The Master Baiter

“We all have our strong suits.  You’re funnier than I am.  I am better at killing terrorists than you.” – Recruiter who submitted this guest entry during the edit/review process

There are many types of recruiters out there.

By and large, they’re all decent, professional people simply trying to do their jobs.

Granted, there’s the occasional exception to that rule, but still – good people, professionals, doing their jobs.  Sometimes we might get annoyed at an uninvited phone call, or a job description that simply isn’t a fit (I am a Recruiter and I received a call about an exciting opportunity as a Cisco Voice Engineer.  Huh?!). However I think that all of us have run into recruiters who are… shall we say…”less than forthright” in their professional dealings.

Like The Master Baiter…

Because today…today I encountered the Master Baiter.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone cast the lines out like this, but apparently they still exist.

You’re familiar with fishing, I assume?

So you’re familiar with the concept of “bait”, right?  Throwing something into the environment that doesn’t really belong there, but looks attractive to the inhabitants, enticing them to come up and take a nibble so you can reel them in?

Look at me! I’m an awesome developer who does just what you’re looking for!

I started my day today sourcing and calling SAP FI/CO Business Analysts for a pretty cool job here in the Metro Detroit area.  I’m looking for someone with a solid 5 years of experience, and my client isn’t able to do any kind of long process Visa transfer.

I refined my source down to 15 or so candidates that I wanted to contact.

The candidate at the top of my list was Niki B.  She lists herself as a US Citizen with 7 years of solid BA experience implementing SAP FI/CO at specific organizations here in our local market.  She also lists very good educational credentials from a local university.  My only red-flag was that she didn’t have a LinkedIn profile (not that I could initially find anyway)…but some people still don’t “get” it, so I decided to move forward and make contact.

I don’t know she DOESN’T look like this…

When I called her, it turns out that Niki is a recruiter working at a smaller, local company.

The resume that was posted was basically a lure to get employers to call.  Once they DID call, they were pitched about using that company’s consultants on a corp-to-corp basis.

Dammit.  Can someone help me get this hook out of my mouth?  It hurts.

This is embarrassing to both business development professionals and recruiters.  This particular resume was posted on a job board.  Trolling with fake resumes is a violation of policy for every reputable job board that exists.

Look…I get it.  Developing business isn’t the easiest thing in the world.  I’ve had that conversation plenty of times – show up at an event and ask Bob about it at some point and brace yourself.

But seriously:  Don’t Be That Guy…or girl…