANAGMENT, All kinds of other made up shit that had no room in an IT company of any worth. We never missed a deadline or dropped the ball UNTIL they started with the project managment crap.
MY point is, All of those 80 people we hired were wholly unsuited for the IT market, those who werent have jobs and had no problems finding jobs, I left for a Higher MUCH salary amongst other reasons.
Did any of these people think theyre not getting hired because theyre better suited to diggin ditches than IT work ????
What they had a taste of the IT glory days and think theyre qualified and dont realize they were just warm bodies ?
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
The accent is optional in resume' in english.
However, it belongs on the 2nd E only - the
articles use of 2 is incorrect.
(it would be pronounced ray-zu-may,
instead of the correct reh-zu-may.)
Resume spamming got me both of my last two jobs when I needed them, and it gave me something to do while I was calling people about jobs and between interviews/job fairs. It may be sleazy, but at least I can pay my rent.
Bottom line - spamming sucks, no matter who is doing it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I think the article was referring to people who send their resume out to non-job-related mailing lists, random people they see online, or picking a bunch of inappropriate names from a corporate website. Some people seem to be confusing this with sending resumes out to all the job search engines and sending messages to all the jobs/hr@prospective.companies-type addresses. Remember that these lists and addresses are created specifically for this purpose... so it's not abusive to take advantage of them.
(Which reminds me... I may be losing my job in a week or so... wish I could figure out why all the "internet" jobs on the search engines are for the point-and-click-FP-of-website-designer, and none for router jockeys/infrastructure engineers)
Get off my launchpad!
About 2 years ago, I was actively seeking a job. I posted my resume on Monster and some other automated resume service websites. As noted in other posts here, most of the replies I got were from headhunters -- job offers consisting of contract, part-time, or other things I was not interested in. I got NO responses from actual employers, which was what I was trying to accomplish by posting my resume on the net.
IMHO, the best way to distribute a resume is directly to whom you're interested in working for. Can't find anyone of interest to work for? I suggest talking to as many people as possible. Since these resume services cater to headhunters, you'll never get personal interaction. Through talking to people, you can get a good idea of what is available for you.
Presently, I still get an occasional email from my original resume posting 2 years or so back. I find it amazing that although I've taken my name off of the resume sites, I still get offers.
Shouldn't there be some sort of premium service, or at least an option on an automated site to filter out would be head hunters? Just my 2 cents.
Actually, the headhunter alternative isn't always so great. I personally know of several respectable, smaller, companies that avoid hiring people who went through a headhunter/recruiter whenever possible. They don't like paying all the additional fees they get hit with upon hiring the candidate. Some of these places may, in fact, prefer contacting you directly after you post a resume on Monster or another job-search site.
Also, in my past experiences, most headhunters are out for themselves, and care very little about your long-term success in a new position. Sure, they'll call all the time and try to prep you for a new job - but if they know the place has high turnover or generates a lot of complaints, they'll hide that from you.
Anyone use headhunters? I'm skeptical that they aren't as selective as they need to be.
a CV. If someone's impressed, maybe they don't know how to spell resume, either.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
I find that I must disagree with your liberal spreading of grammarial disinformation.
The proper plural of virus is BEEEEOTCHAE .
"I just didn't have a million dollars to run a commercial," he said.
OK, so go online and submit your resume via the many various accepted methods. Just about every corporation has an ability to accept resumes, there's Monster.com, thingamajob.com, all sorts of others. There are job recruitment agencies all over the place that take online resume submissions... basically, get off your ass and work for it, don't just send your resume out to everyone and their brother and expect a kind response!
PS - most resumes have confidential information in them, it would be great irony if these resume spammers suddenly suffered from "stolen identity."
~ now you know
Actually, I'm going to try that when I get laid off.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Here's a buissness model for you. Create corporation. Register on all the job sites as a high tech company with lots of job openings. Compile huge email list from all the resumes, then sell list to spammers. It's like free money!
One good headhunter is worth a million mediocre headhunters ones.
/. readers look for in a headhunter?
What do
Heh
I'm doing a PhD.
At my university account I _never_ get any comercial spam other than from headhunters. The anoying thing is it is _always_ in HTML or M$-Word. Dispite the fact my website says send plain ASCII text only!. It really gets on my tits.
Nice try dumbass, the trolls have been thwarted by a +4 funny fp, that didn't claim such!
w00t th!s bitch!
'Nuff said. The bimbo spams her resume hither and fro, then wonders why she's been unemployed for a year? Hint, air-head -- people don't want to hire spammers! Bernie Spamner sent his spam resume to me and I deleted it immediately. Your resume would get the same treatment, because even if I were an employer rather than a guy running his own ego site (hey, gotta be honest here!), I wouldn't hire spammers.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Using a headhunter is a business proposition. You are putting your livelihood on the line by working with these people.
If you are looking for entry level positions I'd avoid headhunters. This is because (surprise) entry level headhunters are the ones hired to find people to fill entry level positions. These people don't care if you are successful, you won't have the opportunity to generate more business for them . It matters not if you stay around.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a more senior position, I would recommend looking at using a headhunter. Three reasons: 1) headhunters looking to fill more senior positions are more senior themselves and have more senior contacts in their rolodexes (or is that rolodices?), 2) the old birds understand that they are trying to place people who will generate repeat business -- they really want you to end up happy, 3) fitting good people into positions where they succede helps them make contacts with HR people.
AC, who used a headhunter to land his last gig and is happy to have done so.
I really don't care about offending others... as long as I get the job
I really don't care about causing traffic delays by cutting people off... as long as I can get there faster
I really don't care about causing pollution... as long as I can make more money
I really don't care about trampling the rights of the innocent... as long as we can punish the guilty
The funniest thing is how loud people complain about others being selfish...
OBFun: Go to local grocery store. Cut in front of line. When someone complains say "Why can we do it on the freeway but not here?" Watch them fizzle.
Maybe the people who spam resumes should start a legitimate company... One that sells viagra or online pr0n, perhaps? :)
:q!
unless I am specifically asked to email a person who is expecting my resume, it shall never go out.
In our digital world, there is still that simplistic charm of a nicely formed resume on high quality paper, packaged in a nice envelope. If you want to attach a digital copy, a nice, pure black floppy with a printer printed label make a great touch. (in otherwords, no funky neon 13 year old floppies)
This approach not only shows that you are willing to put in the extra mile, but that you're one step ahead by including both forms of media.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
He was congratulating the guy who got the fp, dumberass.
Nope, no sig
Believe me, if you were a key person at Boofarg Enterprises, which has Garfal Industries as a customer, and Boofarg goes titsup.com, Garfal will be overjoyed to have somebody on staff who understands Boofarg's (former) technology as well as that overall industry so that migration to somebody elses' technology can begin.
Of course, if you worked for a dot.com with no business plan, no customers, no suppliers, no competitors (how can anybody compete against nothing? :-), then you're SOL.
It also helps to have some Open Source credentials nowdays. I got hired on my current job because of my work on an Open Source program in a related area.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Or get that stick out of your ass and try to understand that not everyone is an HTML code amoeba.
"What do /. readers look for in a headhunter?"
The willingness to give head as well as seek it
Apparently there is some passive Zen thing to getting jobs, at least for me: every time someone successfully hired me it was because they were looking for me, not the other way around. By posting to various services like Monster and NOT doing the one-click resume sending thing, I've gotten more calls than I ever did by sending resumes to them actively, even in response to their own ads.
My best success has been from just informing them I'm available, either by website or by listing on job sites. Apparently there's something to be said for the confidence of passivity and not seeming to want it too much.
I'm sure there was a time long ago when aggressive tactics like resume spamming and showing up at offices was appealing (especially in the glad-handling sales world), but now it just seems creepy. It is no longer a benefit to seem desperate.
I've been very lucky job wise; I've survived the job slump in the Boston, MA, USA area unscathed. But I've kept my ears open. There was a good "Connection" (PBS radio talk show) discussing this; the expert basically came out against spamming. Better to send one or two resumes, custom tailored to the specific opportunity, that will stand out. In other words, do the research on the employer and opportunity and juggle your resume to jump out at them. Of course, I've changed jobs only twice in eleven years so YMMV.
You mean bernie schiffman? www.petemoss.com/spamflames/
Apparently this guy thought wrong:
1. Spam resume
2.
3. Profit!
Maybe he'll figure out 2 someday.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Someone spammed me a resume. I replied back that if they wanted a position as webmaster, they should read thw 'Shiffman is a moron spammer' page about a moron who sends out his resume as spam... and that if he wrote me again, I'd bill him for the time to download and read his mails, minimum three hours a day, hundred bucks an hour. I haven't heard back since.
Wow. Thanks for saving me the typing. Too bad you wasted it as an AC. I would only add that you should never agree to be exclusive with a headhunter. They are a dime a dozen and if one is steering you the wrong then tell them to bug off and find a new one.
As for small companies (the other gentleman's post) - if you are looking for a small company job then you are probably better off looking through the trade press for the business you are in.
Who would want to steal the identity of an idiot?
Maybe anothe idiot, perhaps.
But if you're dealing with an idiot, do you really care which one?
I'm surprised that you didn't get any responses. One of my (as Scott Adams says) cow-orkers just updated her Monster.com resume...only to be bombarded by phone calls the next couple of days.
I don't know if it still works, but if you haven't already, add "Linux" somewhere on your resume. When I changed "BSD" to "Linux" on mine last year, the offers at least tripled in volume.
I wonder if BSD is dying...
--saint
The site that the previous story referenced has quite a bit of funny correspondence - if you look at his complaints section, you can see all the negative feedback the guy got, and then forwarded to Neil as some sort of revenge for posting the story in the first place. My favorite so far is an e-card somebody sent Bernard, seen here.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Not long ago, I was interviewed for the "Ask the Headhunter" column in EETimes. (Yep, there goes the cowardly anonymity....) The interview pertained mainly to finding and keeping a good job.
One of the questions asked why looking for jobs on the web doesn't seem to work. My answer was because it doesn't work for employers. Sifting through all those resumes takes a lot of time and money, usually for very little return.
Resume spamming is one of the reasons why. Poorly conceived resumes are another. My experience has been that anyone who thinks spamming is a good idea almost inevitably has a badly done resume. And absolutely nobody is going to go to the expense of an interview if you can't write a good one.
All employers want to know is what you can do for them. If they have an opening, they have a problem they need solved. Can you solve it? You have about a half a page to convince them that you can. Face it, hiring managers spend less than a minute reading any given resume. Most don't get to the bottom half UNLESS the top half gets their attention (in a good way). This is required for ANY resume, not just e-mailed versions.
Spammers don't seem to understand that sending form letters to the planet shows exactly the opposite. It says that they're too lazy to do any real work. If they can't be bothered to learn about my company, why should I hire them? Even on contract? No company will do that. No, instead they take the "mass market" approach. Snail-mail marketing is considered a wild success if there's a 1% response. E-mail spam won't get you that much.
Alas, the same cerebral flaw that causes people to think spamming is a good idea will also prevent them from learning anything from this message, this board, or even the copious mail they get from their targets.
In a lot of ways, this is like a gambling addiction. "I only have to win once. Just one more try...."
gm (sorry for the bandwidth, but I used to be a hiring manager. THOUSANDS of those cheesy resumes crossed my desk)
Ad luna, Alicia! Ad luna!
The REAL problem is the current way jobs are found, or rather, NOT found. And this existed during the peak of the bubble, making it hard for employers to find good people even though many good people existed looking for work even at that time. That problem is that connecting between employer and employee candidates is so ineffective.
Job boards are the rage. But they have only a small percentage of the jobs. Most of the jobs on the boards are posted by professional recruiters and their firms. But the majority of job openings are not listed there because they are not sent to recruiters. These are "less crucial" openings that don't justify the cost of a headhunter, which can be as much as the employee's full first year salary. And most businesses simply don't want to deal with the hassle and cost of posting all their own job openings on all the job boards. It costs a few thousand to post a single job opening to all the major job boards (there are too many of them).
A better designed job board would help. Doing searches on skills, job functions, and other criteria is in many just a cheap string search. And in those few that do more than a string search, they are often limited to listing just skills alone, instead of also other things like what job function roles one is looking for, or needs. I remember getting calls many times for someone to do a programming job in C++ even though I was only open to network management work. The reason was that I have nearly 20 years experience programming in C (not C++), and some board lumped C and C++ together, and never took into account that this was merely a skill and not what I was actually looking to do. I wonder how many potential employers skipped over my online profile just because I looked like a programmer to them (when searching candidates on these boards, employers see profiles first, and have to take extra steps to see the actual resume).
Then there is the fee to post a job. And the fee to view resumes. While the job boards do need to make money these days (especially considering their investors want to see a return on investment), this still remains a big obstacle to getting jobs listed. Some industry analysts say there are nearly a million job openings in high tech even now; a figure I have some doubts about, but I can't totally discard the possibility because I know the vast majority of them won't be posted on the big boards, even if the market was booming (and certainly not during a recession).
It sure would be a big plus to people looking for work if there was a totally free board (free to post a job, free to post a resume, free to search jobs, and free to search resumes). I've even suggested that employers wanting to hire people on H-1B visas should be required to post on the major boards for 3 months before applying to grant the visa, and a free super job board might even make that viable (and get more Americans back to work at American companies ... and maybe similar in other countries, as I hear Germany has a problem similar to H-1B). The problem will be paying for such a board (bandwidth isn't free, now), and advertising probably doesn't cut it anymore.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
-sk
A couple of years back, I had a similar experience -- I was looking for a new job and had given a resume with references on it to a headhunter. Within the next few weeks, the people I had listed were getting solicitations from the bloodsucker. It didn't seem to diminish the volume of responses I was getting, but then this was at the height of the .com insanity -- headhunters were desperate for anyone who might be remotely qualified. Anyhow, never give a reference to anyone until they are ready to offer you the job.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Over the last six weeks or so I've gotten a total of two calls.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Pre-web (1986) but same thing:
:-)
The day after arriving in Japan I borrowed a friend's portable typewriter, banged out a resume and generic cover letter, copied them several times and mailed them to all the computer-related firms I could find in the English Japan Yellow Pages.
The next day (God, I loved the Japanese postal system) I got a call from the head office of ComputerLand Japan saying they had a franchise who needed a computer-knowledgeable English speaker to deal with their foreign clients.
Thus, what I thought would be a one-week stay became 10 years.
OK, where's my t-shirt?
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
If Shifman hadn't been a complete fucking asshole to everyone he contacted, it would have never gone this far. Shifman is entirely responsible for his actions. If he is so unstable as to kill himself, it's no one's fault but his own.
Unsolicited Bulk Email
ac
Back in college I worked for a desktop publishing/copy/printing company and one of things we did was prepare resume packages for people, including mail-merged cover letters. We would type and copy the resume with cover letters for something like $30 for 20 copies. We had a guy come in who was graduating from vet school and he wanted to be a Kentucky race horse vet, so he obtained a mailing list of every horse breeder in Kentucky and paid us to type in the list (he didn't have it in electronic format) and generate over 200 resumes with mail merged cover letters then mailed all 200+ of them. It cost him a few hundred dollars and out of 200 mailings, he got like 20 offers and just picked the best one. I think that in my career, I've maybe submitted 20 resumes and got three different jobs from them.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Personally, I think I have a great résumé for a new graduate. I have been part of a dozen different honor societies (most of them a waste of time, actually), I was on the dean's list every semester, I was Vice President and President of the school's ACM organization (you guys, of anyone, know about them, right?), I was on the school's ACM programming team, given awards in the computer science department for solving obscure program-of-the-month tasks, I'm willing to relocate anywhere, I worked hard and graduated magna cum laude, but none of this really matters.
The only work experience I have is with fixing computers. But I'm interested in programming. Java, or C++, mostly, but I'm very open to other possibilities. So where do I look for companies that are looking entry level people? No one seems to advertise them, and when they do they don't write back to me.
I recently had a discussion with a friend about an interesting situation:
If you graduate as a nurse (what my school is known for, incidentally), how do you find a job out of school? You open the phone book and start calling people under "Health" or "Health Care" etc. and you've pretty much got everyone, right there together.
So for an entry level programmer guy, where do you look? Sure there are the big companies that "have got to have a need for IS" but when that doesn't bear fruit? then what?
Basically, what I'm saying is that I understand this guy's situation, desperately wanting a job and simply not finding anyone interested.
Sure, I can work for peanuts, that's not the problem. I simply don't know how to look, I guess. I don't know how to say "Hey, even though I don't have 2 years programming java j2ee using weblogic, i'm damn quick and I'll stay up every night until i understand it up-down-left-right-center and you're satisfied" to people and have them listen.
so, yeah. If they don't advertise, and they get mad when I ask them for a job without their solicitation, how do I get in the door?
Ah, yes...and how exactly does TV, other mass media, and the Internet make people into mindless drones? Is EM radiation turning us into zombies or something? Are there mind-altering signals embedded in websites? Do see hidden swastikas in national newspapers? Do infomercials feature hypnosis?
It always gets me when people take potshots at mass media when they don't back it up with facts.
Of course headhunters are out for themselves? What did you think they did? Find jobs for people out of the goodness of their hearts?
I use recruiters exclusively because A. I only work contract positions and B. recruiters are usually the only people who have access to jobs at some of the very large companies.
I've gotten ALL of my IT positions (about 12 now) through recruiters.
You confuse "egalitarian" with "identical" or "mass-enlightened." Baloney.
It is "egalitarian" in the sense that all responses are given equal weight; it does not mean that those responses will all be equal in quality. Remember that the WWF and tractor pulls are very popular events these days. "Egalitarian" means that the opinions of people who think these are the pinnacles of modern civilization will be equal in importance to your (obviously far more valuable [sarcasm alert]) opinion. You may be accustomed to surrounding yourself with intelligent, educated, culturally sensitive people -- welcome to the rest of the world!
ThatTallGuy
That's the problem with democracy: two village idiots can outvote one educated person.
Agreed.
I used to work for DICE in my younger days, and having supported many a non-techinical technical recruiter I have the following to report...
1) MOST recruiters usually do not care about anything other than adding your resume to their database. This is why the 'Laundry List' job add exists in today's newspapers.
2) Any job that is vague about the position is usually bogus. Look for postings that contain detailed job/project information.
3) If you meet a scummy recruiter (think slimy used car salesman), or someone who does not appear to be on the up and up about the position with you, go somewhere else.
I used a recruiter to find my current job, but I only contacted those that I rememberd being rather reliable people from my contacts in working for the company.
There are a lot of short-term or fly-by-night recruiting agencies created by MCSE's, or programmers who couldn't hack it.
My company is about to go under, so I've been applying nad posting like crazy to different places.
I also have a terrible commute to my current office and wanted to find an IT position in my suburb community.
So, I thought I'd be innovative. I figured, "I can be passive and just hit F-5 all day long on Monster.com, or I can actually be a little more aggressive." My first stop was the industrial association in my hometown that represented all the businesses in the commerce park. That yielded the names of the companies, but no contact information.
Next stop was the chamber of commerce website where I was able to find the names, addresses, and contact information for about 4 dozen medium sized companies that I knew had to have computers (ie not manufacturing companies or retail places).
After getting the data, manually typing it into a database, creating a generic yet specific form letter addressed to the IT department, merging the documents, and finally printing about 35 letters and envelops, then printing 35 color resumes (I've got a bit of color in my resume to make it standout)and finally folding 70 documents three ways and licking 35 stamps, I sent them out via snail mail, $0.34 a piece.
After reading this and the previous story, I felt a little conflicted. I mean I put a good day's work into this little project and I'm still updating my list, sending out new packages and hoping for replies. None so far unfortunately.
So, if what I have done is spam, then I'm guilty as charged I suppose. But at least my form of spam takes a lot of effort, research and skills. And if only 1 out of 100 of those companies like what they see, then I've scored big time.
You owe me a shirt friend. The reality of it is, spamming works. If it didn't work, people wouldn't bother. Notice you get less telemarketers lately?? Telemarketing is not as effective as it once was.
Why is Bernie Shifman any less guilty that AOL, Amazon, or MSN?? I have only been to MSN once, and then I changed the homepage preference, but I get e-mails from them daily. Why?? A hotmail user e-mailed me.
When I did consulting work, I used to harvest directories of local IT managers and send brochures and resumes for our companies services. While I was somewhat targeted in my spamming, I got alot of wrong e-mail addresses.
I am looking over old records, and I made over $27k from "cold calls(S)" (notation for people I spammed) in 1997. I admit it was spam, and I am proud of it.
Of course, realtors look through tax records and find people who bought their houses 5 years ago and contact all of them.
The real concept of Spam vs. Bulk mail seems to revolve around the idea that there is no penalty for the spammer. He doesn't pay for stamps, paper, etc. But to me there is far less of an environmental impact to sending an e-mail than a glossy brochure.
Just look at all of the junk mail you recieve and know that every person in america gets just as much. All of those glossy catalogs and 4.9% credit card offers consuming the landfills oif America.
The effectivness of an advertising message sent via e-mail is just as effective than that sent by snail mail. The real key is to have a good advertising message. If you send a subject "Resume Attached: " your response is not as good as say... "New streaming solutions for multimedia in the Mobile Paradigm" or even "Multimedia pioneer seeks new java-based challenges.". You might read that e-mail, the guy in accounting won't.
Yes, your subject should reflect the body of your message. If you are looking for a job as a Unix admin, put it in the subject! "Unix admin and scripter seeks employment." If they have a Unix job, they'll read it, otherwise, they won't.
I'll bet none of the resumes I sent in 1997 still exist today, but I'm sure that 99% of the paper resumes sent in that same year are still cluttering something up.
I'll spam you and let you know where to mail that shirt.
~Hammy
I know of several people who have found work this way, and apparently they got no complaint.
/.er a few messages upstream of yours. I'd jump on it before he gets cold feet. ;-)
There's a free ThinkGeek t-shirt available to your friends courtesy of a generous but skeptical
Fried ice cream is a reality. - George Clinton
If you hurry, you might still be in the running for the free ThinkGeek t being offered above.
Fried ice cream is a reality. - George Clinton
What do I look for in a headhunter?
Someone with a clue and who respects me.
Seriously.
I've had headhunters call me when they obviously didn't read my resume, just saw a warm body they could hammer into whatever position they had, irregardless of what skills I had, where I was located, or even whether I wanted contract or full-time. I won't hesitate to tell these to go away, and don't bother me.
I've had other headhunters call me, but don't really understand the industry they're hiring for. I once had a headhunter tell me that he had a hot job for me fixing ATM machines because I told him I knew something about ATM networking. *sigh* Another didn't know what the salary scale for my profession was. Turns out he was trying to find folks with more 5+ years of experience to take jobs at less than half than what I was making in the same geographical area.
I've had others who have social-engineered my phone number from somewhere and call me at work - something I had said was a definite NO-NO.
A good headhunter doesn't forget that he's dealing with people on both sides. Stuffing me into a job I hate might get him his finders fee, but isn't going to make me happy, and I certainly wouldn't use him again, nor reccomend him to my friends.
Spamming for jobs can be useful. I was recently laid off, and I'm not complaining. I'm eligible for unemployment benefits for the first time in my life, and I really want to take a few months off and hack on some of my own stuff. The "problem" is that I'm a reasonably skilled and specialized coder, and in spite of the economy, if I so much as make eye contact, I've got job offers. Resume spamming allows me to "look for work as directed" while at the same time drastically reducing the odds that the people that get my resume will bother to look at it. Resume spamming is great if you want to be a slacker.
Perhaps the illustrious HR offices of the McDonalds, Burger King, and Jack In The Box corporations and their IT departments have a need for embedded crypto this week.
Well, you see most folks have a "social circle." It's that set of people they're on good terms with, keep in touch with, do favors for, spend time with. When one hears of one of these folks in need of assistance one pauses for a moment and thinks if there's anything they can do; in this case if they know of a position or a connection for this person. In return these folks do the same.
Another popular strategy is "work buddies." These are the folks who you shared jokes with while waiting for photocopies, sat in small windowless rooms fighting the good fight, who respected or appreciated you at a former job. If you haven't completely alienated everyone you've ever worked with you'll likely have a few names in the address book you can drop a line to, see if they have any leads. Of course they'll expect the same in return; today or someday.
Finally there's the traditionial technique of "working the room." There are any number of events in most places for folks who are looking for positions to get together and share information. There are also places where the fishing is good: Try finding a users group meeting for products and tools you're familiar with. make a favorable impression and see if there's anyone in need of your skills. Go to trade shows in areas relevant to your field, chat up others and hand out resumes. Get involved in online discussions and projects you can contribute value to, perhaps impress a potential employer or someone who can recommend you to a potential employer.
Sure none of these are alien concepts?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Actually, I'd consider that newsworthy. (Not to mention completely unheard of...)
http://www.wilwheaton.net
Hehe, it occured to me right after I posted that, that headline would probably make /. as well.
I still stand by my original point that Bernie wouldn't have become "The Most Hated Man on the Internet" had that been the headline though.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
and God knows they never givve up. I remember a few years ago, my fiance had a headhunter calling repeatedly, wanting him to come work in glorious Topeka KS. Week after week this guy called, finally my fiance told him that the only way we would move to Topeka was if they got rid of the Phelps family and the mental hospital that provides the half of the town that aren't patients with employment. He STILL got a few calls after that (but then we moved out of state and the guy can't find us, hahaha)
I've used resume spamming to help both myself and my friends to get jobs. The key is to not make the email look like spam.
I use a program called Gammadyne Mailer, available at www.gammadyne.com. It lets you mass customize your messages, using any ODBC data source and has a nifty bit of scripting built in, too.
First, I would go to jobsites and find the names, titles, emails, company names, and what the company does, and enter it all into the database. Then I script Gammadyne to use this info in the cover letter, and voila!, a personalized email just for the prospective employer. I also script in defaults, in case I don't have certain information, like the person's title, the sentence using the title in the email would default to something else.
OTOH, I don't approve of simply sending out to group lists or email addresses of someone, just because the domain name of the company is one your are looking for.
There is a line, albeit a fine one. Honestly, If you don't want to receive resume spam, don't put your email address up looking to receive resumes.
The only reason I started doing this was because whenever I post my resume on monster, or hotjobs, or whatever, I don't get responses from potential employers, I get spam from someone else telling me to use "their" job board.
It's a shitty thing to do, but it is also a shitty job market, and it's shitty to be unemployed.
Come on people, bring it on!!!
First, you send the spammer a reply, saying that you're very impressed with his qualifications, and ask him to fly cross-country at his own expense to meet you. Then, you say you'll send a limo to meet him at the airport.
For extra amusement value, hold up a sign with his name on it, and then when he walks up and identifies himself, take a picture of him and post it on your "idiot spammers that I fooled into spending some real money" web site.
If the idiot spammer in question is someone like Bernie, just kick his ass.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You deserve what you get, you lazy, stupid bastards. It sure sucks living in a bubble world, doesn't it? Especially when that bubble pops.
As for those who do have degrees who are now out of work: you have my sympathy, and I hope you find good employment soon.
Oh my HELL that's annoying
it seems that wasingtom post has been posting a lot of hals ass and bullsit stores half the time. why the hell do u keep posting from them?
Lizard "Never let them set limits on your mind!"
Neil Schwartzman
2305 Oxford Avenue
Montreal, QC
(514) 485 4474
He's hated because he didn't apologize for being an asshole. To tell the truth, I don't hate him. I don't think he's worth the effort. He is, however, worth the effort of making an example of. It's called deterrence. Spam won't be stopped until Bad Things start happening to spammers. Well, a Bad Thing happened to him. Hopefully it'll deter some other idiots.
Best Slashdot Co
its obvious you havent.
the spammer in question is not your ordinary idiot spammer, hes transcended to the next level of scum. self-righteous spammer who doesnt even see spamming as wrong
Yeah, that one guy was a jerk. I read that article even before it was posted to /., kthx. MY whole point is that you can't sue everybody, and flying lawsuits doesn't change anything. It's like if you flung dog feces at the mail man every time you got junk mail.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
As to "spamming" my résumé, what else is there? Résumé by telepathy? "woo.... you will hire the guy that hasn't sent his résumé because you'll consider it spam and sue him... wooo...."
Anyway, I'm trying to get in as a programmer and my work thusfar has all been pc repair, networking, and maintenance. I had an internship, but they're a dot-com and since I was there last year the population has more than halved, so they're not interested! I'm just glad they've survived this far; it was a good company.
As for consultants, I've contacted every tech recruiter/headhunter/consultant I can think of and the ones that talked to me at all said "we don't do entry level. Come back in two years."
I know finding a job takes effort, I'm no sloth. But apparently I'm not doing it right anyway.