Agencies redux

[darmstadt]

I'm sure this has been done before, by mself even, but I am getting so many mails for me to apply for contracts which have no relevance to my skills. I'm even getting them in French and nowhere does it say in my profile that I speak the language. Primarily they're coming from the big agencies, for example:

• 8051 programming with C/C++ for smartcard and crypto programming
• content manager with imperia CMS for a website in 17 languages and a load of other web stuff which I've never heard of

My profile quite explicitly states zSeries and mainframe stuff with some server based skills. I know they do keyword searches but quite often I read the mail and not one of the TLAs in my profile is there so that can't be the reason. Is it because the market is so busy they're just mass mailing everyone or is it just me?

[doodab]

They probably got bob in to design a new skills database and candidate mailing system.

[darmstadt]

Pretty obvious that agents don't read CVs and just do keyword searches...today were 2 mails in my inbox for positions to do with some product called Flex. Now I have do have that word, nearly, in my profile. In fact I have Flex-ES which is totally different, compare:

Flex-ES

Flex

For a mail like that I just ignore them which is silly on the agents part because he might actually be searching for a person who does have my skillset for another project.

[Menelaus]

They probably got bob in to design a new skills database and candidate mailing system.

"Yeah, hay, English and French, they are the same are they not?" (with that wiggling of the head thing that every time I see it I want to rip off said m'fing head!!)

[suityou01]

"Yeah, hay, English and French, they are the same are they not?" (with that wiggling of the head thing that every time I see it I want to rip off said m'fing head!!)

[OwlHoot]

Also, I often get interest, and have gained two or three contracts, on the strength of long obsolete skills that hadn't dropped off the end of my CV.

Only today, I had a phone interview partly on the strength of my past experience of Informix and 4GL, which I thought by now would be buried in the ruins of Troy but is apparently still going. Not that I'll be using it (I hope), just that the client is reassured it is there.

So the moral is don't ditch a skill just because it isn't cutting edge - It may differentiate you from some young pup, or Bob, whose CV is more vanilla and threadbare.

[minestrone]

I am going to send out a CV filled with lines of...

"Oracle you daft c**k, 2 years JAVA with JSP you feckin knob, yer maw is a slut, PL/SQL gayboy"

... and I bet I would get emails for java/oracle jobs.

[s2budd]

For a mail like that I just ignore them

Your no fun.
I send off my CV and apply for them for a bit of a larf.

If an agent wants to act the idiot and send me Job ads for office administrator roles or some other nonsense then I just return the favor.


Quite a few have actually gone through to the end client for them to let me know that my experience in Organic flower arranging or Quantum physics was not quite up to scratch.

[OwlHoot]

I am going to send out a CV filled with lines of...

"Oracle you daft c**k, 2 years JAVA with JSP you flipin knob, yer maw is a slut, PL/SQL gayboy"

... and I bet I would get emails for java/oracle jobs.

Make it "you daft c##k" and they'll be putting you forward for .Net roles too.