The Recruitards II: Heads-Up

This is my second installment on Recruitards. In the first blog, I discussed the "mass" marketing hard-sell approach to recruiting. Today, I'm going to tell you my experience with yet another Recruitard last week. I will not disclose his name, for the sake of illustration, we will call him Santosh, from Syntel LLC.

Santosh sent me an email about a Data Architect position in Rochester, MI. Before I even had a chance to read the email (and I was reading email at that time), he called me. Now IT leadership is my forte and my resume is tailored thus, but my technical expertise is RDBMS, Enterprise Databases, Data Warehousing, ETL, BI, Data Modeling, Optimization, ODBC and generally making systems and databases talk to each other. So, I am a good fit for this.

The Position

So he tells me the rate, for the sake of illustration, let us say $80/hour. I am looking for a job; the money was ok, the location is great, bring it on. He wanted a current resume. I send it and qualified it with the statement that it is a resume tailored for technical leadership.

Then Santosh tells me the position is for the Mayo Clinic. Now, I know the Mayo Clinic is in Minnesota and I asked again, just to be sure.

Trish: "The Mayo Clinic is in Rochester, Minnesota, and I am in Michigan, are you sure about the location of Rochester, Michigan?"

Santosh: "Oh! No, No, they have a location in Rochester, Michigan."


Ok, I think to myself. Crittenton Hospital and Oakland University are in Rochester, MI. Henry Ford Health has IT services and medical offices in Rochester, MI. The Mayo Clinic very well could be opening a satellite office. It is not outside the realm of believability. So, I go along with Santosh.


Negotiating?

Santosh tells me the client loves me, and although he quoted me $80/hour, he has to be able to undercut the competition, so he can only go $75/hour. He tells me his firm will only be "breaking even" on the deal.

I'm thinking that's $200 A WEEK, he's nicking me for. And, he is sending me another email, could I please fill-in the number of years of experience in each of the following areas? Ok, I agree and proceed to fill out the experience grid. Less than 5 minutes later, he calls me AGAIN.



Santosh: "Trish did you receive my email? Where is the experience grid?"

Trish: "I am working on it now."

Santosh: " Oh, did you receive my email? Where is the experience grid?

Trish: "I am working on it now."

Santosh: "My manager says we can only pay, $74/hour. Can you please put in your response to me, that you agree to this rate."


I am grumbling to myself that he just nicked me for another $40/week. But justify it by telling myself, I am on a diet, I will do without lunch. But also thinking that Santosh wasn't going without lunch. I do as he asks. As I was pressing "send", he called AGAIN. Now they can only go $73/hour (and another $40/week, I'm going to end up paying them.) can I please agree to that in an email.

Now, this position was to run 6 months. Recall the rate started at $80/hour and he nicked me for $280/week, that totaled $7280 for the contract. Nobody likes to take a $7000 plus hit. At this point I'm feeling like he's scammed me.

As I pressed send, he call me AGAIN. Now the client just loves me, but needs me to sign an agreement for Syntel to represent me. So, I get the email and Santosh, had sent my resume back to me, no agreement. So again, before I even could call him. He was calling me yet again.

"Where is the agreement? Can you please sign and return it to me"

I told him, he needs to send me a copy of the agreement.

Location, Location, Location

As I describe what transpired the other day, I may have left out a couple of calls, but I just checked my phone to verify how many times he actually called me. In the span of 3 1/2 hours, Santosh and I had a total of 10 calls. And the above gives you a flavor for the afternoon. And after all this, I am both amused and mildly irritated at the same time. You know the feeling? Finally, his email with the agreement arrives. I read it and the position location is in Rochester, MINNESOTA!

You know the feeling? To put into the words of the great, Charlie Brown:  "ARRRGGGGH"

The Icing on the Cake

So, I call him back and explained that my rates had to go up 25% for a remote location. I followed up with an email, outlining the new rates with and without expenses included, and even offered to telecommute for the agreed upon rate. The icing on cake was the following day, when he actually responded to my email, saying that telecommuting was not a valid option.


Recruitard Award
Santosh of Syntel, LLC is a truly deserving recruitard. Santosh, in honor of your blundering ways in recruiting, you are hereby awarded the Recruitard's, Heads UP Award.













Check out my other blog at: http://detroitprojectmanagers.blogspot.com


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Armada Business Consulting, Inc.

Armada Business Consulting, Inc specializes in excellence in execution for Technical Project Management and LEAN implementations. Contact Trish at trish_sutter@yahoo.com.

The Recruitards

Sponges are animals of the phylum Porifera (pronounced /pɒˈrɪfərə/). Their bodies consist of jelly-like mesohyl sandwiched between two thin layers of cells. While all animals have unspecialized cells that can transform into specialized cells, sponges are unique in having some specialized cells that can transform into other types, often migrating between the main cell layers and the mesohyl in the process. Sponges do not have nervous, digestive or circulatory systems.

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponge

Image credit - http://www.natural-sea-sponge.com/


Recruiter, Salesman or Sponge?

Have you been contacted by all kinds of sales organizations looking for sales people? MLM marketing recruiters, Insurance Sales Recruiters? They get your phone and email from Monster, Careerbuilder or other similar job sites. The MLM marketers can be surprisingly persistent.

They contact you with this rehearsed, high pressure sales script, like you are going to actually fall for their line. If it's such a wonderful job, why are they employing high pressure sales tactics? Why aren't folks standing inline to get these jobs?


I have new term for these types of recruiters: Recruitards.

Recruitard: High pressure recruiter/sales that have no clue as to your real value. Like the sponge, recruitards lack un-specialized cells (that do transform into specialized cells) and recruitards do not have nervous, digestive or circulatory systems.  Similar to a Marketard.

Image credit - http://meanmommyuniversity.blogspot.com/

Flavor of the MonthHere is a typical letter from a recruitard.

Interview Confirmation Needed

Dear Trish Sutter,

We are expanding in Michigan, and we are seeking candidates to fill our Account Executive position. I would like to invite you to an interview in our Michigan Office on Tuesday, October 27^th at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Please reply back with your name, interview time and contact number to confirm your interview. The purpose of the interview will be to discuss the specific details of the position including compensation.

We are a member of the Independence Holding Group (NYSE:IHC). A $1.3 Billion dollar publicly traded company. Please review our website at www.independenceholding.com

Please arrive 15 minutes early and dress in Professional Attire.

Below are the directions and the address for the interview.

I look forward to meeting you in person to further discuss this career opportunity.

Michigan RegionalOffice:

2000 Town Center
Suite 1900
Southfield, MI 48075

Click here for map

Thank you,

Dan Conrado

Regional Sales Leader

Conradodetroit@ipa-america.com

The flavor of the month seems to be Insurance Sales.  And don't you just love when they presume to set-up an "Interview" for you? .

Here you are a professional. Be it Sales, Computers, Health Care, Accounting, whatever your profession may be.... As a professional, you have sacrificed for your education in your chosen field. You have years of experience. You are a consummate professional. You are searching out every avenue for your next position and seriously into it and then you get a letter like the one above.  Oh my, what a joke. These recruitards, really are sponges. And they are a big insult to real professional recruiters and marketing professionals.

Serious Thought

I have given this recruitard problem some serious thought. And have concluded that we need a national non-recruitards list, like we have for those pesty telephone marketers. You know, so we go online and register your contact information and recruitards would be prohibited from contacting you? Recruitards would have to check the list before they can contact you otherwise, they get slapped with a $500 fine.

Recruitard Awards

We can have fun and create a solution much like the infamous Darwin awards. Yes, you guessed, Recruitard awards. Award categories for

• the company that doesn't match your skills to the job,
• the individual recruiter who doesn't match your skills to the job,
• the most inaccurate job description,
• the most insulting recruiting letter,
• the MLM company with the most spam,
• the worst recruiting website!

How Great Would it Be

How great would it be to reply to the next recruitard with something like this?

Congratulations Lisa,

You and your company have been given the honor of
The Recruitard Award for Individual Recruiter
and your website has also won
The Recruitard Award for Websites!

Thanks,

National Recruitard Awards

_________________________

Armada Business Consulting, Inc.

Armada Business Consulting, Inc specializes in excellence in execution for Technical Project Management and LEAN implementations. For more information contact Trish at trish_sutter@yahoo.com.

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