Thursday, January 31, 2008

using my powers for good

According to site meter, most of my visitors are recruiting firms, so let me take this opportunity to give you all some advice:
  1. If you are contacting me unsolicited, the first part of your message should be what job you are offering me, not a demand for a resume and home address.
  2. If I have given you the courtesy of writing back, explaining that I am currently under contract but will be available in N months, try to keep your job solicitations to less than weekly. Companies that politely write back expressing their interest get added to list of places to contact when I'm on the market again. Companies that ignore me and send me more inappropriate offers may not get the first round of e-mails.
  3. If you want me to start in two weeks, on a different coast, for a temporary position, the pay had damn well better be "market"
  4. I know that you aren't programmers, and some of the finer technical distinctions may escape you, and there is a fudge factor in both job postings and resumes. But do you notice how none of the languages or systems required for this job are listed under the "languages" section of my resume? That's a clue that I might not be the right person for the job.
  5. Failing that, could you maybe figure out that the one year of experience I have is less than the five years experience this job requires?
  6. Or that "tester" is different than "technical lead"?
  7. It really is insulting for you start a solicitation by demanding information from me. So imagine how pissed off I get when you don't even tell me what the job is.
I realize as I'm writing this that thousands of people would love to have people harassing them to accept a job, so I think I'll stop whining now.

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