How to not win friends and influence people

Sometimes you just have to laugh at how people approach trying to secure employment. The following was posted at the top of a candidate's resume on Dice:

No Recruiters, DIRECT HIRE ONLY!

If you are a recruiter or work for a recruiting company, please read carefully.

You DO NOT have permission to submit me to jobs EVER!

You DO NOT have permission to add my information to your database.

If I find out that you have used my name or resume securing a client, I will sue you and your company to the fullest extent of the law.

Recruiters, If you contact me, you will be reported to The Federal Trade Commission

The ONLY people who have permission to contact me directly are Direct Hire Companies.

I will not be exploited or have the money I am working for given to a lazy person who makes phone calls. Anyone who exploits the talents of others for their personal gain is a sorry excuse for a human being and I want no part of them in my life or career.

I didn't have the time to build the HTML to provide the emphasis or the link to the FTC complaint form, but I think you get the idea without the rainbow of colors and extensive use of bold fonts and underlines. So, any corporate people out there ready to hire this gem? What kills me is most of his career he's been a contractor, so I'm sure that there are plenty of "lazy people who make phone calls" out there who have helped him make a living. You have to wonder why he's got so much anger built up regarding agency recruiters, and more importantly why in the world he would think his resume "preamble" would help him secure a position. All you can do is be thankful he's not on your payroll and talking to your best customer.

Comment by Maureen Sharib on April 23, 2008 at 10:02am: “People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong...Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Comment by Claudia Faust on April 23, 2008 at 10:15am: Agreed, Maureen! Funny thing about perspective -- it tends to color everything. Isn't it nice that a) the world is large enough to accomodate many perspectives, and b) I don't have to work with this individual?

Comment by Maureen Sharib on April 23, 2008 at 10:36am: a) Yup
b) Yup

;)

Comment by Nancy Ford on April 23, 2008 at 10:52am: Bitter, Table for One! LOL

Comment by Steve Sill on April 23, 2008 at 11:44am: LOL... I see that a lot; though the FTC one is new. Many people have the "no 3rd Party recruiter" message and leave it at that. These people are open to opportunities, but they don't want to be bombarded by every Tom, Dick, or Henrietta who is trying to make a placement.

As it is I am one of those direct hire recruiters he wants to hear from, and I would have to be pretty desperate to actually reach out to him.

Comment by Kathleen M. Sheridan on April 23, 2008 at 12:11pm: LOL, Nancy! Yes, I agree with everyone's comments here. Also, it stuns me that this person relegated so much valuable resume space to threats. Yeah...no. Not healthy.

Comment by Joshua Letourneau on April 23, 2008 at 2:30pm: Real Exec Search Professionals aren't on boards anyway, so he's probably reaching his target audience ;) The issue is that he'll never be offered a direct-hire opportunity with an attitude like that. A contract recruiter would place him with a client in a heartbeat, though - looks like he's probably been burned a time or two.

Comment by Dave Templeman on April 23, 2008 at 2:36pm: This contract recruiter wouldn't touch him with a 10 foot pole attached to another 10 foot pole. But you do bring up an interesting point - I don't think corporate recruiters rely on the boards as much as a contingency recruiters (at least based on the job postings I see) which goes to further prove this candidate has no idea how to effectively market themselves. I also suspect that he hasn't been burned as bad as he thinks he has.

Comment by Joshua Letourneau on April 23, 2008 at 2:57pm: Yeah, this guy picked the wrong place and he was probably aggravated about something. I imagine that he probably has had some run-ins with the bigger publicly traded firms where anything goes and "all is war". I say that because there are great contract recruiters out there . . . and it sucks that he'll never get exposure to them. What he probably doesn't know is that he might be imported into a search firm or corporate ATS with a "Do Not Touch" note attached!

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