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I hear ya; I feel your pain. I was looking 1/2 year ago. Here's what I've learned/trained myself to do: If English (my native language) is their native language, hear them out. Hone that list down to 4 or 5. If English is not their native language, hang up/delete. I wasted a ton of time on the non-English speakers this last time and the time 5 years ago - from those experiences I learned that they are a waste of time. I've had very good luck with the honed list.
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I just went through a learning experience with a recruiter who I could not understand. He bungled the whole thing (including setting up an interview with the employer but not with me) to the point that I wrote him an email saying I was no longer interested. He sent me an email saying "thanks for the response, how about this other opportunity". I told him to never send me another email or call me ever again. I've not heard from him since (yet).
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50 miles? Seems like a lot to me.
I get calls occasionally from people with positions which would be a 'great fit' in the Denver Tech Center (about 30 miles one-way). Instead of rejecting them outright, I always make sure to check if they're willing to send a car each day so I could work during the commute.
Haven't really gotten a bite on that yet.
I agree with the not willing to reloacte bit. I keep hearing of these great opportunities in Tulsa or some other BFE town. I'm sure they have their appeal, but when I say "Not willing to relocate", that should pretty much seal it.
Finally, I got a phone call the other week from a number I didn't know, so ignored. Within seconds I got an email from some recruiter telling me:
* How he understands that I probably get bombarded with communications all the time from recruiters and doesn't want this to be like that and
* How he could use his expertise in the Denver market to get me what I want.
His area code was from Maryland. But I'm sure he knows all about the market here...
Sigh.
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You are not the customer of the recruiter. The recruiter's job is not to find you a job. The recruiter's job is to fill a position for their client. You are a commodity.
You might as well tell Red Lobster that they need to completely change the way they do business to better suit the needs of the lobsters.
Recruiters are often competing against several other recruiting companies and sometimes even other recruiters within their own company. Whoever gets to you first gets the right to represent you to the client. So if they sat and read through your whole resume, the person who just calls you based on the fuzzy match gets to you first and shuts them out.
The more money a company spends on an all American recruiting firm, the less they have in their IT budget. Who would you rather get the money, the IT guys who you think are skilled, or the recruiters whose skills you find so lacking?
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: "senior recruiters"
Are there any "Senior Recruiters"? I have yet to speak to any recruiter that after enough time did not conspiratorially admit they were thinking of starting their own agency and would I go with them?
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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I have, on the first several lines of my résumé the most common questions asked by recruiters answered. So when they call and ask me the question I just say, "Have you read my résumé?" they say, "Yes I have but I need to know X", oh "I am terribly sorry, can you open my résumé please and read me what the fourth line says" I really just do it to play games, if someone doesn't look at your résumé before tehy called then the opportunity doesn't really exist and you are just a fish for a recruiter looking for max margin for minimum effort.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: I DO NOT WANT TO WORK IN BUM-F*CK EGYPT, NORTH CAROLINA, OR ANY STATE THAT STARTS WITH THE WORD "NEW". In point of fact, if it ain't within 50 miles of my zip code, I don't want to know about it.
This is what's killing you. You're in a highly competitive area at a time when good positions are not easy to find. Houston/Dallas would be great if you were willing to move there, and you could sure as hell find a good job in Boise or Memphis, but you're going to have a hard time finding the job you want without leaving San Antonio.
And yes, headhunters are worthless. Since you're looking for jobs in a small area, your best bet is probably to network and get to know people, that's still the best way to get a good job.
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Although I agree with much of what you say, and believe (but cannot prove) that I am the victim of age discrimination (recruiters show interest at first, but thereafter won't even return my followup emails, at times, after they've realized, I think, that I'm no spring chicken), I don't understand why you'd hang up on somebody for not being an "American," whatever that is (I have three strains of Native American in my heritage, and could make a snide remark about who is really a true American).
As for your aversion to states beginning with "New" I get the New Jersey and New York revulsion, but Hampshire and Mexico are nice places. Then again, you don't want to relocate - neither do I, I get that same thing: recruiters contacting me for jobs all over the place, when I have indicated I'm not interested.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: For the record, Houston and Dallas are NOWHERE NEAR San Antonio. Neither
location qualifies as a "longish commute"
What's a 4 hours drive? 
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I have experienced most of the idiocies you describe, and more (although I'm a bit less upset by requests to recommend other candidates when the message offers a USD$500 "commission").
Let's add a couple more:
I have retired(I still take small projects), so I have removed my resume from all the job sites. I still get E-mails stating the recruiter found my resume on Monster, or Career Builder, or ... In other words, yet another form letter.
Why did I retire? I just got too tired of the idiocy of the recruiting process.
The IT recruiting industry seems to have implemented a common "unsubscribe" mechanism (through something called "jobseekers"). However, the unsubscribe applies to the recruiter, not the company. WTF?
Finally, like you, I've got quite a few years of experience (try forty-four). In the U.S., it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of age. So I became accustomed to being rejected for "not being energetic enough." How energetic do you need to be to sit in a cubicle and type on a keyboard? Given that experienced programmers are more productive, and make far fewer bad design decisions, they are a better choice, even economically. And, of course, if you (the employer) need to save money (in a short-term calculation that amounts to cutting your throat to satisfy your shareholders while losing (see, I spelled that right ;<) your customers), you can always lay me off, or out-source my job to China (where an entire team of programmers were unable to even understand the code I provided). Sigh.
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John,
Let me make sure I understand what your issue is.... "Your getting too many offers for work". Did I read that right?
Let me know... Lee
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I find it really ironic actually just based on the names from those emailing me, but I think what you are experiencing is "head hunter trolling"... it seems like most of these folks are "work from home recruiters" who troll monster, dice, indeed, and the other job aggregation sites. I doubt they earn much in the way of commission, because most companies (at least from my experience) use the same online career software (can't remember the name of the company), but their might be one or two companies that have cornered the market... anyway the most annoying are these 6 month temp jobs or temp to perm jobs.. what software engineer wants to be "test driven" and then thrown away after the job is over? I guess when peoples' H1-B or student visa runs out -- they have to become a recruiter because they are ineligible to work? maybe that's what is happening.![Java | [Coffee]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/coffee.gif)
David
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I'm in the same position (except I starting programming for a living forty years ago). I just need a couple of contracts to make it to retirement. I get all the same lame calls and emails that you do. I keep getting an ad for occupation therapists in Texas somewhere. (I'll forward it if you are interested.) Half the cold calls I get are from people who I cannot understand. I've started just ignoring them.
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This missive, and some of the author's follow on comments, are a little economically illiterate. All parties to a transaction boil down to two categories - HAS the box of money, and WANTS the box of money.
You're the person who WANTS the box of money in this, and since, unless you can, say, produce cold fusion, cash is always the most versatile commodity, you're the supplicant here.
In the end, it's arrogant to assume that you're such a demigod of your profession that you can expect the consideration you're demanding.
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... than a man with a mechanical calculator in four years. Interesting[^], but not exactly state of the art.
Esit: Of course they tried to Show off with the vector graphics, but this is still great for the time.
Sent from my BatComputer via HAL 9000 and M5
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"full year" not four year
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Ok. The computer got four times faster and I have been sitting on my ears. 
Sent from my BatComputer via HAL 9000 and M5
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He's using four year analysis?
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:groan:
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
English doesn't borrow from other languages.
English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
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Dave, completely Off Topic. What was the new release RaspberryPi OS you mentioned the other day?
About to go pick up 2 new 512MB Model B to make OpenELEC to access Movies and TV shows from NAS using XBMC. That will leave my original 512MB Model B to piss about with Wheezy or whatever it is.
The older 2 x 256MB Model boxes will probably find use as SSH targets at a customer or relatives place to allow secure remote access without having to have a full size box running.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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"The other day"?
I can't think of any posts I have made about RasPi recently, the last must have been a few weeks ago The only thing I remember talking about lately was the GertBoard IO module for RasPi.
I just pick up my RasPi OS from the usual source: http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads[^].
The NOOBS release was updated just last week.
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Must have been someone else. They mentioned a new version of Wheezy (or maybe something else) and said they were looking forward to getting to play with it when they got back home.
I thought it was you waiting to get back to shore. It may have been weeks agoi, but didn't my memory was that sh*t.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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It was Eve Alpha RasPi wireless platform I was planning on playing with last time home. Never managed though, too much other stuff got in the way, like kids being on school mid-term holidays and having to keep them occupied!
That and the gertboard.
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Wow that's a real flash from the past, "1 million instructions/per second" blazing. 
modified 11-Nov-13 17:59pm.
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For those of you who's Googled by the keyword "architect sexy"[^] - it seems to reconfirm that architects really are sexy. After all, Google represents the collective knowledge of human being.
Then, why are we not? (I guess I understand this - they make things that are tangible)
So if you make tangible things it makes you sexy?
dev
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