I got two e-mails and a phone call today. Which would be great if I hadn't said to use e-mail and removed my phone number from my public profile (now that I've double checked this, I'll be asking anyone who contacts me in the future how they got the number), and it wasn't the third contact in four days from one particular company, asking for the same information. I checked my records, and what do you know they did the same thing a year and a half ago, when my resume wasn't even available: three e-mails from two people over a week and a half. Once more and I will seriously consider outing them on this blog, except I can't see how that would accomplish anything, they already look like idiots to anyone they try to recruit. I suppose the company they contract for, and it's only one company (you've heard of them), might care, but I doubt it. I'm still debating how snarky my reply should be. One on hand, the economy sucks. On the other hand, their are 400 companies that contract for the megacorp, 200 of which recruit for them alone, and they all have my e-mail address. And it would have to be a boatload of money to justify putting up with these idiots.

Speaking of idiots: today's phone call had something in common with Monday's (which was from my stalkers enthusiastic fans): a triumph of hope over reality. Monday's caller was really, really hoping I'd be available to start in two weeks, despite the fact that the availability date I gave me was five weeks in the future. It didn't hurt to ask. Today's caller was hoping I had five years experience testing databases. Now, recruiters* are stupid, so I can see how he couldn't tell from my resume I only had a year of DB work, because it's all greek to him. But maybe he could have noticed that I only had three and a half years of post-college experience, and my college work wasn't testing. That's just math, although there is the tricky thing where you have to remember years are base 12.

I really, really want to reward the good recruiters. Despite what I said above, my recruiter is actually quite good, and actually understands the things he recruits for. But a given agency only has so many jobs, and I'm not actually willing to take a pay.