Bad experiences

For some time I’ve been applying to different positions. I have two daughters and I want for them (and for me) to live in a different culture and language. After a few experiences, I’m tempted to say something about bad experiences:

• Forget about recruiters. They have different alignments than yours. In my experience (it could be biased), 90% of them are just form fillers. They ask you things (CV, tests, questions), in order to fill a form in a random web site. When they send you the position, look for the most weird sentence, and put it on Google. You’ll probably get the company hit, because they don’t bother to change it (sometimes I’ve been tempted to apply directly). Usually they don’t know about the IT bussiness (I’ve been offered Javascript position because my CV had lots of Java in it). And for me, the more important problem with recruiters is that they won’t ever (EVER), contact back for a position. They can ask again new things for a new position but they won’t tell you anything about the previous one. So recruiters are a lot of effort but with very low response.

• Forget about public/international employment unless there is a competitive examination. Here my personal sample is smaller (just two cases). But from what I’ve heard, it’s quite representative and unbiased. Usually behind a public offer there’s some procedure forcing to publish a public profile to hire somebody already known. In my personal experience(an embassy on 2008 and an EU position in 2011) it was like this.

I’m still in contact with a recruiter because I have some type of personal commitment with him. But this is what I’ve learned and I share just in case it’s useful. However, I have good experiences to tell you about. You’ll have to wait next post for it.