Technical recruiters and their firm are a mixed bag, to say the least. For ever recruiter who listens to their client and submits only qualified, viable candidates, (too) many tech recruiters appear unconcerned about skills or experience and submits anyone who breathes. It’s not fair to stereotype all recruiters, but in general I am contacted by more recruiters that I immediately ghost than I keep in contact with.
Recently I had a reason to look at a contact’s profile, and I was dumbfounded.
This LinkedIn profile raises a lot of questions like:
- How does/can one jump from a high school activities director to a FedEx General Manager without any relevant experience?
- How, in less than three months, one cannot know enough about FedEx to achieve even part of the successes claimed? I call bullshit on route optimization: FedEx route optimizations are computer-generated, not by a human drawing lines on a map.
- How does one jump from FedEx to technical recruiting, again without any relevant experience?
- Is cold calling an actual skill? Really?
Likely he’s a schmoozer with connections that supplied opportunities at the expense of more qualified candidates. Perhaps after two years he’s a competent sales person or perhaps he just lies better than the rest of us. In a nutshell, there’s technical recruiting.
Woody Allen‘s movie Annie Hall has the line Those who can’t teach; those who can’t teach, teach shop. When I worked at CSC Partners, the (unconfirmed) background shared about a senior leader – white, male – is that he became management once his poor coding skills became apparent. While most of us would have been fired, he joined the C-level suite. Go figure.
