Slashdot Mirror
Hounded By Recruiters, Coders Put Themselves Up For Auction
An anonymous reader writes "When Pete London posted a resume on LinkedIn in December 2009, the JavaScript specialist stumbled into a trap of sorts. Shortly after creating a profile he received a message from a recruiter at Google. Just days later, another from Mozilla. Facebook reached out the next month and over the course of the next two years, nearly every big name in tech – attempt to lure him to a new employer. He received 530 messages in all, or one every 40 hours ... the only problem? Pete London didn't exist."
how many of the jobs didn't exist as well?
or are 3-4 recruiters all going after the same job??
Wasn't there some guy who went on interviews for high paying jobs, the type where you got flown in, put up and even given money? He would intentionally throw the interview at some point, ensuring he didn't get the job he wasn't qualified for yet enjoying a free vacation. Somehow he got found out and was convicted for fraud. Anyone know this story?
Not this shit again. "We can't find talent!"
Quite obviously employers have a very different definition of talent than people who actually have said talent and capabilities. It's either that or we are in an all-out war with employers at this point over wages and foreign worker importation/outsourcing - take your pick.
This seems to me to be yet another ploy to push for more H1B workers and to justify outsourcing. There's no two ways about it.
"Not enough qualified applicants" my ass. I happen to be aware of quite a few competent people who are out there looking for positions in "in-demand" fields. Guess what? They're getting stonewalled.
(Sorry, you're going to be hiring 5 green programmers for every 2 experienced, and 5 experienced for every expert - that's just the way it is. You can't only staff experts unless you're willing to pay expert rates. It's not good for anyone.)
If, in fact, they really think there is a lack of qualified people, here's their problem: there has been a breakdown of communication, and their formalized hiring processes, excessive HR, and outsourced employee sourcing (you know, headhunters) are at the root of the problem. Finding (and keeping) good employees is the single most important part of maintaining and growing a business. Why would you push that responsibility to someone else? What ends up happening is that headhunters (of all kinds) do end up finding qualified applicants who are looking for work - we just write them off as spam, telemarketers, or insincere requests without so much as a second notice because of how unprofessionally we're addressed. (Hint: having an Indian "initial contact" team for your HR is not a good idea; neither is using an automated system for requesting potentially qualified applicants to submit a resume via eg. LinkedIn - you're only going to get desperate people, not those who are capable.)
The culpability for this problem sits squarely on the employer.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Click-whoring; yes.
Plagiarism; no.
Just because they cut and paste a few sentences from a much larger copyrighted article, doesn't mean they are infringing on the copyright, despite what copyright pimps would like you to believe.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
cut down unqualified candidates or cut out good people though a 3rd party HR system that looks for key words / name of school / etc over real skills.
or he'd pay to work?
This is a great idea, and I think that it is going to work. I experienced myself how badly some companies are trying to recruit skilled people. Many people I know received a job offer from google, me included. Also once I received a weird phone call from another country, because a recruiter at citrix googled my cv, and he was thinking that I will abadon my job and move with family to another country. This recrutiting market is just crazy.
This is why I think that DeveloperAuction will do a lot of good.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
“Good engineers are never unemployed and never seeking jobs.”
Unless they're living in India and over 40...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Copyright isn't the issue. Quoting from copyrighted content is fair use.
Plagiarism, on the other hand, is trying to pass off someone else's work as your own.
In this case, the summary says "an anonymous reader writes..." when the actual author is not anonymous and not the submitter of the story.
Heck, at the very least put "J.J. Colao writes for Forbes..." That would be honest, but this is just shitty journalism.
Just because they cut and paste a few sentences from a much larger copyrighted article, doesn't mean they are infringing on the copyright, despite what copyright pimps would like you to believe.
Is is plagiarism if the summary claims that the cited passage was written by "an anonymous reader" when in fact it was openly written by "J.J. Colao".
Ezekiel 23:20
I get hit hard every day due to some of the esoteric terms in my resume (I'm a Windows OS/apps rollout and migration specialist), and end up having the primary tier of recruiters contact me first, then a week or two later the second (larger) tier hit me with the exact same job. The worst aspects of it are the recruiters ignoring my geographic/telecommuting preferences and wanting me to constantly "network" for someone to fill their positions. It becomes discouraging to waste so much time filtering the same exact irrelevant positions over and over. - HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
"Good engineers are never unemployed and never seeking jobs." But this recruiting firm wants the equivalent of 15% of your first years wages to match talent and an employer. Couldn't a good engineer (and a smart one!) just cut a deal directly with the employer and pocket some of that? Should be a no-brainer - enigneer wants job and employer wants engineer. Why the middleman?
That reminds me a recent exchange I had with Google. Some guy from Google contacted me on linkedin saying Google was interested in my profile.
Since my profile is fairly atypical, I am a researcher, a technical consultant, a CEO of a tech start-up, an open-source enthusiast and member of several major standardization efforts, I was wondering what they had to offer.
I gave the guy my number and he called me. It was apparent that he hadn't even read my resume, and when I explained it he didn't seem to understand what I was saying. He actually expected me to resign from my job, freshen up bachelor's level computer science stuff and then come for an interview. He wouldn't even tell me how much they'd be able to pay me; just that "you know, Google has the best, and everyone there is quite satisfied with their salary".
If you're going to try hiring people randomly with keywords on linkedin, a good idea might be to check who you're pitching to.
Will you father my baby?
I know this is Slasdot, but out of curiosity I took a moment to RTFA: the part quoted as the summary here is the only place in TFA that the phony profile's mentioned. The rest of it's nothing more than a puff piece for the head-hunting firm behind it. Yet Another Case where the "editors" didn't bother to check what they were accepting.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I sometimes wonder if head hunters are worse than bill collectors.
How are you to know I am not J.J. Colao?
- J.J. Colao
How does this rate "interesting". If it was plagiarism there wouldn't be a link to the actual story. You can't tell someone they are trying pass someone else's work off as their own when they provide the original work. Especially when it is just a couple lines on a news aggregator site to give the readers a clue what the article is about.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
... register here at /. ?
Because even non-existing he could get a lot of automatic karma while ACs -- even existing ones -- are pushed under the carpet...
The question is not whether you are him or not. It is whether you represent yourself to be him or not. Plagiarism is copying without proper attribution.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Copyright isn't the issue. Quoting from copyrighted content is fair use.
Plagiarism, on the other hand, is trying to pass off someone else's work as your own.
In this case, the summary says "an anonymous reader writes..." when the actual author is not anonymous and not the submitter of the story.
Heck, at the very least put "J.J. Colao writes for Forbes..." That would be honest, but this is just shitty journalism.
You must be mentally impaired or trolling, or this is your first time ever on slashdot. It's not journalism at all so saying it's "shitty journalism" is not relevant. An anonymous reader wrote in that there was a story on another site and provided a summary. This tips off the Slashdot users to go comment without reading the article or sometimes without even reading the summary. One or two users will actually read both and have a bit of sport trolling the group that did not. It's a cycle.
Good engineers are never unemployed and never seeking jobs.
Biggest falsehood ever. I bet this is the reason most unemployed coders are still unemployed, and these companies have announced a false 'shortage' of engineers.
FWIW, if anyone's hiring, I am a coder that would like a better job...
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Hey, if this site claims to be a "news" site, then it is journalism. They should do their fucking job and actually, you know, write a summary.
Exactly. Provided someone else's summary.
This is where the disagreement lies between actual news sites and aggregators. The news sites say it's plagiarism and the aggregators say it isn't - they're just "search utilities" like Google.
Call it what you will - I call it fucking lazy.
I've been tempted to setup a LinkedIn profile and put up my resume. I've held back because I don't want to give the impression I'm looking for a new job. OTOH, I *feel* that I'm underpaid for the skills, education and experience I have. I'm also looking to switch career and willing to see what I'm offered.
I get why people setup profiles and can see some of the benefits.
Any advice or good reading for the LinkedIn shy? Is it even worth it?
What is happening is you are running into the sales game. Don't think just because someone is caling you that they have a job for you.
I am not going to go into percentages here but a good number of these so called offers are B.S.
They are sales people. They are doing what they are suposed to quote un quote do what sales people do in a cold calling envrionemnt. It's the numbers game.
They get paid if they get some sort of information from you. Even a referal get's them a stale Twinkee of the week award.
They don't read your resume, because if they did they would offer you a interview appointment right then and there.
Or if they do ofer you an interview appointment it's to come to thier boiler room operation where all you hear are noisy phone calls and no privacy. it's like walking into an H&R tax office so that people who are waiting arround can hear what you make and what deductions you can't take.
Don't waste your time. Don't even give them more than 1 min on the phone.
Here is how a successful phone call should work.
Ring ring.
Hello?
Hello Mr. so and so. I was looking over you resume and I am interested in your skills. We have a position open at a company _______ fill in the blank.
Starting Salary $$ benefits and whatever else they have to offer.
What would be the best time for you to come in for the interview?
If they don't have that down just hang up.
People love to waste your time. In fact there would be more millionares per capita if people were paid on the sole premise to waste your freaking time.
This is a bogus article because if you put yourself up for auction you arent going to get any offers and in fact I don't think people have the time to play let's see who we can get for X ammount of dollars. You better be a well known superstar if you think you can offer yourself to the highest bidder.
Most large organizations have outsourced your so called superstar programming experience to India anyway. These companies don't care if they get a workable product that serves the customer, all they care about is how quick thier project gets launched and how much money they saved up front. It's the same stupid shortsighted bullshit that American cars manufactures use. get the product out at all costs and when the recall happens fire the head of the engineering division because we decided to go with the low ball 20 cent micro switch over the $1.00 one that causes parking brakes to disenguage.
Well, are you? The odds are 7 billion to one.
How about looking up the definition of "summary", the fact that it is a "summary" removes the possibility of plagerisim.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
When I was a software engineer (12+ years of experience), I had recruiters contacting me pretty much daily, with all sorts of wonderful breathless urgency, about how they were "so very interested" in my software skills and would love to chat about their crappy entry-level job or temp position. Annoying as hell, and the recruiters have only gotten more and more desperate as the software job market starts picking up.
Fortunately, I now get contacted about once a month (if that) by recruiters. How, you ask?
Simple. I did a little career move over to the technical marketing side, and changed my job title on LinkedIn to "Senior Product Manager". BAM! The recruiter contacts stopped pretty much overnight. Every once in a while, I get the occasional "I notice you were once an engineer, want to come back??" message which I politely decline, but no more annoying stream of desperation. I suppose if I ever become serious about changing companies, I could always put "Senior Software Engineer" back on LinkedIn and dive through the recruiter spam.
When you think about it, it's kind of revealing. It shows the mentality out there--people think the only thing software companies need is a steady supply of engineers. Apparently, software simply leaps from the engineers' fingertips, right into the customer's shopping cart, with no product definition, schedule, market requirements analysis, etc.
And do they accept bitcoins?
Gently reply
Hang on, what? Are you saying if I write something, then repeat what I wrote in an anonymous context, that's plagiarism?
-- All your booze are belong to us.
I wish I could be hounded by recruiters
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I'm surprised at the number of people who don't know the skill of dealing with telemarketers on the telephone: "I'm not interested"
Dealing with recruiters is similar and simple: "I currently make $X, and would consider a change for a 30% increase."
Hang on, what? Are you saying if I write something, then repeat what I wrote in an anonymous context, that's plagiarism?
For Pete's sake, people! It's not "cut and paste"; it's "copy and paste"!! The two operations are not the same thing.
You'd think a bunch of geeks would get it right.
If you're making up a fake resume, you can say whatever you want to...whatever you know recruiters are looking for! Why is it so surprising that a custom-tailored--but false--resume would attract attention from recruiters? Real resumes usually carry some baggage, and other less-than-ideal unless you've had a flawless career. Fake ones can be perfect.
Yes, and you'll have to promptly sue yourself.
It would only make a difference if it was true, of course.
Okay, I am looking at Merriam-Webster, which says "summary" is: "an abstract, abridgment, or compendium especially of a preceding discourse."
Now I'm looking at the definition of "plagiarize" which is: "to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source."
Can you tell me what in these definitions makes it impossible to "present as new and original an abstract, abridgment, or compendium especially of a preceding discourse derived from an existing source"? Cuz as far as I can see, that's exactly what the submitter did. Except, it's not even a summary - it's the fucking introduction of the article itself!
I actually just ran into this situation myself.
I didn't even have a LinkedIn profile until about a month ago when I ran into an ex-coworker who wanted to connect with me. I've been happily employed developing Android apps at my current company since I graduated university about a year and a half ago, but I figured what the heck, I might was well throw my experience up on my profile for shits and giggles.
Within one week, I was contacted by recruiters at Facebook, Amazon, Google, and a couple lesser-known local companies.
Really all it comes down to is picking words that get a lot of search hits and shoving them in your profile.
First some context:
I've been a Software Engineer (or developer with extensive design and architecture experience if you prefer) for 18 years. Without posting my resume, suffice it to say that I have a great deal of experience that many companies and recruiters find desirable. When I post my resume, I generally get between 70-90 calls within the first week. About 20% of those will be for jobs requiring relocation even though I clearly post that I am not interested in relocating. I only use one job posting website to cut down on the number of calls I have to take. As a contractor, I have to do this two to three times a year most years (thank god that I'm on a three year contract now). As such, keeping references is VERY hard for me to do because they get pestered to death every time I'm looking for work. Every single recruiter wants to verify them personally, and during any given search that can be up to 100 calls (that's high, but it has certainly happened).
With all of this popularity, I still have yet to break through the 110k barrier on income. Why? Business Managers (MBAs) with comparable experience and projects under their belt are making at least three times that much. Why? In most of my contracts and every W2/Fulltime job I've ever had I have to learn as much or more about how the business works and what policies, processes, procedures and rules exist, have existed over time and may change. I've designed and built as well as implemented CMS, CRM, ERP, Authentication, Physical Access Management and many other essential core business processes. So with all of my knowledge and experience why is it that salaries for my profession lag so far behind salaries for business managers?
Because most of the spam I get is from course invitations, not recruiters...
...but never, ever, ever accept let your resume be submitted by a guy with an Indian accent calling from New Jersey. There are a lot of them, and none of them actually have an in with the local company they're "recruiting" for. They're just grabbing the job off the wire and calling blind in hopes of striking paydirt.
Word has a little box under properties fro "keywords". The keywords are not visible in the Word document but a search through Word resumes will see those keywords. And there seems to be no limit on the number of keywords. Same is true for HTML and other types. You dump in a huge list IT and comp sci words and every search hits on your resume. You get a phone call "I'm calling you because of your experience with ...(not having actually read your resume, you hear shuffling of paper as he goes through your resume looking for the skills he searched on.)
Its entirely possible that the quotes were cut from a copy.
You'd think a geek would account for edge cases.
'nuff said.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You just noticed that? A significant number of submissions (and on some days, a majority) do the exact same thing.
I remember when Slashdot submissions required some original thought, and the quality of your submission might determine if it was picked over others submitting the same link.
Much of the fault falls on Slashdot editors. It should take less than ten seconds to reject a submission based on a copy-and-paste summary. Of course, that'd harm their page views for ads, so gotta keep the stories coming no matter what, right?
That's why a laugh when I see any discussion about the evils of corporate greed. Impartial with regard to Google? Maybe if the big G wasn't a primary source of revenue. This isn't new however. About ten years ago, I made a hobby of grabbing screenshots of Slashdot where they were pimping Microsoft in banner ads - sometimes even on the same page as articles about MS. A couple are here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020929185648/http://www.mr-bill.net/
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Re-read the introductory line to TFSummary:
An anonymous reader writes
Now for those for whom English is a second language, AND native English speakers who have never learned to use the language properly, realize that the word "writes" can take either of two distinct meanings in this context:
1. In both the context of written discussion as well as the more general context of broad English usage, "writes" means the same thing as the newer word "authors" means: "to write" or "to author" means to construct new sentences and paragraphs using alphanumeric characters.
2. In the specific context of written discussion only-- not in the general case-- "writes" means to contribute a piece of text to the discussion. The origin of the text is not a part of the concept. The word "contributes" is an exact synonym and in formal writing (to use yet another definition of "write") it is probably always the better choice.
But slashdot is not formal writing and because there are so many ESL participants, the use shorter words is better than polysylabic ones. Using "writes" as a synonym for "contributes" is the more appropriate choice. And in this sense, it says only that someone contributed some text, without implying that the text was an original creation.
The summary is not plagiarism. This is most especially evident to anyone who goes from RTFS to RTFA and sees that TFS is a repetition.
Will
I never respond to recruiters unless I find proof they actually read my resume.
Lately I have been doing the selections. Boy. I wish people would simply pass the Codility test, find the nullpointer in our test and understand sql injections. I never trust a resume again; have to verify it.
nosig today
No, but a person who accepts and publishes your anonymous submission without checking that you are in fact the author of the work is putting himself in a dodgy legal position.
The problem isn't really the lazy AC who submitted the copypasta (it's better than the 99% spam that clogs the firehose) - it's the lazy editor who didn't bother to check for originality and authenticity.
Wait... you actually read TFA??
Well, are you? The odds are 7 billion to one.
2.5 billion to one.
Out of 4 billion English writers 1 billion end everything with 'do the needful', and 0.5 billion claim to love Jesus so much you have to send them money.
Yes - I made those numbers up.
For Pete's sake, people! It's not "cut and paste"; it's "copy and paste"!! The two operations are not the same thing.
http://www.vincentchow.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/copypaste.jpg
I've been staying away from github which seems too Facebook-like for comfort. I host all my own git repos on my own domains.
Is that all we aspire to be now here at /.? Just a news aggregator? Oh, how we have fallen!
Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
Slashdot can be many things. News aggregator is one thing that it is. It doesn't have to be the only thing.
Here's the exact problem. There is no way to know if copycat AC was you or not. While this is clearly a parody, there is no way to tell if the 2nd post was something you cleverly posted to create a satire or if someone derived on your work and made a satire out of it.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
LinkedIn has gone from being a semi useful way to keep track of colleagues to being a meat market. If you accept invites from agents you WILL be spammed without remorse from now until forever. At least that's my experience. It's best not to accept invites from agents at all and be careful about what groups you join too since I've had explicit spams identifying as a member of some group to justify the spiele that follows. I expect agents just see LinkedIn as cheaper than Monster.com andsimilar and LinkedIn has obliged them with tools which mine the data. That might be great for agents and LinkedIn but it makes me quite averse from using the service at all.
I've found that many of the recruiters aren't real either. A high percentage originate offshore, have some obscure short-term contracting job a long way from your current position and want some kind of handling fee from you. It's this century's 419 scam.
My adventure began when my company announced outsourcing a few years back. I ended up transferring to another group and staying on, but for about a year I explored all those annoying recruiter emails and cold calls. More than half of them did not sound real (for a lot of the same reasons a 419 scam doesn't sound real -- unlikely profits, terrible writing skills, difficult to understand on the phone, obviously no technical or recruiting skills) and it eventually came down to wanting a handling fee from me to process the job application. Now, maybe somewhere there are recruiters that operate this way, but my experience has been that legitimate recruiters charge the company, not the recruit. Buyer beware.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Contract/consulting work ends up costing more for the individual(where it effectively nullifies the advantage) and removes the ability to tap into the scale and knowledge of an established organization. In addition, it removes the ability to effectively plan for the long-term.
On the other hand, practicing career monogamy, as close as possible, sidesteps the issues as indicated in the article.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I agree, github is the facebook for coders looking for dates. I don't understand the draw. I want my code earning money, not being freely given away.
I do send patches to F/LOSS projects, occassionally.
Most of the code I've written over the years cannot be released. It isn't mine. I was a worker for hire, hence the code was owned by the company or a government. Some was flight control code that can never be released.
OTOH, I don't know javascript and don't ever plan to learn it. If I wanted to learn javascript, I'd join a popular F/LOSS project creating javascript libraries.
Lastly, I'm retired now, so money is not something I worry about. I retired a few years ago at age 42. I'm not god-wealthy, but I'll never worry about money again. I spent 2 months overseas this year, so far, traveling in 3-4 star hotels. Not on the cheap.
There is more to life than some job, but doing something really cool in your life IS great. I've done that. You've seen my work, but less than 100 people in the world have ever used my "life changing" code directly. I'm positive.
For fun, I'm in a free Ruby-on-Rails class taught by the local Rubist group. I have a similar background to you, but would say Ruby has subtlties that you do not appreciate. Hacking something together in ruby is easy. Creating a work of art in Ruby is harder. Or perhaps I'm not as good at coding as you.
Some of us who are real, actual engineers must remind all of you that Comp Sci is not engineering! Being a software engineer requires one to actually have engineering knowledge. Engineering = applied physics; comp sci = applied math. Big difference.
Is that all we aspire to be now here at /.? Just a news aggregator? Oh, how we have fallen!
Don't forget the shitty book reviews!