Bonkers

[Peter Corlett]

On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 12:55:07PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
[...]
> 1: There are (at least) 12 companies in and around London trying to
> recruit developers with strong Perl skills
> 2: I know of 5 people who are sufficiently dissatisfied with their current
> job
> 3: The recruitment agents are having kittens* because they can't find
> anyone to interview for these jobs

Well, I'm somewhat unimpressed with the current conditions at work and have
been casting around, doing the odd interview.

Often, I'm declining to even bother to interview once i've got the recruiter
to cut the crap and tell me where the job is and how much they are offering.
What seems to be on the table is longer hours, travel to the back end of
beyond, and an effective paycut of about 10% once those are factored in.

It seems that employers think they are in a buyer's market. What appears to
have escaped their notice is that they're desperate for people, but people
already have jobs even if they don't like them much.

Of course, the pimps should probably smarten up when trying to match people
to jobs: I've seen at least three different jobs that evidently repeatedly
fail to be filled, and a new member of staff finds languishing in the pile,
keyword-matches my CV and then phones me up. I then have to sit through them
wittering on about "great opportunity" and rattling off keywords for me to
go "yep" to all of them. They're nigh-on wetting themselves that they've
possibly finally got rid of the job when tell me who it is and I point out
that I've already declined the job, or have interviewed and never heard
anything back.

In all, it's a wholly unsastisfactory business for everybody concerned.