[Baylisa] A Minor Etiquette Question

Thu Dec 6 14:19:20 PST 2012

Hi Roy,

Speaking as a longtime reader of baylisa-jobs, here, not an officer of
BayLISA or anything official...

I would definitely lean toward either responding directly to the poster, or
sighing with unfiltered resignation such that your coworkers think you
passed a stone and then moving on.

In general, while I'm not excusing the sorts of things that you see in a
lot of LinkedIn forums ("GREAT JOBS IN THE TRANSPORTATION INDUSTRY IN DELHI
TODAY" in sysadmin groups, for example), a recruiter, headhunter, hiring
manager, or employee seeking a referral bonus is trying to do something
acceptable by posting their request on baylisa-jobs. Or I'll at least give
them the benefit of the doubt until they are proven malicious.

Recruiters may have no idea what "large and distributed systems like cloud
computing" really would mean, or how to recognize same if it struck them in
the middle of the back at a really amazing floating party. The internal HR
people at the company may not even know what it means. But if you assume
(bravely) that they're trying to help a company solve a problem, and in the
process trying to help a sysadmin find a job, you can give them a gentle
prod, constructive and polite suggestions, or just the benefit of the
doubt.

Having gone through thousands of resumes as a hiring manager and as a guy
looking to get colleagues and referral bonuses myself, I've seen a lot of
resumes that had the same level of clue. People who list "Ethernet" as an
expert technology but can't tell the difference between 568A and 568B.
People who demand $160k for a senior position with a junior level of
expertise. People expecting architecture roles because they built a VM by
downloading it from a vendor and importing it into Fusion.

It would be an interesting discussion, if it could be done civilly, to
cover red flags and buzzwords in job postings (and in resumes). Maybe if
someone has a good relationship with a local (Bay Area)
recruiter/headhunter, they could get said person to come in to the December
BayLISA meeting and talk briefly about life and candidate hunting from the
other side.

But in short, don't take recruiters personally, don't take your beef with
their postings to a public forum, and remember, if "TEN YEARS MINIMUM
WINDOWS 7 SERVER EXPERIENCE" is the worst, most annoying thing you read
today, you're doing better than a lot of us out here.

Robert

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Roy Rapoport <rsr at inorganic.org> wrote:

> Say you see a job posting go to baylisa-jobs that seems to you pretty
> horrifying.  Things like a mismatch between salary ("We'll pay you $8.23 an
> hour!") and qualifications ("Advanced knowledge of Python! Must have gone
> to kindergarten with Linus Torvalds!"), or work conditions ("Must be ready
> and willing to work 24 hour shifts.  Several.  Without breaks").
>
> What's the right behavior, then? Respond privately to the recruiter (these
> sorts of things seem to correlate strongly with recruiter-posted jobs,
> rather than direct postings, because hiring managers are typically at least
> somewhat more grounded in reality)? Respond to baylisa-jobs? Respond to
> baylisa? Let it go because it's none of your business?
>
> I'm curious to see what other peoples' opinion is.
>
> Best,
> -roy
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