Recruiter hounds

After quitting my job a few months back, I posted my resume in the job portals. I clearly mentioned that I was looking for part-time/freelance/work-from-home opportunities. And as required, my experience, expertise, and stuff like that.

Since then I’ve been getting umpteen e-mails, phone calls, and SMSs mostly from recruitment agencies and a few directly from companies, for a variety of jobs – fitness consultant, insurance advisor, ‘male’ sales engineer, packaging designer, field sales executive, receptionist, personal assistant, SAP professional, financial analyst, customer service executive, event manager, and what not! I am also contacted for quite a few openings that match my profile, but mostly full-time jobs. When I tell them that I don’t intend to take up full-time job now, invariably the next question is, “Why?” Do I need to explain it to them?

There was this lady from a recruitment agency in Bangalore who called me many times for the post of Supervisory Analyst (SA) at Deutsche Bank. I tried to explain that I was not qualified for the job. She argued back saying the job profile for SA had ‘editing equity research reports’, which was there in my profile as well. The similarity ends there and editing is just a minor thing that SAs do! She was not convinced when I said one need to get certified by the appropriate agency in the country to become an SA, and I didn’t even know which is that agency in India. Someone else wanted me to relocate to Hyderabad to join UBS. The calls and mails for this stopped of late; either they got someone or got fed up with my arrogance when I replied, “Ask UBS to shift their research production operations to Mumbai, if they want me to join.”

When I get mails from people looking for fitness consultant, sales engineer, that too male, I used to reply saying “nonsense, read the profile before blindly sending out such mails”. One of them replied back asking me not to use bad language. Another replied saying they didn’t have time to read profiles. He also asked me to post my resume in the right section if I don’t want such mails. Duffer! He doesn’t even know how a portal works. I replied, “I thought it’s part of your job as a recruiter to read profiles.” Now I don’t bother to reply. I just mark them as spam.

The spam callers apparently get phone number from job portals, but they would not get profiles as they’ve not paid for it. So they make blind calls!

I’ve friends who work for recruitment agencies as well as in the HR dept of companies. Not disregarding their capabilities as well as of many others who work in this field, I think these recruitment agencies ‘recruit’ dumbest people available as they come cheap and, may be, give them targets like 100 phone calls a day or 150 mails a day. Or they won’t get intelligent people to do this mundane job. These people search on job portals by punching in some keywords in the job profile and send out mails to all the profiles thrown up by the search. So since I’ve worked for a magazine on packaging and have written an article on packaging design, they think I’m qualified to be a packaging designer. I can only tear away the package, not design it!

I know job market is dull, but that doesn’t mean I will go and work as a fitness consultant, when I don’t even take care of my own fitness. This particular mail said, “Since our requirements matched your profile …”. Isn’t that nonsense?

It’s not that I get mails and phone calls from unknown, small-time agencies; big ones like Teamlease also are there.

Now, what triggered this post was the SMS I got yesterday. I was attending a meeting at an NGO where I do some voluntary work. My mobile was on silent mode. I didn’t pick up the call when it came, nor checked the SMS that followed. After half an hour, when the meeting was over, I checked the mobile. The SMS read, “Plz call urgently- 25139967.” I checked the missed call. That was from a different number. I panicked. Did something happen to my family or friends? I called back at 25139967 immediately:

25139967: Hello?
I: I got an SMS asking me to call at this number urgently.
25139967: What’s your name?
I: Bindhu
25139967: Hi Bindhu, this is ‘so and so’ from Sai Consultants.
I: Why did you send me such an SMS?
25139967: Because when I called, you didn’t pick up the call.
I: So you’ll send such SMSs?
25139967: Yeah (in a casual, what’s-wrong-with-you tone)
I: Do you think it’s proper to send such SMSs?
25139967: Yes (again in the same tone)
I: You made me panic as I thought somebody I know was in trouble. I don’t want any of your services.

I disconnected.
Such insensitivity, such audacity! It left me fuming, and now I am letting it out here. :-)