Recruiter Math and Keyword Regex



  • My company lost the contract that I'm on during re-compete so I'm actively seeking work. I made the infinitely stupid brilliant decision to post my resume on Dice.com. I've gotten about 30 emails and 15 voice-mails in the span of one week. Is it just me or do outsourced recruiters not understand basic math? I only have 3 years experience, but about 40% of the positions I've been sent require 7+ years. So at what point does 3 round up? Furthermore, I've gotten an ASS ton of positions that require ASP.NET. I think someone taught these dipshits geniuses how to do a Regex search for partial matches and .NET is giving them a false positive. At least they aren't sending me positions in the UAE, cause that's totally within 40 miles of anywhere on the Eastern US Seaboard.



  • Sometimes they ask you to lie on your resumé, changing it to say you've got the total years of experience needed. A major red flag. You do well by avoiding those people.



  • If you've got .Net then you basically have ASP.Net, not enough for doubling years of experience but a little bit of looking over the documentation and you should be able to be productive with it.



  • I was having a difficult time with one of my previous positions ... the customer was "all thrust, no vector" and when we finally thought we understood what they wanted (and had agreed to), they said "stop, we're not sure that's what we want to do."

    But I digress. As said, I was tired of the WTF so I e-mailed a former co-worker/friend and asked if he had anything. We set up lunch for the next day. At lunch, he handed me the job req that he'd been holding on to until I called (!) I read the the requirements and looked up at him and said I didn't know half the stuff on the sheet.

    What he told me I'll never forget: When you read a job req, whether online or whatever, always remember that they are describing the IDEAL candidate for the job. If you have experience in X but not in Y, that may not be a deal-breaker if you can jump in and learn what you need to learn in a reasonable amount of time. Yes, there may be candidates out there who have more experience with Z, but don't let that stop you from apping/submitting your resume. Use a cover letter or the e-mail or the resume itself to help them understand who/what you are about ... you may be surprised.

    Of course, your mileage may vary...



  • As a note, don't let "7 years of experience" stop you from applying to a job you think will be good. Those are guidelines, not rules-- if the company really cares, they'll reject you before you get to the interview. If not, and you impress at the interview, you might get hired with your three years.



  • I have 18 years experience in breathing. And about a trillion years experience in existing as particles of some variety.



  • @MathNerdCNU said:

    My company lost the contract that I'm on during re-compete so I'm actively seeking work. I made the infinitely stupid brilliant decision to post my resume on Dice.com. I've gotten about 30 emails and 15 voice-mails in the span of one week. Is it just me or do outsourced recruiters not understand basic math? I only have 3 years experience, but about 40% of the positions I've been sent require 7+ years. So at what point does 3 round up? Furthermore, I've gotten an ASS ton of positions that require ASP.NET. I think someone taught these dipshits geniuses how to do a Regex search for partial matches and .NET is giving them a false positive. At least they aren't sending me positions in the UAE, cause that's totally within 40 miles of anywhere on the Eastern US Seaboard.

     

     Don't see a 'requirement' as a hard and fast rule.  It's like dating - you might have an idea about what your perfect man/woman is like, but if you hold out for perfection you'll be waiting your whole life.  It's not about what you ideally want, but about what you're willing to accept.  Companies rarely post their actual minimum requirements.



  • @Cat said:

    actual minimum requirements.

    Alive
    Not dead
    Living
    10 or more years experience in being alive
    Must not be dead
    Must not be on fire


  • @Ben L. said:

    @Cat said:
    actual minimum requirements.

     

    Alive
    Not dead
    Living
    10 or more years experience in being alive
    Must not be dead
    Must not be on fire

    WooHoo!!!

     I meet all the qualificatins!!  Sign me up!!

     



  • @MathNerdCNU said:

    At least they aren't sending me positions in the UAE, cause that's totally within 40 miles of anywhere on the Eastern US Seaboard.
    Well, don't ditch the UAE out of hand. I've got two family members (and their spouses and children; interestingly, both from the Maltese side as well as the Dutch side) living in Abu Dhabi, and whereas the first ones pay about as much in rent as I earn in a month (and the salary is obviously to match), the other ones live in a house the size of Buckingham Palace overlooking the beach.

     



  • Yeah, it's easy to live in luxury when your society is built on slave labor.



  • @MathNerdCNU said:

    ... about 40% of the positions I've been sent require 7+ years. So at what point does 3 round up?
     

    I think they are understanding their maths properly. They just interpreted it as 7 + -4.



  • @Ben L. said:

    about 0.0135 trillion years experience in existing as particles of some variety.
     

    FTFY. If you're going to play the cosmology card, you should do it right.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Yeah, it's easy to live in luxury when your society is built on slave labor.
     

    Like the US?



  • @Ben L. said:

    I have 18 years experience in breathing. And about a trillion years experience in existing as particles of some variety.

    Would have been funnier if you'd not totally exagerated the existence part.  The universe is only 13.75 billion years old.



  • @Hmmmm said:

    Would have been funnier if you'd not totally exagerated the existence part.  The universe is only 13.75 billion years old.
     

    Why do you repeat my jokes with reduced efficacy?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Yeah, it's easy to live in luxury when your society is built on slave labor.

    Like the US?

    No. Well, I guess the guys who owned a lot of slaves did OK for themselves, but slavery definitely reduces the number of people who can live in luxury. And retards economic progress (this was one of the big advantages the free North had over the South in the American Civil War). Anyways...UAE is more about selling oil to foreigners and cheap immigrant labor. But mostly the oil. Some interesting background:


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dhromed said:

    Why do you repeat my jokes with reduced efficacy?

    Do you know how we can repeat them with increased efficacy?



  • @dhromed said:

    @Hmmmm said:

    Would have been funnier if you'd not totally exagerated the existence part.  The universe is only 13.75 billion years old.
     

    Why do you repeat my jokes with [b]increased accuracy[/b]?

    FTFY 

    And also because I already had the page loaded from before you posted and didn't hit reload before reading it and replying.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @dhromed said:
    Why do you repeat my jokes with reduced efficacy?

    Do you know how we can repeat them with increased efficacy?

     

    With pile-ons.



  • @Hmmmm said:

    FTFY 
     

    bla bla bla who cares about 250 million years. That kind of resomolutions is only interesting on those super-quick evolutionary timescales.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Some interesting background
     

    sweet

    ShakeShakebooty was a real asshole.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    As a note, don't let "7 years of experience" stop you from applying to a job you think will be good. Those are guidelines, not rules-- if the company really cares, they'll reject you before you get to the interview. If not, and you impress at the interview, you might get hired with your three years.
    +1



  • @Ben L. said:

    @Cat said:
    actual minimum requirements.

    Alive
    Not dead
    Living
    10 or more years experience in being alive
    Must not be dead
    Must not be on fire

    Hello. I am interested in applying for this position.
    I am currently on fire, but I am highly motivated and confident I can become productive with your company's preferred flame retardent technology in no time at all!



  • @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Yeah, it's easy to live in luxury when your society is built on slave labor.
    Like the US?

    Wow. You really know nothing about the history of the US. Protip: slave-owning States have never done anything other than drag the rest of the country down. They were the Loyalists in the Revolutionary War. They fired the first shots in the Civil War. And today they're by far the fattest, dumbest, and poorest States. Slavery destroyed those States. It's been centuries and they still haven't recovered.

    Anyway, point is, when a country makes it legal for a boss to take and hold the passports of his employees, so his employees can't leave without the boss's consent, those employees are slaves. If you go there, for business, for tourism, for whatever reason-- you support slavery. Don't.



  • I went from a program that was C# .Net to asp.net with C#, I picked up asp.net in less than a week.  It really is easy if you have a few years of experience with .net.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @dhromed said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    Yeah, it's easy to live in luxury when your society is built on slave labor.
    Like the US?
    Wow. You really know nothing about the history of the US. Protip: slave-owning States have never done anything other than drag the rest of the country down. They were the Loyalists in the Revolutionary War. They fired the first shots in the Civil War. And today they're by far the fattest, dumbest, and poorest States. Slavery destroyed those States. It's been centuries and they still haven't recovered.

    Anyway, point is, when a country makes it legal for a boss to take and hold the passports of his employees, so his employees can't leave without the boss's consent, those employees are slaves. If you go there, for business, for tourism, for whatever reason-- you support slavery. Don't.

    What about that Oracle guy!  He has contributed a lot to the US (and the world)!



  • @Hmmmm said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I have 18 years experience in breathing. And about a trillion years experience in existing as particles of some variety.

    Would have been funnier if you'd not totally exagerated the existence part.  The universe is only 13.75 billion years old.

    ♪♫ Happy birthday to you.

    Happy birthday to you

    Happy birthday dear universe.

    Happy birthday to you. ♫♪

     



  • @Ben L. said:

    @Cat said:
    actual minimum requirements.

    Alive
    Not dead
    Living
    10 or more years experience in being alive
    Must not be dead
    Must not be on fire

    Woohoo! I'm qualified for the QA job at Aperture Software!



  • @Hmmmm said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I have 18 years experience in breathing. And about a trillion years experience in existing as particles of some variety.

    Would have been funnier if you'd not totally exagerated the existence part.  The universe is only 13.75 billion years old.

    in my defense I did not specify which planet.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Ben L. said:

    @Hmmmm said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I have 18 years experience in breathing. And about a trillion years experience in existing as particles of some variety.

    Would have been funnier if you'd not totally exagerated the existence part.  The universe is only 13.75 billion years old.

    in my defense I did not specify which planet universe.
    FTFY.



  • @locallunatic said:

    If you've got .Net then you basically have ASP.Net, not enough for doubling years of experience but a little bit of looking over the documentation and you should be able to be productive with it.

    You must be a recruitment consultant if you think this is true. ASP.NET is not "just .NET" !!

    If I had an interviewee turn up claiming this without any actual ASP.NET experience I'd pretty soon tear them a new a-hole.

    I'd ask how they would create a dynamic set of controls within an AJAX update panel and handle postbacks and callback events in their codebehind?
    Or how does an ObjectDataSource control work? Or I'd ask how they would ensure only authorised users would be able to call controller methods in MVC? How would they create custom routes in the MVC routing engine? Can they show me a simple example of a HtmlHelper method?

    Sigh



  • @MathNerdCNU said:

    Furthermore, I've gotten an ASS ton of positions that require ASP.NET. I think someone taught these dipshits geniuses how to do a Regex search for partial matches and .NET is giving them a false positive.

    You might want to add to your resume that you think you need a regex to find '.NET' in 'ASP.NET'. That might filter out some of the offers...



  • @PJH said:

    @Ben L. said:
    @Hmmmm said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I have 18 years experience in breathing. And about a trillion years experience in existing as particles of some variety.

    Would have been funnier if you'd not totally exagerated the existence part.  The universe is only 13.75 billion years old.

    in my defense I did not specify which planet universe.
    FTFY.
    Year length is based on universe?



  • @Ben L. said:

    Year length is based on universe?
     

    Depends. Are we talking male year length or female year length?


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Ben L. said:

    @PJH said:
    @Ben L. said:
    @Hmmmm said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I have 18 years experience in breathing. And about a trillion years experience in existing as particles of some variety.

    Would have been funnier if you'd not totally exagerated the existence part.  The universe is only 13.75 billion years old.

    in my defense I did not specify which planet universe.
    FTFY.
    Year length is based on universe?
     

    Maybe he counts the timeline of the universe's pre-Big Bang state as contiguous with the post-Big Bang state?

     



  • @Quango said:

    You must be a recruitment consultant if you think this is true. ASP.NET is not "just .NET" !!
    It's close enough that with good experience in .Net you can pick it up relatively quickly.  Which is what I did in the past 2 months.  Which is, you know, what he said, not that it's "just .Net"... not sure how you can put quotes on something that's not a quote.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @PJH said:
    @Ben L. said:
    @Hmmmm said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I have 18 years experience in breathing. And about a trillion years experience in existing as particles of some variety.

    Would have been funnier if you'd not totally exagerated the existence part.  The universe is only 13.75 billion years old.

    in my defense I did not specify which planet universe.
    FTFY.
    Year length is based on universe?
     

    Maybe he counts the timeline of the universe's pre-Big Bang state as contiguous with the post-Big Bang state?

     

    Clearly "planet" was wrong, because to meet the stated conditions you'd need one that circled its primary in under three Earth weeks.

     



  • @da Doctah said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @PJH said:
    @Ben L. said:
    @Hmmmm said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I have 18 years experience in breathing. And about a trillion years experience in existing as particles of some variety.

    Would have been funnier if you'd not totally exagerated the existence part.  The universe is only 13.75 billion years old.

    in my defense I did not specify which planet universe.
    FTFY.
    Year length is based on universe?
     

    Maybe he counts the timeline of the universe's pre-Big Bang state as contiguous with the post-Big Bang state?

     

    Clearly "planet" was wrong, because to meet the stated conditions you'd need one that circled its primary in under three Earth weeks.

     

    Who's saying there isn't a baseball-sized planet with a basketball-sized sun?



  • UPDATE Looks like I have a new job with the same company. Granted, it involves alot of VB6(Kill me now?) and VB.NET. But hey, atleast they gave me the FizzBuzz test.And there should be a pay raise, that's a plus.

    Is it weird I hate interviews that'd don't have some technical component to them?

    The same day I had the internal interview I had an interview with a much smaller(100-200 employees) company. This was one of the recuiter positions that seemed to actually fit my resume, but when I got there the gentelman I was supposed to be interviewing with wasn't who I was interviewing with. Not unusual, but when the receptionist says "You have an interview? I know it's not with XYZ, but you are from (Recuriting Firm)", I start to get iffy. Add to that the interviewer hadn't looked at my resume, at all. But they gave me excellents feed back.

    Basically I just regurgetated the stuff on my resume and played the "I is interezted, can haz job?" card. Honestly I feel like it was 40 minutes of both my time and the company's time that was wasted. No talking to devs, no straching the surface on if I can program or if I'm a google monkey, just what I was interested in and can I fit one of a handful of slots.

    Sidenote: It's weird to get positive feedback. I mean, it went for a solid 3 posts before the smart-assery-pedantic-dickweedery I've come to expect showed up. Is that a record

    Sidenote 2: Want to screw with an interviewer that isn't familiar with C#? Use continue in the Mod15 requirement for FizzBuzz.


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