I'm 19 and skipped college and university to travel, I freelanced for a couple of years and worked on games and personal hobby projects during this time and currently work at a small web development company.

I only have 6 months of commercial experience but I get approached literally daily by recruitment companies because of a single resume I posted on a website and it is driving me crazy.

They all ring me up and say "Don't trust another company, they will screw you over, trust us instead" and "The job states it wants 5 years of experience, but that doesn't matter, I'll send your resume too."

Honestly, I wouldn't mind as much, but it all feels half assed, they don't want to find me a job, they want to find their company an employee, telephoning me and pretending to give a crap about my life is all well and good, but to be honest, when you go cold for a week after that without a single email it makes the candidate feel worthless.

That and the fact that if a candidate isn't accepted for an interview, the de facto method of rejection is simply not getting back to them unless they contact you.

This space really needs to be disrupted, for the love of a God, why isn't there a humane recruitment company?

I feel you. For sure, most recruiters are basically trying to fill a position - they work for commissions, and the hiring company, not you. Expecting a recruiter who contacted you to represent your interests is like expecting the lawyer for a company suing you to give you legal advice.

I think your expectation is a little off, and you may view it differently if you viewed them as someone you are doing business with, not an advisor. When someone is trying to sell you a car, they will butter you up the same way.

There ARE humane recruiters who can be more representative of your needs, but they don't usually cold call with specific positions in mind. They build a network of good candidates and people who would have good referrals, then reach out to them when they have a position that's a good fit.

Of course, you've proved my point above :) It doesn't take much to get smothered by recruiters.

Frankly I think the original article is linkbait. It presupposes a problem that does not exist.

Ouch, not so much fun. I should have been much more specific that this post was about getting interviews at companies, not getting agencies to put you into their mill. There are some good recruiting agencies, but the problem is there's no way to know which is which unless you've worked with a lot of them and have context. You're right, this would be a good area for disruption (or maybe a good new feature for GlassDoor).

>why isn't there a humane recruitment company

Sounds like you've found the business you need to start!

Be aware of the anti-pattern section of TFA though. The impression of job hopping really does "damage your chances" as the author put it. I hope its not too rude to talk about my own case.

I lost a job in 2008 over the financial crisis (LIFO employee retention policy), had 2 short contracts (which really shouldn't count as job hopping!) a research position where I suffered a burnout and now recruiters don't answer my calls and I have to jump on any opportunity that comes around. I'm looking for both accounting and software development roles (obviously slightly different CV for accounting roles - in fact I generally tweak it for each application).

My (dev) CV is at (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8PrUXneejNRdThYRWFHZUk5aHM/...) and I welcome and solicit any feedback to relfect on. Its hard to wrap a cohesive career trajectory around it when its really just me taking the best of the opportunities that I find.

I admit my github is embarrassingly bad, and I've been focusing more on my Coursera courses at the moment. I've had 1 interview in 2 months of looking for entry level/junior positions.

/rant

1. Put up a personal site on your own domain if you don't already have one. It doesn't have to be fancy but should look professional. A single page will do. Write a few paragraphs about yourself and link to projects, social media profiles, and your CV. See mine as an example: http://driverdan.com

2. Have a searchable PDF version of your CV / resume linked to from your page. If possible also include an HTML version. Consider SEO when writing your CV. What keywords do you want people to find you for?

3. Be everywhere. Have active social media profiles on all the major sites. LinkedIn is a cesspool of recruiters so get your keywords on your profile and link to examples of your work.

Thanks for the feedback. I will definately look into building a single page personal site.

Some advice -Remove junior from all positions -Too much stuff about accounting if you are looking for swe job -More verbs - I did A, implemented B, saved C amount of money -Follow coursera courses = meaningless, remove it or at least put what courses you graduated from. -Fix grammar and spelling -Change objective to " I am looking for software engineer position where I can do ABC".

Thanks for the feedback.

I guess I'm lucky in that respect. I have no problem finding jobs so far, but exactly zero recruiters have ever contacted me.

EDIT: I'm sure I've jinxed it now, and this message will cause recruiters to start emailing me.