[kloncks]

I got a call from a recruiter recently. Turns out he thinks I'll be a great candidate to be the new CEO of some algorithmic trading/financial services company in New York City...given my decades of experience in the field. MBA required.

I'm a 21-year-old who just took a leave of absence to concentrate on Kout.me ; how is it that I'm even a target of these people yet?

[vidarh]

You should tell him you'll take it as long as your severance package once they fire you because you have no clue about what you're doing is at least 7 digits. Then if you got the job, make sure that your first act is to ensure that recruiter will never be employed by that company again - that alone will probably make the cost of the severance package worth it for the company in question.

[jaylevitt]

Because you have a phone or an e-mail address.

I got a call from a recruiter once who said "So Rails, is that like Java?"

[sakura_k]

I got a LinkedIn request to interview for a hedge fund manager position in Boston, mid-market crash. (Me: platform dev & user engagement in Seattle). They're like sharks in water seeking any hint of blood.

[NathanKP]

I usually get one or two job offers a month, but I always get my contacts via one of my web app projects that I built as a sample of my skills. Surprisingly the offers aren't from ignorant recruiters, and are mostly legit offers from decent startup companies.

Of course I am happily employed full time already so I am turning offers down. However, I don't think being contacted is a bad thing. At the very least I am building a list of email addresses of insiders from reputable startups that I can draw from if I ever am on the search for a new job.

[angelbob]

They're desperate, and they get paid a lot if everything goes well. They could carefully screen each person for exact suitability, throw out bad matches and bring in only a few good ones. Or they could throw huge numbers of resumes and see if any stick.

If the recruiter doesn't have excellent technical judgement (few do), the approaches basically pay the same.

[leif]

What I don't understand is: why don't the recruiters that do carefully screen people just wipe out those that don't? Are there enough companies that are too clueless to hire a good one that the bad ones still get enough results to keep doing it?

[Michael_K]

I believe the answer to that is the market segmentation. There are so many different type of segments (by programming language, years of experience, company size, industry etc.) that it is very hard for recruiters to spread across too many different segments. So they stick with a few, work them for years, build up a huge network and get really good in these few segments. But of course there is still lots of room in other segments for less qualitative focused recruiters to make a buck by just playing the numbers game.