Apols for the break in transmission – things at this end are a little full-on. After a lovely week away in Cornwall for the ‘Obby ‘Oss parade & associated funnery, I’ve contracted a shocking instance of the dreaded manflu, and on Wednesday I started at a new job! Currently full to the eyeballs with new information, a massive raft of new business processes, and snot. And about eyebrow-deep in the planning shennanigans for this year’s Westminster Day of Dance. So don’t give me any shit.
Luckily, I found the following draft blog entry which I can entertain you with. Please enjoy with me now.
~oOo~
News here is mainly just me getting less interested in this job by the day – I applied for a new one on Friday morning after stumbling on a fairly promising looking ad. I heard nary a peep out of the agent for the rest of the day, but was surprised to get a call back on Saturday afternoon. The idea of an IT recruiter working on a Saturday already got my suspicion gland twitching. However the ensuing conversation confirmed an awful lot of theories I had:
Recruiter: Hi there, I was ringing to see if you were still interested in the Webmaster/Developer role which you emailed me about yestarday morning.
Me: Well yes, that’s why I emailed you – it sounds really interesting. Now, I realise this job’s a bit less development and more content management, and my CV shows a fairly strong leaning towards the dev end of things, but I…
Recruiter: Oh, yeah – since posting that ad I’ve spoken to the client, and it turns out the role’s got a lot more development in it than I initially thought.
Me: Oh, ok…
Recruiter: In fact to be honest it’s primarily a development role. It’s a role to be a developer. Does that sound interesting?
Me: Well, sure, if you can tell me more about the platform & setup?
Recruiter (cutting me off): Now, what salary would you be looking for?
Me: Well, I thought that the salary on the ad was…
Recruiter (cutting me off, again): Ah, again – after speaking with them this morning there’s been a slight change in finances, and they’re offering something more like (£7k a year less): will that be a problem?
Me: Good bye.
What we’ve learned here is that some recruiters will post a job ad without having first confirmed with their client what the job description actually is, or what the salary offer is. So, essentially other than advertising a job that vaguely had something to do with computers, and was broadly located in London, the advertisement was a complete work of fiction.
The somewhat sinister suggestion is that agents are advertising jobs that don’t exist in order to get applications from people in order to shore up some sort of personal sales contact figures. However Hanlon’s Razor tells us that this can’t possibly be the case. Even when the recruiter tells you that he’s been talking to the finance department of a multinational corporation on a Saturday morning.
And that’s why a *good* recruitment agent is an individual to hold in very high esteem.
Oh, and my new job’s in the Bloomsbury/Tottenham Court Road area, in case anyone’s wondering.
Hurrah.
