I was thinking about something else for my next post, but earlier this week on my way home from work I got a call from a recruiter and that reminded me I wanted to talk about this subject. So, for any of my imaginary readers who haven’t had the experience of looking for a tech job in the modern world. Or even not so modern, I worked for a “Contract House” (a form of recruiter) in my first job out of college. What is a recruiter? Well to quote my favorite boss ever “Recruiters are Pimps”. That is crude, and rude but also at a very base level mostly true. Always remember, Recruiters make money when they sell your body/mind to their customer, you are very (very, very) rarely the customer, you are the product. The recruiter is not your friend, they can be friendly, after you are no longer working with them they will still be friendly - they want to sell you again later. Also recruiters are salespeople, they have to sell themselves to the “product” to get you to sign on with their agency, then they have to sell the product to the actual customer. There are many types of Recruiters, just like there are many types of Pimps, and amazingly I think in some ways they correspond fairly well.

The first type of recruiter I want to talk about is the Contract House, this is a usually large (or largish) company that specializes in placing people in positions. I am going to talk about Tech Contract Houses but there are Contract Houses in all industries - Manpower is a good example of a cross-industry Contract House, they will place anyone from a ditch digger, to a high power executive, but they are not nearly as widespread as they were in the 1980’s/1990’s. Basically a Contract House is your employer, in the ugly terms the contract house is the Brothel/Escort Agency, you work for the end customer, the end customer pays some hourly rate to the Contract House, the Contract House pays some lesser hourly rate to you and handles your taxes and (good houses) benefits. Really good houses have paid vacation treat their “lady’s” well and act basically like a real employer (probably true of real brothels too but I am talking about Contract Houses right now <grin>).

Just remember, if you don’t have a current placement you don’t get paid, and frankly the good houses are few and far between. I have worked for 2 contract houses, my wife has worked for 3 and I have had friends who have worked for 2 others. Of those seven, we have seen 2 good houses, 1 okay house, and the other 4 have been “place and forget”. Where you basically got placed and never heard from anyone from the house again until it was time to re-up, got no benefits, got no support, got nothing except they covered the employer part of your taxes. In at least one of those cases my friend had his contract disappear because the company he was working for (the end customer) not the house, went under his house didn’t have a clue until he called them when the doors were locked. Then they looked back and look, they hadn’t been paid in 3 months. But nobody at the house had bothered to check...my friend was out of luck and looking for a job. While my I was at a good house I had the rep checking with me at least weekly to make sure things were okay, and when they weren’t, she stepped in and fixed things. So Contract Houses, can be good or bad, but still they are selling you and out to make money from your experience/body.  

Placement Agency, specializes in finding permanent employees for companies. Often there is some crossover with Contract Houses, with Contract Houses doing Placement, and Placement Agencies having attached Contract Houses, but usually a company will specialize in one or the other somewhat. Placement Agencies get paid up front. They get a fee for finding you and making sure you fit with the target company. This means the good ones that have a long term relationship with the target company will work carefully with you and make sure you fit, these are the Recruiters that will seem to be your friends. I kind of think of these as the high end Madam’s of the recruiting world, they are friendly, personable, usually tech savvy enough to tell if someone is BSing and will really make friends with you because they want to place you a second or third time later in your career.

However, there are the “hit and run” Placement  Agencies, or “Spam Recruiters” as I call them. They spot a posted opening on some job board, grab the keywords out of the posting (I suspect strongly an automated tool for this part) and search the related resume boards for those keywords. Then they send emails and/or call the people from the resumes, all of them, regardless of how old the resume is, I know this because both my wife and I have gotten calls within 10 minutes of each other several times - and my wife hasn’t been looking for a job for over a year. They don’t look at the resumes at all, I have gotten calls about postings for iOS only developers - I put that I have 6 months of experimentation with iOS on my resume, not the 5+ years they asked for. Once they figure out that you are actually looking for a job, they send you other random postings every few days. I have found 2 out of the dozen or so that are spamming me that have actually listened to what I told them about my requirements and have been tailoring the postings they are sending to my requests, but they are still mostly random. These Agencies seem to be the bottom feeders, but frankly I wouldn’t know for sure because I haven’t used them and I am not sure I would trust them.

Just because you have enough work experience to cover three pages doesn't mean you need to include it all on your résumé. In fact, trimming your résumé to create a more targeted message about your skills and achievements can be a better way to land your next job. Most employers are interested in knowing only the most applicable ways your skills can help their organization, and a concise résumé is the first step. "It's vital to make sure the relevant information is at the forefront and easily viewed by the reader," says résumé expert Charlotte Weeks and founder of Weeks Career Services.

Not sure which experience to leave off your résumé? Here's what to consider.