I have always tried in my life to be optimistic and to be positive and see the positive side of people. And I have met lot of people that are negative and evil inside. They had few or no things in common: a teacher, a leader, a classmate… Then I found a class of people that are not manageable: RECRUITERS!!!
I am against generalising, so I should say that not all of them are bad. I am sure that indeed some of them are good, they care about the people that they contact and all these stuff. But 99.9% are bad. And with age I have read, mainly on Linkedin that is their territory, lot of stories, reasons and wise quotes pretending to explain why they are not bad, how superior is their ethic and noble their spirit. Bullshit!
Recruiters make big amount of money by making you work for a company that they call client. That sounds great: you, the recruiter and the client got something, all happy. Sure, if the thing works at the first shot, but this happens almost never. And for them you are just a big amount of money: so they mob you, they stalk you, they call you every moment of your life, and it happens often that they become also rude if you are not always present for them. FOR ALL OF THEM!!! Because of course if your CV starts going around different recruiters, you can be called by dozens of them that don’t understand the word “NO!”.

I could spend a whole book describing how recruiters pretend to be good people when 99.9% of the time they don’t give a shit of your life if they cannot convert you into money. And that is what is doubling your hatred: they stalk you and then they also want you to treat them as saviours. NO WAY!!!
There are exceptions, anyway. Isolated cases. One is the company HIRED (if you want to try please use this link). I don’t want to advertise them, but they are not bothering you, they contact you only if you need help otherwise you can use their platform to get in touch with companies. There is a talent advocate that follows you, some rules, but the company works and he service is good. Lately I found other website like that, HIRED is very good for contractors or position as senior engineer or more junior roles, not very good above that.

But tonight I want to interrupt my series of posts of the conference to speak about one isolated case I faced.
A girl contacted me on linkedin. First thing I noticed was that she was young, and smiling. It didn’t look like a fake images: not extremely pretty, just friendly, genuine. She wrote me:

“Hello from Ireland 🙂
Hi Andrea,

How are you? How was your weekend?

I am hiring in the Java area, but also interested in all Software Engineers from any programming language. I see you are in the UK, and that you have relocated before. Would you consider doing so again?
How about to Ireland where there is a really strong technology sector, plus it rains a lot and the people are very friendly ;).
Another thing Ireland is in the EU and maybe you are fed up of hearing about Brexit!

I saw that you worked with a lot of technologies, which one do you prefer?

I will gladly discuss with you about opportunities here and if you want to know how is the market in Ireland, we can chat too :).

Have a lovely Monday!

Jess”

First: she customised the message. Second: she made a kind of a joke with the rain part. Third: the message was friendly. She studied the person before sending the message. I mean, most of the recruiters send batch messages that obviously are based on keywords (how many times did I receive a message saying that the recruiter saw that I am an expert in a technology that I have never used?). The problem is not only that you are wasting my time contacting for an opportunity that I don’t match, but it is obvious that you didn’ even spend one second trying to do the minimal work of matching the roles you have open to the candidate.
She was young. I had the feeling that she was enough young to still believe that she has to put effort. At least I want to believe that. So I replied, because if you say no, no matter what you say, if the recruiter doesn’t give a shit of you he will ignore you after the no. But the next morning she replied again…

I made her morning. She replied. She proved that not all the recruiters are soulless. But still I am suspicious with the whole category of people. But she deserved to be mentioned.
Stay tuned!

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