Archive for the 'Things we shouldn't have to say' Category

What recruiters wish jobseekers knew about what jobseekers wish recruiters knew…

Friday, January 19th, 2007

So was that title confusing enough? Jason Alba makes some very thoughtful points about follow-up from recruiters and what expectations everyone should have of each other during the process. The commenters make some excellent counter-points as well.
The thing that struck me as I was reading through the whole thing is this idea that […]

College life, MySpace, and employment: having cake and eating it too

Monday, December 11th, 2006

Jim Durbin has a great post up about the way putting your life online changes expectations between employers and employees.
I pondered posting a comment to Jim’s site, but my thoughts on it got kind of complicated so I decided it deserved a blog post of its own. I think there are several key points […]

verbal pet peeve of the day

Monday, December 4th, 2006

I really hate it when people say, “Hi, how are you?” and then keep talking before you have a chance to answer.
Asking how a person is doing shouldn’t be perfunctory spoken boilerplate that you don’t think about. Say, “how are you?” and then listen for the answer.
In a brief conversation with someone you’ve […]

your staffing companies talk to each other

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Late this afternoon, nearly at closing time, we got a call from a professional contact of a recently-departed manager. It’s a manager at one of our competitors, calling to ask an awkward question and hoping we could help her out.
A client that she has been working with, a client who also works with us, […]

Don’t anger your staffing company, redux

Friday, October 6th, 2006

Some of you may remember the talent from a few weeks ago who was offered a job at an insultingly low salary by a company who dodged my calls, circumvented me, and told the talent that they were having trouble making payroll. I did eventually find him another assignment, but yesterday…
I got a call […]

good judgment departs the recruitosphere

Friday, August 25th, 2006

So there’s all this foofaraw in the recruitosphere about Google and ZoomInfo staring over our shoulders and what the implications of our blog comments mean for future employment prospects, blah blah blah. People are asking that their comments be deleted from other people’s blogs, and making (I hope) jokes about other bloggers using their […]

discrimination is alive and well in the big city

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006

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. […]

is this you?

Monday, August 21st, 2006

Who. The. HELL. sends me a resume in Powerpoint?
Not a presentation about why I should hire them- which would still be a turnoff- but an actual resume, formatted normally, except in PPT format, complete with cheesy slide templates.

Seriously. SERIOUSLY? THIS is your cover letter?

Monday, July 24th, 2006

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 […]

Why you should always be polite to recruiters

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

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 […]