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A Note for Recruiters

Executive Summary

I am not the droid you are looking for. I'm employed, not looking to change jobs, and not able (or at all eager) to take on side work.

If you email me an "opportunity" it will probably result in you regretting having done so. I am likely to make an effort towards that goal.

Longer Executive Summary & Rant

Do your damn job. Prove that you're not as worthless as the vast majority of your profession whose only skills are using Google and sending boilerplate email. If all you know about me is on my resume, you can count on a harshly hostile response to any "career opportunity" email you send me and will probably assure that I never see another solicitation from you or anyone else at your company in the future. Your FIRST message to me needs to convince me that you have made a competent judgment based on more than my resume that I am the ideal candidate for whatever role you need to fill and that you will provide compensation and flexibility sufficient to make switching jobs feasible and worthwhile.

Be a real recruiter. Recruit me. I believe I could not care less about any "career opportunity." Your job is to convince me otherwise and you need to do that in your first contact. Also: do not ask me to do your job for you unless you are willing to send me your paychecks. If I knew of a good candidate for a job that I might be good in, there's a very high likelihood that I would be trying to hire that person. I'm not going to give you leads.

Background

Over the years since I first put a resume online, I've received hundreds of messages from recruiters who have pulled an email address from my resume. I've had to change that address repeatedly, because from time to time the spam, largely from sloppy recruiters, gets excessive.

I call that mail from careless recruiters spam because it is just that. Having my resume online is not an implicit invitation to job offers and is not even evidence that I am looking for work. At present (late 2012) I am not, having thankfully found a great job in August 2008. That resume is documentation. I have a bit of a public profile but not enough that others would bother to write anything about me. I leave my resume online to provide an open answer to the question of why I consider myself qualified to have opinions in various technical fields. In a profession where many formal credentials are meaningless, one's work history can play a less iffy certification role.

That is not to say that the address on my resume page must never be mailed, but if you mail it I will expect you to have read and understood this page. If you clearly haven't, I am very likely to respond quite negatively.

What is welcome at my resume address

If I've made a typo or have a bad link or have made some other error you notice, I'd be grateful for your mail.

If you have advice for a way to make my resume more attractive or expressive, I'd be grateful for your mail.

If you are a recruiter with job reqs to fill and don't want to waste your time and mine, please consider the following important issues that are central to whether I consider any career opportunity. Note that some are grounded in my family situation as the father of a child with severe disabilities, so they are not easily negotiable. Others are grounded in the fact that I have a job which I have no reason to want to leave:

  1. I live in a near-northeast suburb of Detroit and I am unable to relocate at any time in the foreseeable future.
  2. I am unable to travel on a regular basis.
  3. I am unwilling to work in a "start-up mode" job that requires long hours for below-market pay in the hope of being a part of the next Google.
  4. I value flexibility very highly. A position that allows for no telecommuting and has a rigid schedule is unlikely to interest me.
  5. I value stability very highly. A position that is expected to only last a few months is unlikely to interest me.
  6. I have an excellent job that suits me well and provides more-than-adequate compensation. I do mostly interesting work, for and with people I like, trust, and respect. My job carries responsibilities that are incompatible with me taking on "side work" of any significance. Any opportunity that could entice me to leave my current position would have to be something truly special in substance and compensation.
  7. I have had the good fortune of being personally and directly recruited into most of my jobs by bosses-to-be who knew me through my participation in various professional communities and/or being co-workers previously. As a result I am a bit spoiled from the point of view of "professional" recruiters. Solicitations that are not specifically meant for me (rather than for anyone with the right set of resume buzzwords) will get a hostile and scornful response.

If you have read all of this and still think it is worth your time and mine to discuss an opportunity, go ahead and mail me at the address on my resume.