Lemmings.  Junior HR twerps. Gatekeepers.  Obstacles.  Just plain “in-the-way-of-the-real-work-the-grown-ups-are-doing”.

Now before anyone starts setting the comment section on fire, please note that I am myself a corporate recruiter.  I don’t think I fall into ANY of those categories, nor do any of my excellent co-workers.  In fact, I work internally for one of the very few companies I would ever consider going in house for.  Many of these issues don’t apply to me, but some…

Fortunately I don’t get these very often… I’m one of a handful of recruiters and rather new to my company, so the vultures haven’t caught up with me yet.  However – earlier this week I had FOUR horrible voicemails in a row, from FOUR awful sales people.  Three agencies and a job board.  It went a little something like this –

“Hi Amy, this is (first name only) with (unintelligible company name).  I’m calling today to introduce you to my company.  We are the…

“I want people who are coming TO us, not running away from something bad.  You know, bad job, bad boss, they’re unemployed; I can find those people no problem.  I want people who WANT to work here.”

Interesting words spoken by one of my hiring managers during a recruiting meeting.  I was fresh off my blog “job seeking is a lot like dating” so naturally I’m picturing the goofs on The Bachelorette always running to each other… bad visual.  Then I really thought about what he…

There is a lot of well-intentioned advice cautioning job seekers from disclosing their salary history and / or requirements.  The wisdom (?) behind this is that you don’t want to get “low-balled” by asking for too little or be tagged over qualified by asking for too much.

So what’s the alternative?  Apparently you wait until the employer is ready to make an offer, and naturally you NEVER accept the first offer.  After all, who leaves money on the table,…