I don’t understand recruiters. Why do they contact us when they ask for skills that are not on our resume?
Every day I get recruiters who contact me for skills that are not on my resume. Yesterday I had a recruiter want to call me about skills that I didn’t have nor claimed to have on my resume. Earlier I had a recruiter do a call about a position and then when she asked about my certifications I said what I had, which is on my LinkedIn profile/resume as well. She said that I didn’t have the certification they needed to hire me. Then why bother me?
If this was an occasional thing I would understand. However, 99% of the time a recruiter contacts me they haven’t read my resume or if they did they didn’t note the skills that I had. I am not asking for recruiters to have photographic memories, just asking that if a skill is critical then why waste your time (and others’ time) by not asking about this upfront?
That recruiter today could have said “A critical skill that is needed is an MCSA 2012 certification with server. Do you have that?” Then we wouldn’t have had to have a phone call. The rule is that I am telling recruiters I don’t have the skills and asking them why they are contacting me when it is not on my resume.
Ok recruiters I can hear your objection. “Well, people have skills that are not on their resume.” That is true. I have many skills, not on my resume. However, then you should ask the first thing, “Do you have skill X”? Earlier this week I had another recruiter reach out to me for a position that I didn’t have the skill listed on my resume. They wanted to do a call. Normally I love to talk to people but I suspected that I wasn’t a fit for this job since I had never done that software. I said to that recruiter, “I have never administrated this software. I can learn it.” The next response I get is that I am not a fit for this job. Then why contact me?
Recruiters you have to do better than this. You ask why people don’t respond to you, yet you waste our time when we do respond to you. You can’t have it both ways.