The pulse of Alexander Interactive

AI is a great place to work! And it’s not just because our Director of Security & Integrity will have your back. We’ve got a great team that does fantastic work on exciting projects. We’ve also got someone who likes adding extra adjectives in his totally exciting blog posts.

Getting hired at Ai means more than a daily commute and a paycheck. It means contributing to award-winning websites on a dynamic set of projects.

It means working with clients in a wide variety of industries, from luxury goods to museums, from ecommerce to financial services, from social networking to nonprofit organizations. It means sitting alongside smart, talented, fun coworkers who take pride in the work they do.

Here are our current job listings:

Account Executive Salesperson
Engagement Supervisor
Project Manager

A recruiter in New Jersey got ahold of my contact information last year. He called and managed to learn from me that I do some of Ai’s hiring. I did not choose to use him for any of our staffing.

Since then, he has called me reliably, every two weeks, to see if I need him yet. Last fall I got tired of his calls and told him, flat out, to please stop calling. We have no relationship and his repeated attempts to wear me down were not working.

He ignored this request and keeps calling. Today was his most recent ping. I now recognize his phone number on caller ID; I don’t pick up when he rings me and I delete his voice mail without listening. And still he calls. (It’s been so long that I feel like I blogged about him once before.)

What percentage of a user base gets worn down by this tactic? Is it worth alienating a high percentage of a potential consumer segment in the hope of finding a sale?

I’m sure my recruiter/stalker has found that repeated calls work on some people sooner or later, but in the meantime, I’ve memorized his name and sworn never to work with or recommend him. Is that good business?

This is a good thing for an online marketer to consider before buying email lists and defaulting signups to opt-in.

Ai is currently (and rather proudly, in this economy) hiring a few more hands for a busy spring season. We have several jobs posted and have heard from hundreds of people in the past few weeks. We’ve seen many good resumes and have a full slate of interviews this week.

Unfortunately, we’ve also heard from many people who are, to put it bluntly, doing it wrong. As our dear friend Loren has attested, few things about job placement are worse than misdirected or inappropriate contact. So I’ve made a short guide to getting one’s foot in the door properly–and what it takes to do it right. Here’s your 10-point plan for getting a job:

1. Read the job posting twice. If you’ve found a good job and are questioning whether you’re a good fit, sit on it. Leave your browser for an hour, then come back and read the want ad. The right jobs will become obvious. Those are the ones you should reply to.
2. Follow instructions. If the ad asks for a cover letter, write one. If it asks about foosball proficiency, as one of ours famously did, mention it. This is your first deliverable: get it right.
3. Do your homework. Googling a company takes minutes and gives you a huge advantage. More than once we’ve been swayed to interview a candidate based on a love of dogs and an appreciation of Jack. One guy even sent us a photo of his dog. (We met him, too.)
4. Customize. Write a cover letter that speaks to the position you’re replying to. A resume geared toward the position helps, too.
5. Don’t spray and pray. I have received any number of responses to our IA position–a targeted, talent-focused role–from IT executives, software developers and designers. This position is wrong for all of them. “Getting the resume in front of the hiring manager” doesn’t work, because I’m not filing good resumes away for future reference; I’m marking them as not doing #1 on this list.
6. Don’t be pushy. Related to #5. Why did I receive 11 calls from placement firms when our ad says, “No recruiters, please?” Because they all believe in the no-no above. Sorry, guys, but we made our preferences explicit, and all you’re doing is ignoring our request.
7. Be respectful. Showing up a few minutes early for an interview is a great first impression (and at Ai, it often means we’ll start early, too). If you’re running late or have to cancel, call us–we’re people too, and we understand. Standing us up or rolling in late is much worse.
8. Ask good questions. Everyone likes to feel like they’re interesting, and interviewers are no exception. Don’t you want to know more about our company? Our client types? What all those photos on the orange wall are for? Immerse yourself and show us you want in.
9. Be thankful. Not grateful, silly; just send a thank-you note. A few sentences in an email is plenty. Just let us know that you’re paying attention and you’re still interested. It’s not a decision-maker, but it adds to our overall impression.
10. Smile. Enough said.

Ai is currently hiring a user experience lead to add to its UXD resources. (We’re hiring a freelance IA, too… email me if you know anyone for either position. But I digress.)

I have gotten an unsettling amount of recruiter contacts in the days since we posted the job ad. Most of them are polite enough, and I turn them down, politely. This is nothing new; Loren and I have a long history of frustration with muscle-in tactics.

But I occasionally get inquiries that just blow my mind. Consider this, which came to me via LinkedIn, which is usually a good place for targeted communication:

While Linked In is a great resource, it cannot give you access to the most elite talent in the Internet arena. We can. Our difference is that we aggressively call directly into your top competitors and leading firms in your field to source candidates who are among the top 10% in your industry.

Holy smokes! Here I am, trying to wisely use networking to extend the reach of my job ad. And I get a networking reply that suggests I use them to cold-call the competition until they unearth some good candidates.

Underneath the letter was some marketing copy, equally flabbergasting:

* Aggressive cold call recruiting.
Our recruiters make 150 or more calls per day. We directly call into your competitors to recruit the top 10% in North America.

The company promises quantity and quality! I was still working on the math behind that one as I read the last bullet:

* We work exclusively for you.
The candidates we recruit are exclusively yours, and we will never send someone we recruit on your behalf to any other company.

Somehow it’s hard to believe that a recruiter with hard-nose tactics like these won’t be sharing what little bits of successful entry it finds with every client it recruits.

I suppose there are employers out there who employ, and enjoy, these tactics. But I’m not on that list. (I wonder if I’m on the call list, though….)

Now before I get too far into this, not all recruiters are bad, shifty, underhanded, manipulative and entirely quick-buck-oriented and self-serving (and several less polite things I can think of), but I am occasionally amazed at the snake oil quality that many bring to the table. Here’s an email I got today:

Hello Loren,

This is XXX following up with you in regards to this exceptional candidate. I do feel strongly that he would be a great asset to your team at Alexander Interactive. Again, his key points are:

If you are interested in this engineer or top recruiting services, follow up with me at your earliest convenience. I know you would be very impressed with the level of service and candidates we provide to our clients.

Please feel free to refer to our website for more information and call me at the number below to discuss your technical hiring needs in detail.

Best,

XXX

So in no particular order:

• This is obviously a boilerplate letter – both from the hokey tone, and the fact that it says “key points are” without any actual key points listed.
• This also indicates that the recruiting individual didn’t bother to check his letter, meaning that he isn’t that interested in what I may actually want in a candidate.
• The subject line was “Surprised I haven’t heard back as yet; do you have time today?” What? I’m shocked, shocked that I didn’t drop everything to look at your candidate that I didn’t ask for, that we’ve never spoken about, that you selected randomly from the stack of resumes in front of you and decided to push on me.

Recruiters, read this next part. Read it well:

• I only work with recruiters that bother to listen to what I want in a candidate.
• I never schedule interviews without looking at resumes first. Ever.
• If you don’t hear back from me about a candidate, it means I’m not interested. Period.
• Recruiters that annoy me, by acting manipulatively, by trying to “trick” me into scheduling an interview, who try to mess with the other staff here in an attempt to get to me, who constantly call but never leave voice mails – these go onto a blacklist. The entire recruitment company, not the individual agent. There is no way off the blacklist.

Generally I find that recruiters subtract value from the equation. Besides making hires more expensive for us, they generally act as a kind of contrary indicator about candidates. Good developer candidates don’t need recruiters – they go straight to Craigslist. On average (and yes there are exceptions) the value of candidates from Craigslist is head and shoulders above the value of candidates from recruiters.

So if you are a recruiter – be the exception to the rule. Listen to your clients or potential clients. Don’t play games. Or don’t “be surprised that you haven’t heard back from me”. I’m ignoring you.