The recruitment nightmare

I submitted some applications for several jobs at the beginning of past month, and my life has not been the same since then. At the beginning I just had a little time for having lunch from 12.30 to 13. All the other hours, from 9 to 17.30, were a constant riiiiing riiiiing riiiiing from stressed recruiters which most of the times didn't have a clue on what they were talking about and even more insisted in me describing the topics in which I was interested for a future job.

I even had to deter one of those brilliant recruiters asking stupid questions: are you really asking me to describe you what is AJAX? are you really interested in it? do you know what is XML? not at all? then why are you asking me this?

At the beginning I even thought that recruitment agencies did a good service, resulting in a good selection of apt candidates and removing the useless applications. But come in, how are they going to distinguish between a bad and a good candidate if they don't know what they are talking about?

There were too some agencies which were specialised in IT skills, and knew what they had to ask. Even though, they add too much overhead to the process. They ask you to fill questionaries, answer stupid tests which anybody can (and should) reply just by googling a bit - which makes the whole thing clumsy. Frankly, those questions are of no-use for day to day work. That kind of superspecific questions about the TCP/IP protocol or a weird SQL query for Oracle server version blah will appear on a real-life job one time in 25 years, approximately. Even less if your work involves the development of web applications. And that's not all. Since I got my current job -not by an agency but contacting directly the company- I still have had recruiters calls. Lots of them, actually. They are beginning to be really annoying. I finally have started to not to reply to any number which is hidden. But when you pick the phone, even if it's just for being educated, and after politely listening to their introduction you tell them that thank you but I got a job already, it's their turn for impertinence:

- So where do you work now?

  • I'm afraid but that's not your business
  • No, I can't do anything with the name, which company is it?
  • I am not going to tell you, thank you
  • And where is it located?
  • Why do you want to know it?
  • Could I know approximately how much is the salary? (then I hang down the phone)
Come on, recruiters. Who do you think you are? You look like amateur gossipers, not skilled professionals on which an employee can rely! Would you trust a "somebody" calling you with a withheld phone number and asking you such kind of personal details?

Ridiculous...