Is it just me or others in IT are also getting "job available" emails everyday? I get average 3 emails every day about some job available somewhere. Most of them are the kinds of jobs that we think are going to India. Is off shoring slowing down? Or is the market so hot that even with increasing off shoring there are jobs opening up everywhere? This reminds me of some recruiting experiences I had when I was looking to change jobs.

I get so many emails now that I can pretty much assess the professionalism of the recruiter right away. Some emails read, "Hello everyone, I have a permanent position available in XYZ, they are looking for A, B, C, D. Like I said it's a permanent position and salary is 70K. Please contact me ASAP." No personalization, not targeted to specific individuals, no job description, no information (not even generic information) about the hiring firm, no information on the amount of experience required. I am pretty sure this person gets emails from people who send out resumes based on keywords. I am also sure very few of the resumes this person receives are useful (because he never gave information about the job in the first place).

When I was looking for a job 2 years ago, I dropped my resume for a position that was posted by a recruiter. I received an automatic reply that read something like, "A counselor is currently review your resume … Should we believe there is a potential match, we will contact you.. No further follow up is necessary on your part." If this is the kind of generic response I wanted, why would I contact a recruiter in the first place?

Yet another email was more than 1 page long and at the end it said, "Don't reply to this email, instead listen to a recorded call at ### number for about 20 minutes. I hope we will hear from you soon." If you don't want a reply to your email, how do you expect to hear from me?

The kind of emails that draw my attention, have job description attached, list detailed experience and skills requirements, are personalized (specifically written to me) and also introduce the recruiting firm (if any) that is trying to fill the position. If I do work with a recruiter, I want to see the willingness to establish relationship with me, not just rush to make me take the job. I also want correct information. Some recruiters first find out what you want and try to make the job sound in line with your goals.

I HATE two kinds of so called recruiters. One kind advertises great sounding (but fake) positions with great salaries. When you talk to them, they show a lot of interest, they invite you to their Chicago downtown office BUT they are only interested in knowing where you work, who is your manager, what is his/her phone number, who is the hiring manager in HR, are you interviewing for any other positions. If you say yes, they want to find out about that position (because they see that as a potential business). They also want to know whether you work with any other recruiters, if yes, for which positions and the list of questions goes on. Rarely do they talk about available positions for you. Once in a while they call you to make you feel you have not been forgotten but they never have any real positions. I don't know how they are still in the business. The second kind of recruiters are the worst. Their mentality is, "You should be grateful to us that we are finding you a job. We know everything about the recruiting process so shut the hell up and interview for every position we bring to you. You have no right to have any choices. We are not going to listen to you, we are just going to send out your resume and make money off of you." No wonder I don't know many recruiters in this category because the moment I see this attitude, I stop working with them.

We need a fundamental change in the way companies find candidates. You can't just go out in the market when you need people. This should be a continuous process. More on that later...