I just had the most terrible experience with a recruiter. When she first called me last Friday the job seemed like a perfect fit, and I a perfect fit for the job. However when I arrived at the interview at the recruiter's office I was ambushed with a good cop bad cop routine that left me feeling like a pork chop on a grill.
Then informed me that the client would not accept "I don't know or I don't remember" as an answer to questions about how many sites I supported for a job I had 12 years ago. They were very concerned about the difference between supporting 850 vs. 2000 users. I suggested in the meeting that I re-do my resume and they said no that would not be necessary. Then they called me 10 minutes after I left their office to ask me if they could make a change to my resume. Then they called me 5 minutes after that to ask me to re-do my resume.
I really felt like they made no effort to sell the job to me, and that they treated me like I was inferior merchandise that they wanted to try to pass off as something else. It was very disturbing.
So I called them today and spoke with the recruiter to let her know how I felt. I stated that I was concerned that if their customer is really like they described it did not seem like a good working environment. Instead of trying to describe what the working environment was really like she just kept repeating that they wanted to prepare me for the interview and that was why they were so tough.
I asked that the second recruiter (bad cop) would send me an email or call me letting me know if the working environment was friendly there, and if he thought it was worth it for me to pursue speaking with the customer. She would not agree to have the other recruiter call me so we left it with the mutual agreement that we would not work together.
This is of course very upsetting for me. I do not think it is too much to ask to be treated with respect and cordiality by a recruiter. I did not feel respected or valued by their interview process.
The economy must be bad indeed if recruiters feel no need to "court" their technical recruits anymore.
