mtrupe's Journal: Tech Recruiters Suck!

I have been laid off for the second time in a year now,
so I am browsing all the job boards, like
monster.com,
CareerBuilder,
and HotJobs.

Many great looking jobs are posted, until you notice that
they are posted by the same company again and again, like
Moss Search,
Roy Talman & Associates,
or any number of other recruiting places.

ComputerJobs.com seems to be expecially abused by the recruiters.

They demand
impossible skill sets (must have 5 years of .NET experience,
for example). They post incredible salaries (120,000 a year),
when I know of nobody in programming making that kind of money
right now; at least no grunts. When I call these people they
start scrolling through their list of qualifications. "Oh,
you don't have Oracle 8i, only Oracle 7i? Sorry, we cannot
consider you."

I can only assume they are collecting resumes for when the economy
picks up. I can't imagine any other good reason for why they would want to spam the job
boards or toy with people who really need to find employment.

This experience has taught me a lesson. I will never be
friendly to a tech recruiter when times are good. They have simply
been too rude to me during the bad times. The other day one called
me just to say that the economy is poor and I won't find a job
for a long time. Others tell me that if I see a posting to not send
my resume, instead contact them first (they wouldn't want to lose
a commission). I thought they were supposed to work for me, and not
the other way around! Has anyone else had such bad experiences with
recruiters and with the job boards? Wanna vent about these jerks?