I was wondering if any other monks were experiencing the strange phenomenon lately that I have. I have been working as a contractor for the last five years in IT. Although I am not specifically looking for a new gig right now I still get calls from recruiters from time to time when they have something that matches my skill set.

What has really changed in the last couple of years is the laundry list of skills that they lay on you for these positions. I got a call the other day from a large IT staffing firm and was told a client was looking for a Unix system admin that has a security backround, is familiar with Oracle performance tuning, SAN administration AND C or C++!!

Now maybe I am the crazy one here but are not those like 3 or 4 career skills that could stand on their own? I mean I realize that there have been tons of layoffs and there has been a big downturn but since when is a Unix system admin suppose to go in and start tweaking databases?? This was not just the only call that I have recieved with a crazy stew skill set. I felt like Richard Gere on the phone with Indrid Cold in the hotel room many a day lately. Another thing that seems to happen now is that some of the technical recruiters know so little about what you are telling them that by the time they get back to the client they make a mess of what you told them and the client thinks YOU are clueless. There are also times when they will have the job order on a piece of paper and it will say something like "Perl procedures".

I got this call a while back and the woman was like "do you know perl procedures" and I was like "do you mean Perl programming? and she says "well no, it says here Perl procedures". When I tried to tell her it was probably Perl programming she told me well I must not know Perl procedures and rushed to get off the phone. Very annoying! Anyways it's been a while since I got a good rant in so there it is -

cheers

JSchmitz

In reply to Recruiters from Beyond by JSchmitz

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