Okay, I was kinda waiting a single alternative opinion of recruiters, but since I haven't seen one, I will offer one. True, most recruiters, like the middle part of any bell curve, tend to be...average. And as usual, with sweeping generalizations, you could be missing out on something. In fact, as I understand it, recruiting is one of the first steps of paying dues when walking up the HR ladder. There is certainly an echelon of well connected, knowledgable and trusted recruiters that place high quality candidates into the right jobs at the best companies. In fact, I know a few recruiters that used to be engineers. They tend to work with people that can demand a certain minimum salary, have years of industry experience and are currently employed. Recruiters are just as sick of misrepresented technical folks that don't have a clue wasting their time trying to tap jobs. Their creditabilty is on the line with every placement. Again, as with most things, there tends to be two ends to the spectrum. Best Regards, Andy Walden -- PGP Key Available at http://www.tigerteam.net/andy/pgp On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine wrote:
recruiters will make sure that you only see resumes with some acronym begining with "CC", and/or "MS".
this is not useful if you are not attempting to staff to replicate those notions of what an *sp that uses nanog needs.
two of my best hires (at sri, .5k hosts, circa 1987) were simply trainable. an english major (f) from reed, and a cs major (m) from a school that taught cobol as a modern language -- i hired him for his night job skills, managing an auto body shop, managing ordinary joes holding tools.
i'm recruiter-proof. i'm not sure i'd want anyone who wasn't.
eric