Consultants

Its a familiar word for software job seekers: consultants. They come in all varieties, from down to earth goodies to real jerks, who would have probably ended up nowhere without such jobs. I'm not going to mention the nice ones, but have some incidents to talk of about the wise guys.

My very first interaction was with one from the latter type. This guy sent me to an interview and asked me to carry a resume with his name superscribed. I wasn't too sure if the company was going to entertain me with my background and a mere six months of s/w experience for a job abroad. But there I went, on this consultant's assurance. It was held in some 5 star hotel and it so turned that they showed me the way out as soon as I stepped out of the lift! I was told that they were looking for candidates from only premier institutes: IITs/IISCs. Well, this earlier jerk who sent me should have known. That left a lasting impression on me about consultants.

There are a whole bunch of these who do various things, the most common being to search for the keyword in your resume and not knowing whether the keyword belongs to the project, or your skills, or for that matter, your geographical address! Expecting them to know what it *actually* means would be quite demanding then. Other things these gems do are to call on your office phone, email on your office id, ask you everything thats in the resume even if they have your resume, mailing the same things time and again, asking the same questions in loops, not knowing that they've called the same person a day or two back, send you a posting of something you don't have experience on, or try to send you some place that you don't want to go to. But the laziest I have known are the ones who forward the entire set of requirements and ask *you* where you fit in... of course, they expect to get paid for that!