the "no good Perl jobs"/"no good Perl programmers" myth

[Piers Cawley]

Jacqui Caren <jacqui.caren at ntlworld.com> writes:

> Joel Bernstein wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 11:09:33AM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
>>
>>>                      Agencies are fiendishly expensive (20-35% of
>>> annual salary), but in the last year and a bit, I've had little
>>> luck advertising. I'd say at the moment good people generally a
>>> quite hard to find (we're a Java shop).
>>
>>
>> My experience has been that due to the massive competition in the IT job
>> market, recruiters are happy with margins nearer 12-15%, especially if
>> you'll sign an exclusivity deal with their company. Of course, this just
>> means you get the cowboys rather than the big boys, but I don't know if
>> (in the most part) that's a bad thing -- they're all doing the same lame
>> keyword-matching, 
>
> Not true - I know at least one agency that is using telephone
> interviews and tests to vet applicants before they consider putting a
> cv forward.

I had a falling out with a pimp (can't remember who now) about my CV a
few months back. He wanted me to take a document I'd sweated to get
down to two sides and turn it into a small novel. I thought he was
joking but he was apparently in deadly earnest. I refused to alter it
and I'm not sure he even bothered to forward it to the client.

-- 
Piers Cawley <pdcawley at bofh.org.uk>
http://www.bofh.org.uk/