Magic Pot of Jobs

We got a call this morning from a branch manager at one of our sister offices. We share several clients, including a particular firm for whom we’ve been trying to fill a high-level position for some time.

Our colleague calls to inform us that this client had asked her branch for a receptionist this morning. They immediately sent their most qualified, available talent- a woman who happens to be a Muslim and wears a hijab.

Shortly after the talent arrived, she was sent away from the client and back to our colleague’s office. The HR Director (with a Senior Professional in Human Resources certification, mind you) explained to our colleague that “Image is everything here, and we just can’t have her sitting at our front desk.”

As the Farkers say, “O RLY?”

Note that the talent was well-groomed, her clothes were clean and cared for, her demeanor was polite and friendly, and was in all ways appropriately professional for the position.

So none of our offices will be servicing this client. In addition to finding the talent an appropriate substitute assignment immediately, the branch manager for that office will be calling corporate to get some direction on the most appropriate way to tell this client to take a hike and never come back.

As I often say to my coworkers in such situations, it never surprises me that there are people in the world who think this way. It only surprises me that there are people who actually say it out loud. Especially people with advanced professional certifications in KNOWING BETTER THAN THAT.

I’m appalled, can you tell?

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Ordinarily I am accustomed to stoking the fire under the Magic Pot (yeah, I go a long way for this metaphor, I know) but I spent all day yesterday putting out fires at the office.

Here’s a pro tip- when you accept an assignment, you should actually show up for it.

This talent had a phone interview scheduled last week with a prominent charity for a help desk position. She called not 10 minutes before the interview to confirm the details. The client later complained that she had missed the interview. Now, this client has been nothing but trouble since they first called us, so I was perfectly prepared to believe that they had screwed up in some way. We offered her another assignment- just a quick one-day thing, and she accepted. She even called the day before to confirm.

Come the day of the assignment and she no-shows completely. No call, no explanation. The person I had called in to be the second person on the assignment at the last minute is suddenly the only person. Fortunately, he was way overqualified and didn’t have a problem with that. But then I’m stuck scrambling to find a second person, and didn’t have anyone available on that short notice- I’m reduced to calling a client who happens to be a personal friend and asking to borrow the talent I’ve placed there for a part-time gig for a couple of hours.

Yeah yeah, I know, I should have a deeper bench. And I’d like to, but in DC where unemployment is at 2%, there just aren’t lots of trustworthy IT people sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.

Meanwhile, I’ve got other clients calling at the last possible minute for same day web freelance work- I had ONE person who could go on that kind of short notice, and only because he just finished another assignment for me.

And then today, I finally track down a client who has been blowing me off for weeks- I sent someone out there to him for a two week gig over a month ago, and two weeks have turned into a month and a half. At the same time, I’ve been working on lining up a permanent gig for the guy at a more suitable long-term prospect. I’m finally ready to make the transition, and the talent has no idea how much more work they have for him to do. I’ve been emailing and calling the client for weeks and getting no response. Today, after three weeks of not hearing a word from him, he’s protesting that he’s going to need my talent “indefinitely.” I point out that I had expected him to be available two weeks ago and hadn’t heard anything to the contrary.

The client’s response? “Yeah, I guess the lines of communication did break down there, huh?”

Yeah, if by “break down” you mean that you blew me off for an extended period of time instead of saying simply, “Actually, it turns out that we’re going to need his help indefinitely.” So thanks for complaining when I do my job and find the talent a permanent gig.

Anyway, this post got a lot longer than I intended, but it’s what I’ve been spending my time on for a couple of days. Yeah.

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Get the latest on diversity issues in the workplace at Diversity Jobs.

One of my favorite things about what I do is that I get to meet all kinds of people who, it turns out, have all kinds of hobbies:

- The senior ColdFusion developer who is a competitive fencer
- The information architect who is a competitive ballroom dancer
- The creative director who plays in a rock band and hosts open mic at the local dive bar
- The recruiter who is a DJ and mashup artist
- The other recruiter who sings opera
- The business process consultant who took time off to become a personal chef
- The executive who blogs about pop culture

I think the fact that it’s my job to meet interesting people is my second favorite part of the job. When I work after 6, I’m at a party with a drink in my hand, talking to someone interesting. I love that.

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Furst Person provides call center outsourcing services to employers.

So I get this phone call yesterday from a contact I’ve never worked with at one of my clients. She was calling to tell me that the talent I had placed there had left some of his things and she had been trying to get in touch with him to come pick them up but had been unsuccessful.

Okay… well, I can certainly come pick them up Monday morning.

Great, she says, and is he still with the company? He certainly is, and we’ve got him out to work with another client next week. Oh, that’s nice. Is he still in the city? Yes, he’s still in the area…

Then she asked me if I would give him her number and have him call her directly.

I am wary at this point, because it’s a cardinal rule that the talent do not get to follow up with clients directly. I don’t protest because a realization is slowly dawning on me.

This woman isn’t with HR or IT trying to poach my talent without a fee- he was let go from the assignment due to having insufficient skills to complete it. The number she gave me wasn’t part of the company’s phone scheme- it’s a cell phone number.

This woman is totally trying to pick up my talent, and she wants ME to give him her digits.

Good luck with that- I happen to know the guy already has a girlfriend.

Now I want to know just what it was that he left there…

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For everything recruiting, check out ERE.net.

Okay, I REALLY should not have to say this, people. Seriously. But since someone apparently doesn’t know:

“Hi i was told to send you my resume”

is NOT an acceptable cover letter. Clearly it was your email client that capitalized the H in “Hi,” because there was no punctuation or capitalization in the rest of the sentence.

I know a lot of my fellow recruiting-bloggers have been bagging on the cover letter as unnecessary lately, and if you’re applying to an applicant tracking system (ATS) it probably is, but…

If you are sending me your resume via email, you need to write a cover letter. It doesn’t have to be long- email is great for brevity, but it does need to tell me what kinds of positions you’re interested in, how you were referred to me specifically, and the best way to reach you. This is an opportunity to demonstrate to me how professionally and clearly you can communicate in writing, so don’t squander it.

And DON’T send a separate cover letter attachment. That’s annoying and demonstrates that you have no idea what email is for.

Oh yeah, and if you were “told” to send me your resume, it helps if you do actually ATTACH said resume to said email, unlike my new friend here.

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Recruit.net provides jobs in Australia.

Look, guys, we know. We know that we interview candidates we then aren’t able to find work for. We know that it costs a lot of time to meet with recruiter after recruiter, only to not find work through them. We get it. Believe it or not, it frustrates us too.

But when a recruiter you havent heard from in a while contacts you to see what your status is, you should at least be nice. I checked in with a talent about a month ago who we hadn’t talked to in a while. We hadn’t been able to find him work, but I had some freelance opportunities that might have been a good fit for his skills.

In response, I got a nasty and completely ungrammatical email chastising me for having not contacted him sooner and complaining that he had lost all faith in recruiters and didn’t want to hear from us anymore. I raised an eyebrow, wished him luck, and went on my way.

The other day, I get an email from him saying that HE wants to give US “one more chance” because he’s still looking for work. Right.

First of all, the reason he’s still looking for work is because he’s looking for jobs that don’t in any way fit his skills- he’s a good developer, but he’s looking for design work. Secondly, if this is how he conducts his professional correspondence, I’m sure that also contributes.

Fortunately, I’m on vacation so I didn’t have to respond. Stephanie handled it, and explained, in her trademark polite-but-firm fashion that we have development opportunities when he told us he wanted design, and that our previous correspondence with him had caused us to doubt our ability to represent him effectively, and perhaps he should seek representation from our competitors. Heh.

The moral of the story is that recruiters are people too, and we’re generally less likely to want to work with people who don’t know how to be NICE. Why do we want to send rude people to our clients? Why do we want to open ourselves up to personal abuse if we can avoid it?

Always be polite when the recruiter contacts you, even if you’re not interested. Even if we know you’re irritated with us, we’ll appreciate your professionalism. That’s important, because you never know if you’ll need us later.

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NVJobSearch provides Las Vegas jobs
for workers hoping to relocate to Nevada.

Welcome back, MagicPotHeads, after a lovely long holiday weekend. I hope those of you celebrating your various nations’ independence enjoyed your celebrations and fireworks.

I was privileged here in DC to watch the national fireworks show from the balcony of one of the cabinet-level departments, since my husband and I have a friend with a connection there. I’m working with said friend on his job search right now, and he’s never worked with a recruiter before. Because we’re friends, he hates to “bother” me by asking for little things like status updates and interview confirmations.

Well, actually, NO, I don’t have anything more important to do than check on that for you. Seriously. I get paid to make sure the process is moving forward, so I literally have nothing more important to do than get your interview scheduled and see who we should be looking for feedback from next.

I know we recruiters hate those needy, stalker-candidates, but we also have short attention spans and do need you to pipe up once in a while and remind us that you’re still waiting to have that second interview scheduled.

Stephanie will be ably stirring the pot o’ jobs on her own this week, since yours truly will be honeymooning and the only recruiting I intend to do involves finding people to bring me fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them.

But before I go, a few links for you to chew on:

Why They Hate Recruiting - Dave Lefkow suggests that recruiting no longer be an HR function.

Develop a Who’s Who List of Outside Talent - How to develop a deep database of great candidates and referral sources.

Too Many Jobs, Too Few People - the Washington Business Journal finally catches up to what Stephanie and I have been noticing for months. Via Ben Gotkin.

Before Scoring that Job, You’d Better Ace the Test - The increasing use of personality tests in hiring decisions. If I weren’t about to go to our rehearsal dinner, there would be a long rant on this topic. The nutshell version: THESE TESTS ARE A BIG WASTE OF MONEY.

“Thank you for your response. I’m sure that you are correct, and that your failure to get a job through an agency for four months was due to deficiency on the part of all the agencies you visited. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the complete lack of professionalism or English skills displayed in your written correspondence, or the amateurishness of your design portfolio. Good luck in your job search.”

“Oh, there’s an opening for a recruiter in my office… just not for you.”

“I don’t need all four versions of your resume. One will suffice to clog up my inbox, thank you.”

“I understand that you really need this job. I do. But calling me every half hour to see if I’ve heard anything isn’t going to get the client to make a decision faster. It’s just going to earn you a snarky nickname among my coworkers.”

“If your wife is the one who needs a job, why did you call me?”

So I’m running into a problem more lately that I didn’t used to have so much.

I’ve had several talent out this week on interviews for the same couple of jobs, which means that even if I’m successful as a recruiter and the placements go through, some of my other talent are disappointed when they don’t get jobs that they want, need, and are qualified for.

For one position, the conflict was resolved for me when one of the talent accepted a job she found on her own, making my other talent my only candidate for the job. Whew.

For another, it won’t be so easy. I’ve got two equally charming people who both need the job a great deal interviewing for one position. They interviewed on Friday, and they’re both now calling me anxiously awaiting word. As much fun as it is to tell someone that they’ve got a new job, I am dreading the moment when I have to tell the other one she didn’t get it.

I suppose there are worse things than having an overabundance of likeable, qualified people to place. But that’s probably small comfort to the one who has to try to make it another month without steady employment.