Rant: Recruitment Agents

[helbling]

There be ranting and expletives under here.

What. The. Fuck.

No, strangely enough, if you call three times in ten minutes during working hours my reason for not picking up the first phonecall will remain valid for the second and third ones as well. Namely that I'm IN FUCKING WORK YOU CRETINOUS RATARSE.

If I then make a special effort to call you in the morning before I am in work, and then tell you when I'm working, and you tell me
1) You'll get back to me with an interview time so I can try to get leave for it and
2) Take the time to ask if, given I'm going to be working, whether you should call or email and I say email, no, really, if it isn't email, I won't answer then DO NOT

A) Wait until 5-fucking-50 on a Friday to fucking CALL me and then
B) leave a weak and wimpering voicemail about whether or not I've gotten leave.

FUCKING. NO.

Jesus fucking christ, is it really that fucking hard to ask for a basic level of competance?! Just remembering WHAT YOU SAID AND THE METHOD OF COMMUNICATION YOU SAID YOU'D USE?! I have long accepting the people working in the IT industry as recruits do not give a flying fuck about the skills or technology involved. I'm long used to people getting in touch with me and pronouncing 'VOIP' as v-oh-ip, as if desperately trying to rhyme it with 'Phillip', and other cock ups; the one memorable occasion where one idiot douche pronounced 'triage' as 'tree-ag-eee' and then tried to persuade me fixing PCs in the back of a shed would count as career progression. I'm resigned to that. But remembering to send a fucking email rather than call someone isn't hard.

Especially not if they're going to use up one of their precious leave days - which I really, really need right now - attending an interview. Which I'm not 100% certain I'm a good fit for, but I'm going to try and get to because the practise will be good, and if I walk out of there going 'What the fuck did they think I could do in that role' then I can give him both fucking barrels.

Tempted to give him both barrels right now, as thanks to that little cock up, I won't know if I've actually gotten the leave to attend the fucking interview until Monday now. By which point it might be too late to confirm the interview. For which I need the leave. Round and round we go, stuck in a circle until someone gets brave enough to tackle the root of the problem, by which I mean shoot the fucking recruitment agent.

Argh. Well, that turned an 'ok' day into something full of rage. Tomorrow will be a day of hibernation and applying polyfilla to the cracks in the brainpan before Eurovision. Will swim. Depending on energy levels, and whether I want to do something rather than curl up with Doug and continue brainlessly chomping my way through Castle - thoroughly insipid and stupid, but entertaining in a background noise sort of fashion - might pick up Lara Croft. Don't know; while it's only 20 quid, this has been an expensive month so far, and unless it's a Bioware game, I haven't had much luck in actually finding games I can get emotionally invested in.

Comments

[xanthipe]

Can't say much about the useless recruiter (except that it's possibly a warning sign about the company itself because the good ones get competent recruiters) but so far the new Lara Croft has been pretty fun - Warren's about halfway through, and we've both been enjoying it.

*hugs* Hope that swimming, chilling, and potentially making a voodoo doll/weapon dummy and beating the snot out of it helps get your brain back on an even keel.

[weightofeons.livejournal.com]

Bah to recruiters!

[swordkitten.livejournal.com]

If there's one thing I've learned about recruiters, it's that you can't judge a job based on their quality. On the other hand, most people looking to recruit the best are willing to be flexible. If the leave isn't available, tell (don't ask) the recruiter that you can't make the date and would appreciate a different date. Mention that you'll have a chat with the employer about rearranging if the recruiter can't oblige. You'll find they become far more accomodating most of the time.