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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??
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?
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.
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
But of course - in a body shop you don't want experience, as your product is billable time, not results.
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.
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.
Blowing off mod points here, but damn... I had to agree with you.
I've lost track of how many headhunters call me up, thinking that I'd just drop everything and move to Dallas, Little Rock, Boston, Virginia, Seattle, SanFran, LA, you-name-it. Oh, and I'm supposed to be there in two weeks. For a six month contract. The guy usually has a heavy Indian accent, and always promises that the salary is larger than what I make now.
It tends to crumble when I demand that the agency fly me out on their dime, pay any and all relocation costs, and oh, yeah - get all its fees from the employer. It shuts them up in very short order.
Don't get me wrong, there are good headhunters out there, but I usually stick with the ones who are local, and that I know of personally. Cold-callers have always led to disappointments, and I'm in no hurry to give them a second chance.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
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.
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