[widebody911]

Originally posted by VaSteve
The hard part is if you float a resume on on of the job boards... you get multiple calls from recruiters who "..are working on a couple of things you might be interested in..."

Standard trolls. You'll get more of these when it's obvious to them that you haven't been contracting for long, if at all.

You'll also see generic job ads with a bunch of skill requirements that would sometimes seem like they would conflict, ie "experienced Unix sysadmin with 10 years of visual basic, Java and embedded systems development experiece"

What's really fun is when you probe them for names, you know that all these guys are working on the same positions.

Usually they won't give you names, but this info can be extracted. You'll know the req is hot when you get several 'crooters hitting you up all once.

The problem is, if your currently working, they phone screen you for a few minutes and then want you to come in for like 30 minutes to meet the rest of the recruiters and so they can see if you know how to tie a tie.

Only the rookies fall for that. It's even worse if you're not working, because they feel you have nothing better to do. Tell them you have another engagement @ in the vicinity of (nice restaraunt here) and they can buy you lunch if they want to discuss the gig.

Many of them, not all, are simply the "user car salesmen" of the job world. They push a position that might be uniteresting or hard to fill or with some company that you'd never want to work for. But they need to get you into a job because they need a paycheck.

I had an interesting experience along these lines. A pimp contacted me about an opportunity (w2 contract) that sounded interesting. I blazed through the interview process and the client loved me. The he calls to tell me the client wants me... but he lowballs me - bad. What's fun is he doesn't know that I know how the game is played, so I get the standard "the highest the client can go is $X" routine. No - in real life, the rate is decided between the client and the pimp ahead of time, and the pimp's job is to find the person who can fill the client's need while leaving as much money in the pimp's pocket. I decline the offer. For the next week, the pimp hounds me, each time with "I talked to the client and..." or "I talked to my manager and..." and bumping the rate a few $, but I finally had to tell him "no" out of principle. Yeah, I should have taken the gig - it would have been interesting, but I knew I could get more money elsewhere. One exchange I'll never forget was when he said "How about you work for 3 months @ $X; if you're as good as you say you are, we can talk about an increase." I told him. "It's because I'm as good as I say I am that I want $Y" The best part was revealing to him that I had extensive knowledge of the game, and that I'd dated a pimpette for a while who worked in the same office he did. I'm a bastard, but the look on his face when I dropped the bomb was priceless.