fandom job search

The Recruiting Nightmare #9 – Spamming Speed!

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OK all your hard work as a recruiter, all that effort, all that time . . . and then you find a lot of potential recruits are getting spammed by bodyshop agencies or less-than considerate recruiters.  So of course your responses can get lost in the mail, and you’re competing with these bozos.

It’s gotten ridiculous and it’s getting more ridiculous over time.

I get spam in my inbox for things I haven’t done for years – like programming and engineering.

I get spam from people for geographic areas I told them I’m not interested in.

Lately I get spam on jobs that are so unrelated to what I do, I think someone twigged onto one keyword in my resume.

I’m not alone. A lot of my friends get strange things, and if you did a wide-ranging job search, chances are your resume ended up a lot of databases.  A lot of databases poorly matching you to jobs.

Recruiters have to compete with this.  They can be made to look bad.  They can get real requests lost among the BS.  They have to just plain go up against the spammers.

It’s almost a joke in a way, because of the way people dump resumes left and right.  Now they’re getting spammed as well.

It’s not the worst thing recruiters face, but it’s annoying.

JOB SEEKER TIPS:

  • Make an effort to get “spam recruiters” to back off.  It’ll clear your inbox.
  • Learn to recognize recruiters you trust.

HELP OUT RECRUITERS:

  • Helping recruiters find people via networking is a good way to dodge spam-recruiting snatching people.
  • Also help recruiters craft good response letters so they don’t get written off.
  • Try not to use less ethical agencies where you work.

GEEK EXTRA:

  • I’d like to see a list out there of spammy recruiting companies that people could pass around.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Go Farther: We Need a Fandom Job Site

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 came up in a recent podcast, but it's something deserving of it's own post.  It's a  a business idea if you will that I welcome some of you out there to try, be it as a hobby or something commercial.  Just let me know – hint, hint.

We need a fandom job site.  By we I mean "us assorted fans, geeks, otaku, nerds" and the like.  Well, and the world, but that's only because the world needs us nerds and fans and technophiles.

I'm not talking a website for jobs applied to fans (though that might be cool, if difficult).  I'm not talking about anything for profit.  I'm talking about a site where people post their needs for people to help with fannish events and projects and endeavors so they can find the right folks.

Consider a few examples of who could be recruited through such a site:

  • People could recruit for convention staff.
  • People could recruit for speaking and doing events at conventions.
  • Fannish websites and similar endeavors could find new staff.
  • People doing nonprofit projects that may look good in a portfolio, could find contributors.

Of course this is a tool to do what I love to emphasize – fansourcing, leveraging your fandom connections to get things done.  In this case, it's a way to help people make new connections, stretch themselves, improve themselves, and maybe get something to put on a resume.

I don't see it being hard to implement:

  • The technology is probably already out there in one form or another anyway.  You could start something in Drupal or even Joomla, or slam together some code modules.
  • The talent base is probably easy to find as well – your basic "LAMP" knowledge would let people run it.
  • There are plenty of fandom people with design skills as well who could make the look just right.
  • A lot of people would probable be on board to do it.  Though,ironically, sourcing a site like this would probably be easier if a site like this existed.
  • The basic job-search metaphor is very familiar to people.

Oddly the main challenges I see would be that promoting it properly would be hard (so people didn't get the wrong idea), and policing it properly would take work to make sure posts are legit, control spam, etc.  You'd need a dedicated core of people to do it . . .

So, got some spare time?  Spare programmers? Spare ambition?  Want to help your fellow otaku, fans, and geeks?  Here's a suggestion right here . . .

. . . plus imagine how this'd look on a resume and what kind of contacts you'd make.  Why if you did this it could lead to full, paying jobs someday . . .

– Steven Savage