I’ve literally got 9 stories Q’d up that I’ve been working on, but I’ve recently had another experience that I felt I should cover to help others in similar situations.
What is the first thing that goes through your mind when a recruiter emails you? To some, those fresh out of school or want a drastic change in a job, it can be an experience that would be compared to seeing the light of heaven. A recruiter can make or break your career - they can get you away from the Pointy Haired Boss. To others, like myself, I normally take these type of offers with a grain of salt, tossing most of the offers within seconds of reading them.
But, what happens when you get an email from that one recruiter that sticks out, that has all the right words, is customized with your name and all that neat stuff? Well, first, your heart leaps out. I’ve talked about my once in a lifetime experience, that I blew, before. Well, I got an email from a recruiter last night that has turned it into a second chance that is even better. Its not with the same company, not even in the same state, but boy, a programmers salary that is more than my FAMILY income is what caught my eye.
So, to get to the meat of the story, what happens when you receive an email like the following? What steps do you go about to verify that its a real offer, not a scam. How do you track the company down to try to gain an edge on the knowledge the recruiter isn’t telling you? How do you shock the recruiter into thinking you are the one - their paycheck and their clients best choice? Read on…
The Email
Now, obviously, I’m leaving out the recruiters information because I’m polite. I’m also not publishing her clients info because 1: I want the job & 2: I don’t need to cause problems for some company only to tarnish myself. I’ve also changed server addresses and my main email address. So, info has been changed. [Note: Some of the email has been changed.]
To: justin@webtekconcepts.com
Subject: PHP Developer positionHi Justin,
I was able to review your resume today and would like to present you with an exciting job opportunity. One of our clients in [Oregon] is looking for a full time PHP Developer to join their large team of developers. The client is an internet marketing company and has one of the largest PHP development teams in the country (50+ Developers). The following are the skills that the client is looking for:Strong SQL and PHP skills.
Additional languages (C, C++, Perl, Python) beneficial.
Strong understanding of CVS and Subversion.
Must be able to write and debug advanced SQL queries.
Strong understanding of advanced Object Oriented Programming principles.
Able to solve complex, multi-dimensional problems.
Can produce documentation of concept including Flow charts and API specifications.
Understanding of Internet services such as SOAP, XMLRPC, AJAX, etc.
Understanding of networking protocols such as HTTP, TCP/IP.The client is willing to cover some relocation expenses and is offering a competitive salary that is based on experience. This is a great opportunity to advance your skills and knowledge while working in an exciting, dynamic environment for a successful company.
The interview process is fast and 100% over the phone. The client will have you solve a take home programming quiz followed by a phone interview. They will make the selection over the phone and make an offer.Please contact me if you are interested in this opportunity or if you have any questions.
Thank you,
Now I’ve received offers like this before. Normally, I’m able to find out they are a scam very fast through various methods. Scams normally come in the form of a job offer that you must go to a trade school for or can even be someone offering a job just to get your life information for identity theft. This one, however, is the real deal…
Tracking The Email
One of the first things I look at is the headers of the message. This is a quick, surefire way to tell if the recruiter emailed you from a form where they just attached your email address or if they actually wrote you a message by hand. Headers from my message:
Return-path:
Envelope-to: justin@webtekconcepts.com
Delivery-date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:50:23 -0500
Received: from webtekserver with local-bsmtp (Exim 4.52)
id 1F6W2n-0004ju-Fm
for justin@webtekconcepts.com; Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:50:23 -0500
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.0 (2005-09-13) on webtekserver
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,HTML_40_50,
HTML_MESSAGE,HTML_TITLE_EMPTY,MIME_HTML_ONLY autolearn=ham
version=3.1.0
Received: from [recruiterdomain]
by webtekserver with smtp (Exim 4.52)
id 1F6W2m-0004jm-UL
for justin@webtekconcepts.com; Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:50:21 -0500
Received: (qmail 12763 invoked from network); 7 Feb 2006 16:43:56 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO ?127.0.0.1?) (10.0.0.99)
by 0 with SMTP; 7 Feb 2006 16:43:56 -0000
Message-ID: <43E8CF50.8050901@[recruiter]>
Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 10:48:16 -0600
From: ["Sally"] < [recruiter email>
Organization: Recruiter Company, Inc.
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (Windows/20050317)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: justin@webtekconcepts.com
Subject: PHP Developer position
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Antivirus-Scanner: Clean mail though you should still use an Antivirus
Status: RO
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 5606
Now, there is a lot of information in these headers. Some people have never even seen this information before. If you’re curious, this information is attached to every single email that you send or receive, the information contains changes though.
There are a few specific lines I look at though. The first is the User Agent line. This tells me what email program the recruiter used. This can be anything from Outlook Express, Eudora, Sendmail, etc. If its Sendmail, the recruiter filled out a form and hit the submit button and that was all the time they spent on you.
Looking at the above, mine is: User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (Windows/20050317)
That tells me “Sally” spent some time writing an actual email to me and she’s on a Windows computer. Yes, its forgible, but most likely not. It also tells me she or her company, knows a little bit about technology.
The second line I look for is the Received From line. This tells me what domain and IP address the message was sent from. I’ve had to change mine to protect the recruiter, but the track back tells me that she sent the message from her own domain, not a dialup or DSL/Cable account. They have a business class line into their company and have a local email setup - very good. Most identity theft types will skip this and attempt to forge the headers.
Tracking The Recruiter
Now, I’ve gotten through the above and thought, ok, I may have an actual offer here. Take it with a grain of salt until the next step.
You want to pull up your favorite search engine and do a search on a few things about the recruiter. You also want to pull up their website.
The website of my recruiter checks out, its professional, but doesn’t give too much information. Unfortunately, this is how recruiters are…
Searching Google for “Sally CompanyName scam” and “CompanyName scam” - no results: Good. Searching for just the Company Name results in a few other job posts online, but not too many. They are in different industries, from mechanics to programmers - good…
The only thing that I could not find out in searches is the fee that the recruiter charges and who pays that fee. Later, I’ll take care of this.
Tracking The “Client”
This can seem hard, but I was able to locate Sally’s client within 25 minutes of receiving the email. When you’re feverish and that adrenaline is going though, it seems like 5 minutes.
Tracking the company is the easy part. The secret are two pieces of information she gave in the email: “Oregon” and the requirements for the job. This helps narrow the results very easily.
So, Google “Oregon” and 2 lines of the requirements… You may have to figure out which 2 lines to use. You’ll know very quickly if you chose the right ones.
If you did it right, you found out that there are a few job postings on various sites for the same job requirements. Things that make ya go hmmm… Looking at a few of those, pick out the recruiter postings and ignore them. Grab the company name. After 2 or 3 picks, you’ll see 1 company name keep popping up - BINGO!
Search for the company in Google, go to their Careers page and you should find almost the same job posting listed. If you’re lucky, you’ll have more information listed than I did, like Salary.
Now, go to BBB.org and search for the company name in their respective state. You’ll find out if they’re registered, when they’re registered and how many complaints they have. In my case, there is 1 complaint in the last 36 months (not bad) and have been in operation in a certain city for 3 years and in complete operation since 1999, to they’re Farly stable and not a fly by night operation. This tells me that the hole thing is 100% real - no scam - wowzers!
Digging Up Info On The “Client”
This is where it actually gets tricky. If you have a salary range and most of your questions are answered, look no further and skip to the section labeled “Who To Call”.
For myself, finding info on the client was both easy and hard. I started on the website. In their news releases, they listed a lot of employee growth within the last 2 months. They also had about 5 different types of jobs posted. Their website also told me about their benefits, dress code (casual), number of employees and the size of the buildings. It also gave me both inside and outside views of the company building. Now I know that they have a brand new building, brand new (huge) data center and inside is a cube farm (cubes don’t bug me, people bug me).
To find out about the salary, I searched for the recruiters offering too much information in job postings. This goes hand in hand with the original search to try to find the company. You can include the company, but most of the time, they won’t post the salary anywhere. Through my search, I narrowed the salary down to $55,000-$80,000 - not bad at all. I have a feeling the $55,000 was a bad apple trying to bring in candidates at a lower range to make them appear to be a better option for the company.
I also searched for the company name with various words including “Scam”, “Complaint”, “sucks”, etc… No results, no complaints - except for that BBB complaint from above.
Searching around, I also found the Lead Developers blog. If you find this type of info about your company, its a gold mine of information. It can tell you how life, in general, is at the company, if there are any management problems and, in my case, how nice the company is. Apparently my company doesn’t mind handing out money for large shows like ApacheCon and such - very good.
Where To Live?
Armed with all the information from above, you now have an edge on your salary request. You can do a search on the cost of living. In my case, its very close to where I call home. I can also search for homes or apartments and look at costs and commuting distances.
Thankfully, Google Earth has some VERY detailed maps of the city I’m looking at. I’m able to see the cars in the parking lot of the Company. With that, I can look at the general area and again, commuting distance. This also helps with the homes compared to air ports, industrial parks, railroad/subway lines, etc… Let me tell you, it helps when you can view rental property from space.
After spending about an hour online, I decided housing costs where still too high - $150k for a double wide trailer. Searching around more, I found an apartment community that accepts pets on a normal basis and they’re very friendly according to BBs on the web. So, now I have a place to live.
Who To Call
Now that you’re armed with all this knowledge, you must decide who you’re going to talk to about the job. Some companies like recruiters and use them on a normal basis. They like the recruiters filtering out the idiots from the masters. Other companies use recruiters, but technically like hiring the individual themselves.
But, who to call? This is a hard question to answer and depends on a few variables. The main variables are: Fees and who can sell you better.
With the knowledge I had, I could go either way. I decided to just email the recruiter and state that I was interested, but would like an answer to a blunt question (almost my wording) - who pays the fees and if it where me, how much where they. The reply was “My Client in Oregon”.
Now that I know I don’t need to worry about costs with the recruiter, I weighed my options on who could sell me better. My decision was the recruiter. The reason was because my resume would be handed to the hiring manager, not just in the HR bucket to get lost or thrown away. On top of this, I’m located in Germany and this scares employers.
Most employers immediately think I’m seeking an H1B visa which is not true. If they manage to read past the address, they see a note in my resume that I’m in Germany due to the US Army and they automatically think I can’t move on sight quick enough, again, not true.
When talking to “Sally”, I decided that I would make sure that she understood that I was in Germany. When small talking with me, she asked if I was still in Germany or had moved back - she read my full resume, good! I explained that I was here for another 18 months, but also explained that the military can get me the heck out of dodge in a quick time if I decide to return to the US. She was fine with this. When she asked how quick I could start, my answer of 2-3 weeks surprised her. I explained that my main issue was finding housing in the city of choice and she understood this.
Also, while talking to “Sally”, she kept talking about her client and the client and her client… I got tired of hearing it and stopped her. I was honest and stated that I was a geek and had done my homework on her and her client. I told her that her client was probably “XXX Company” and that just registered as a shock to her. You could hear her excitement in trying to find out how I knew that. I just explained that I’m very resourceful online and love a good challenge. Now, this can go against me, but I think that in this situation, it will help me. If a company wants someone that is a fast learner and loves a good challenge, the recruiter can use the fact that I found out who their client is in her pitch.
When a recruiter gets a request, they are given a template about the position and told to find someone. Normally, its very bland like the above email. If I can take this, or you for that matter, and turn it into an educated decision on who to apply with, what salary to ask for, etc, you have a chance against others.
In my situation, I may not be the absolute perfect PHP master, but I’m able to sell my skills. On top of that, I’m able to bid low on salary requirements because I want the job. I bid 55-60k, low on their side, but depending on how everything goes, it can climb up at their discretion. It also puts me in the running for the position. I’m not going to be greedy on a salary, I just want a decent life and the ability to buy a house later in life. While a higher salary would be nice, again, I’m not greedy.
Did It Work?
After all this research, all the excitement and all the planning, did it pay off? Thats a whole different story…
