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. :-)

Tagged along …

I think I should dedicate this blog to tags; this is my third consecutive post on tags!


This time it’s Arun. He has asked to jot down three (just three!) of my favourite books. Tough, I would say.

Ok, here it goes, with due apologies to my all other favourite books …

1. The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follet

2. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
3. The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh Should I pass on this difficult tag? Nah! Arun, sorry for that. :-)

Photos courtesy: Wikipedia

Quote it!

It looks like only tags make me blog. This time I was tagged by The Layman.

The quote tag demands to list out five of your favourite quotes from the books you’ve read. Here’s my list …

1. Life is difficult.
- The Road Less Traveled; M Scott Peck

2. If God does not exist, then how do you explain all the suffering of the poor?
- Snow; Orhan Pamuk

3. If love is not allowed to flow, it becomes fear. If love is allowed to flow, fear disappears.
- Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously; Osho

4. Shopping is female. When men shop, they are engaging in what is inherently a female activity.
- Why We Buy; Paco Underhill

5. What is past, is past for me

What is gone, is gone for me

Be with the rising sun

Be with the rising moon

Not with the setting ones.
- From a poem in a college magazine I read years back

And I tag …

Sapna

Rose

Arun

Mirage

Multi Menon

My Bucket List

This is the first time someone has tagged me, and thank you Dhanya for doing that.

It’s more than a week since she tagged me to do ‘The Bucket List’, and my lazy self kept it aside. Inspired by the movie ‘The Bucket List,’ this tag is to list out things one want to do before one ‘kicks the bucket’. Well, I don’t want to kick the bucket, maybe in the next 200 years. So I should’ve a long list. But then, some of the most interesting things are never planned. Anyways, here comes my list …

1. I want to travel across the world. It may look like a copy-paste from Dhanya’s list, but isn't everybody getting bitten by the ubiquitous travel bug. And my must-go places include all over India and, for some strange reason, Egypt.

2. Build a low-cost house in Kerala, which should have a garden with all neglected/almost-extinct plants and an orchard as well.

3. Grow my own food, at least vegetables (of course, organic only).

4. Start a bookshop or at least a library.

5. Learn swimming. I get swimming lessons from Unny whenever we get a chance to jump into a waterbody. But I guess I need to go to a real swimming pool and get help from an instructor.

6. Drive in Mumbai city during rush hour. Every time I see the way vehicles are maneuvered during peak hours, my heart skips a beat.

7. Learn Marathi and at least one foreign language. I’ve started watching Marathi channels, but the programmes can’t sustain my interest. Not my fault. :-)

All these came at my finger tips without thinking. And I feel sleepy and I can’t think now. So that’s it.

The last three things in the list are there because I am too lazy to make an effort. You might be thinking, how this lazy bum is going to do the other things in the list. Even I don’t know. :-)

I know very few people in the English blog world and almost all of them are already tagged for this. So I leave it open to whoever reads this post and is interested in making their own bucket list.

For them, tragedy is forever

I feel guilty about forgetting the massive Bhopal tragedy when I wrote the post “Destructive DDT.” That means I am one of those ‘selfish’ souls. As long as it does not hurt me or my loved ones or my state, I don’t care.

I am sorry; I feel frustrated and helpless after reading Annie Zaidie’s post Known Turf: Perfect faces, national poisons.

See a full report here.

What can I do?

Nirmala’s helplessness

Like so many others, Nirmala came to Mumbai for a better life. She’s from a village in Nepal. When I was looking for a maid, my neighbour introduced her to me. She’s our building watchman’s wife. Though a little skeptical because of her pallid look, I agreed to take her for sweeping and swabbing. Nirmala was a little nosy too. She wanted to know how much rent I was paying and stuff like that.

I asked about her life back in Nepal, and she started talking non-stop as if she was waiting for a chance to speak. It was difficult to understand her Hindi with Nepalese touch. My Malayalam-influenced Hindi didn’t help much. Still, she shared some sad facts of her life.

While as farmers there is no shortage of food in her home, Nirmala says, “we don’t make any money over there, and that’s why we came to Mumbai.” Apparently, they grow all the food required – cereals, pulses, oil seed, and vegetables. They use katha as soap. But no savings. Ironically, they earn money in Mumbai, but need to buy everything. No more self-grown food. Her husband earns Rs 2500/ per month as watchman and a little more by washing cars. Even with Nirmala’s contribution, this is not enough for a family of three. They have a 3-year old daughter staying with them. Elder daughter is with her grand parents.

So Nirmala requested me give her more work and more money. If she does all the house work, what will I do? Then I will have to spent money and join a gym to get some exercise.

Now comes the even more sad part. Nirmala used to work as an agent to promote family planning among the villagers. Oh good, I thought. She continued, “Because of my training, I know my back pain is due to the miscarriage I had a year back.” Now it was my turn to become nosy. I asked her why she went for a third child when she advised her villagers to limit the number of children to two. She replied, in Nepal if a woman can’t bear a son, she doesn’t have any value. She may be thrown out of her house and her husband may even remarry. Sounds familiar! After all, Nepal is our neighbouring country. The plight of woman is the same.

So here’s Nirmala, who tells others about the importance of family planning, but willing to subject her frail body to more pregnancies for a son. And she concluded, “Bhabi, you are lucky. Your husband didn’t remarry even though you don’t have children.” I didn’t know what to say.

Siamese coconut tree!

Siamese babies are rare. Siamese coconut trees are rarer.

Check out this nature's wonder (or blunder) here.

:-)