3 ms·

At least in the US, the whole recruiting industry hit its nadir during the dot-com bubble of 2000. I remember getting a cold-call from a recruiter, "Hey, got a

At least in the US, the whole recruiting industry hit its nadir during the dot-com bubble of 2000. I remember getting a cold-call from a recruiter, "Hey, got a great gig at a soon-to-IPO startup for a Solaris and Linux guru", "No thanks", hang up, the phone next to me rings, same dude, literally just dialing up the extension tree. My boss at the time had a strategy where whenever a recruiter called offering "top notch" development talent, he would demand that he only wanted people with >15 years of java experience (remember, this was in 2000, and we also weren't a java shop). If they said, "Absolutely, no problem", they went on the banned list. Most recruiters failed this test. The whole market was so frothy, I remember people who went from being bartenders to high-end tech recruiters making crazy money and doing coke with their clients in the bars they used to work at...and then back to bartending when the bubble burst. Today, I feel like it's settled into an annoying-but-manageable background noise. I still get random recruiter reachouts, "Hey, I have an immediate opportunity for a contract Oracle DBA in illinois at $20/hour, interested?" (no, of course), but at least it's easy enough to hang up on them.

CaptainZapp 11y ago
Reminds me of an ex-boss of mine, who got a visit by a couple shysters from an SEO company. His first questions was: "What's your company's name again?" clickety-click! "Then, would you mind explaining why your company is not right on the top of a Google search?" It was a mighty short visit.
Nursie 11y ago
Hah. We had something similar one day on a team I used to work with in London. The agent had obviously been given the task of poaching a developer from our team but was utterly failing at it. One by one, all 16 of us got a phone call at our desks, with no more than a few seconds between each call. By the third call we all knew what was going on so we all just laughed and told the guy to sod off. Such a bungled effort - even if someone had wanted to take up the offer it would have been impossible at that point to say anything other than "LOL, no thanks buddy"
dec0dedab0de 11y ago
Now we could say 5 years Go experience.
crucialfelix 11y ago
In NY during that time period one company got a cold call from a head hunter asking to speak to "Mitch" or some name like that. That was the dog's name. They had gotten some list of names and it included the office dog.
- anotherevan 11y ago
  Oh, I so want to make a LinkedIn profile for my cat now! Major duties: Licking the spot where my balls use to be.
jobu 11y ago
In the fall of 2002 (after the dot-com bubble burst) I was laid off and looking for a job. One of the more memorable job postings had a requirement of 5 years .Net experience.
FussyZeus 11y ago
I'm way younger but this sounds about right. Every once in awhile I get a recruiter trying to add me on LinkedIn but nothing like the harassment and weirdness described in the article. Then again I'm also in the US. Sounds like the UK could really use some help with these guys, assuming the source is good.

CaptainZapp 11y ago

Reminds me of an ex-boss of mine, who got a visit by a couple shysters from an SEO company. His first questions was: "What's your company's name again?" clickety-click! "Then, would you mind explaining why your company is not right on the top of a Google search?" It was a mighty short visit.

Nursie 11y ago

Hah. We had something similar one day on a team I used to work with in London. The agent had obviously been given the task of poaching a developer from our team but was utterly failing at it. One by one, all 16 of us got a phone call at our desks, with no more than a few seconds between each call. By the third call we all knew what was going on so we all just laughed and told the guy to sod off. Such a bungled effort - even if someone had wanted to take up the offer it would have been impossible at that point to say anything other than "LOL, no thanks buddy"

dec0dedab0de 11y ago

Now we could say 5 years Go experience.

crucialfelix 11y ago

In NY during that time period one company got a cold call from a head hunter asking to speak to "Mitch" or some name like that. That was the dog's name. They had gotten some list of names and it included the office dog.

anotherevan 11y ago
Oh, I so want to make a LinkedIn profile for my cat now! Major duties: Licking the spot where my balls use to be.

jobu 11y ago

In the fall of 2002 (after the dot-com bubble burst) I was laid off and looking for a job. One of the more memorable job postings had a requirement of 5 years .Net experience.

FussyZeus 11y ago

I'm way younger but this sounds about right. Every once in awhile I get a recruiter trying to add me on LinkedIn but nothing like the harassment and weirdness described in the article. Then again I'm also in the US. Sounds like the UK could really use some help with these guys, assuming the source is good.