Re: Why people dislike consultants

devashanti_1_at_my-deja.com wrote:
>
>
> In today's shortage of high tech skills it makes sense for companies to
> hire consultants - and the trend isn't going to go away. We all need to
> learn how the get the best out of it. Permies can learn a lot from
> consultants if they're open to it. (I've always been more than happy to
> teach skills to those eager to learn.)

As a consultant/contractor I'd also have to say that one thing we desperately need is recruiters/account execs who are not pimps and liars. The level of dishonesty that they often introduce is beyond the level which can merely be called unethical. There should be far more accountability than there is presently.

I'll give you a "for instance". I once went on an interview through one job shop (which I'll call "xxx") for a contractor position at a company (which I'll call "yyy") and the result was an offer. However, this offer was below my expectations. A few days later I interviewed with another company (which I'll call aaa) through another job shop (which I'll call "bbb"). It just so happened that one of the individuals who was a part of that interview was a contractor from the "xxx" job shop. He knew that "xxx" had an active offer to me and he gave me a negative recommendation to company "bbb" and as a result I did not receive an offer. This individual had been told by company "xxx" that if I did not get an offer through "bbb" that I would have to take the contract they were offering me. The moment I found out about this I called company xxx and told them that I was declining their offer and that I never wanted to hear from them again. They were indignant and said that I should not have gone on another interview since I had already received an offer from them.

I also have a complaint that account reps/recruiters also only think about their own needs. I have always provided very distinct information as to geographic locations for where I want to work and even with this knowledge the recruiters wanted me to go on interviews at companies where I'd have to drive more than an hour in each direction. They also tended to focus on minor skills rather than on my core skills (one recruiter wanted me to go on an interview for a COBOL/MVS position simply because I had once worked with mainframe COBOL even though my core skills were UNIX, ORACLE and C/C++).

Employers actually make this worse because they do not advertise their needs openly - they send requirements to the job shops and as a result they do not get the very best candidates for their positions - they only get whatever candidates that particular job shop happens to have hanging around at the moment. Received on Wed Nov 17 1999 - 07:48:48 CST