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5. Ask for information which is excessive if not outright irrelevant from a prospective employee. For example:
"...send me a copy of your most current resume with a list of three to four professional references; please include your references' name, professional title, company name, company location, and contact phone number."
Titles are a dime a dozen to say the least; I don't recall most of my own "official" titles, let alone others'. A name and phone number, and perhaps the company name, should be plenty. If you really perceive a need for the rest - and you shouldn't - call them and ask. In fact, if you're going to call, confirming/establishing my relationship with them SHOULD be the first thing an HR/staffer/whatever asks anyway.
PS: you don't need my address unless you're hiring me. And CERTAINLY not my SSN, unless you're going to run a credit check - and I'll want that in writing. One staffer company insisted they needed it just for "their database." I applied for the job with another staffing agency.
"I don't recall most of my own "official" titles, let alone others'" - yep - my official title at one large corp was senior technical administrative assistant (I was in the marketing department and they had no officlal designation for my position).
shoot - I could have called myself "fire marshall" and no one would have cared...
I don't get the emphasis on very specific skills that aren't difficult to master. I'm in IT as well, and have seen want ads stating something like:
Visual Studio 2010, C#, Asp.net, SQL Server, Entity Framework, and must be familiar with Subversion source control
What? You want a programmer but you're going to eliminate people based on their experience with a certain source control system? Anyone familiar with any source control system would get the basics of Subversion in 20 minutes and be fairly competent in a couple days. I don't get it.
EXACTLY thank you.....I could say the same for many other things. It's like saying you used some other word processing software but if you didn't use MS Word they shy away. Idiots.
me: their immediate goal is a job. I think it's hiring people who aren't paying attention.
Intermediate, not immediate. If someone answers that question with their immediate goals, then the question of who is or isn't paying attention will probably also be quickly answered. The desire to get the job is generally assumed if you're applying and interviewing for it.
Look, I gather that you realize that complaining won't change any of these things. Candidate selection is by its very nature an imperfect, subjective process. It depends upon some individual's (or individuals') assessment of you based on brief interactions and incomplete data. There is no perfect model which inputs everyone's qualifications and spits out the best candidate with 100% predictive accuracy. Hiring managers are generally going to look for who they judge to be the best all-around athelete and the best fit with their team. I've known experienced VPs who have turned down bright, qualified candidates for jobs just because they judged them as a conflicting personal fit within their team's culture. That's why if you want the job you've got to play the game as best as you can on their terms - and yes, that may mean demonstrating some knowledge of a company's history, even if you don't personally give a rat's ass. If you don't like the terms, then you'll have to find a different game to play elsewhere.
Intermediate, not immediate. If someone answers that question with their immediate goals, then the question of who is or isn't paying attention will probably also be quickly answered. The desire to get the job is generally assumed if you're applying and interviewing for it.
Misread that, pardon.
Quote:
It depends upon some individual's (or individuals') assessment of you based on brief interactions and incomplete data.
That's what it SHOULD be based on. That's my point. They appear to often based them on idiotic things.
Quote:
Hiring managers are generally going to look for who they judge to be the best all-around athelete and the best fit with their team.
And again: that is what SHOULD happen. Often it clearly is not.
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that may mean demonstrating some knowledge of a company's history, even if you don't personally give a rat's ass.
Again: I wasn't talking about the history of the company itself but the staffing agency.
Just an FYI, when an interviewer detects that a candidate has a bad attitude, lacks the attention to detail to proofread their resume for errors, displays volatile tendencies during the interview, reeks of desperation and just generally exudes a pessimistic outlook, you can be assured that you will not be getting called back for a 2nd interview or offered a job.
Have observed that the "detailed" reference list is sometimes used to hunt additional bodies or openings for staffing agencies.
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In practice I tend to reverse the process -- I call it 5th Grade Journalism.
To go much beyond "Hello," the contact needs to get the Who, What, Where, When and How Much list together. If they cannot get this simple information together, they will not be able to close the deal, anyway.
1. Who (who is this?)
2.What? (What do they do, and what do they want me to do?)
3. Where? (single location only? Travel? Telecommute?)
4. When? (the schedule -- first large scale, Start/Duration/Stop -- and then fine detail -- Days, times, flex, etc.)
5. How Much? What is the budget? W2, 1099, C2C? per diem, expenses?)
THAT really cuts the wankers and time-wastes out.
I use it as a first layer filter.
Sort of comical how some of the recruiters actually have no idea what they are shopping for. Folks that can pass the 5th grade journalism test are usually competent and I give them the time they need
I've seen 5th graders with better grammatical skills than some of these recruiters, but that's sidetracking a bit.....anyway onto #6:
6 - Insist on candidates' SSN and/or DOB for reasons OTHER than a background check. Twice now recently I've had a Fortune 500 company want this simply as a "tracking number." Hello people, never heard of identity theft? (Ironically one was one of the biggest banks in the country, no less - unreal) I don't give those out casually. You want unique tracking numbers, fine; make one up. It isn't hard. Maybe they should've hired me to tweak their HR databases.
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I applied for the job with another staffing agency.
