Pissing off a candidate before you even talk to them

I recently had the joy of hunting for a new job. Its not a new experience for me, quite frankly I've done it more often than I care to admit. I took the same tactics I always have in the past. Updating my resume, posting it out on some job boards, reaching out to my network and contacting some recruiters that I have worked with in the past. The thing is, during this most recent hunt I became aware of what seems to be a new tactic among some recruiters that quite frankly pisses me off.

I have a good resume, and a lot of experience with all the right buzz words for certain positions. In short to some recruiters I am a dream candidate, and in that respect I can understand why it is they are doing what they do... and that is call me TWO OR THREE TIMES IN A ROW.. or call me EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR THREE WEEKS STRAIGHT!!!

Allow me to explain why this is a problem. I have had a pet at the vet undergoing surgery. Im waiting for them to call. The thing is I get so many calls from recruiters EVEN WHEN I'M NOT ACTIVELY LOOKING that I CAN'T pick up my phone on the first call. EVER. My pet could be dying on the table and I have to look at my phone and ACTIVELY choose whether its worth the risk to answer the phone. I have a child that may or may not need to contact me from a strangers phone in case of an emergency... Guess what? same problem! What if my wife gets into an accident? Bank needs to get in touch with me? Any one of these scenarios!

Look, I get it, you guys are trying to make a living... But heres the thing, I used to be able to just assume that if I got one call from a number it was a recruiter, I'd listen to the message and then decide if I wanted to call them back. I mean hell that's why I have a phone... MY CONVENIENCE... not yours. If someone called me twice in a row I'd assume that person had a legitimate reason... NOT ANYMORE!

The most frustrating part of it is that I have had people call me like this, AND NOT EVEN KNOW MY NAME OR MY RESUME. I'm sorry, that's just lazy, and if you are doing such a shitty job recruiting me, you can be damn sure I'm not going to hire you to put my in front of a business... After all by agreeing to let you submit my resume, that is what I am doing!

So to summarize, stop calling people non stop. If they aren't into what your offering, they aren't into it. Calling me 30 times over the course of the week isn't going to change my mind. If I don't call you assume I'm not interested. I have 10000 things going on in my life and the reality is that my time is valuable. I am very choosy as to where that value goes, and in that respect try to create a relationship with your recruitee. I may not choose the position that you are trying to recruit for this time, but I am going to be in the market again at some point, and a good recruiter is worth their weight in gold. And for fucks sake know the name and resume of the candidate you are trying to contact. When you don't you just look like incompetent and useless.

Apple, iOS7, the new iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C and Innovation

Apple had been on a media blitz. With iOS7 being release yesterday, and the impending iPhone 5s and 5c onslaught, its been dominating tech news today. It seems they are trying to paint the picture that Jony Ive, Craig Federighi and Tim Cook are the happy awesome replacement for Steve Jobs as the head innovators of Apple. They may be able to pull it off, but I must say that some of the quotes that have been coming out of Apple have left me a little less than sure of this. I think Apple makes some beautiful products, but the reality is I'm not seeing the same swagger that I used to see at Apple during the years of Jobs. I am however seeing a lot of arrogance. Thats not to say that Jobs wasn't arrogant, but at least it seemed like he backed it up with some innovation.

I upgraded my iPad 2 and my sons iPhone to iOS7 last night, and played a little, and I can honestly say: meh. In all honesty, iOS needed a UI update. It's looked pretty much the same since 2007, it was getting dated. Now it looks like... well, I'll put it in the terms of my teenage son: "check it out, now it looks kinda like the [Samsung] Galaxy [S4]!" Ouch.

Now I don't want to take that quote out of context, he was thrilled, but as Apple, when your big UI update has you "catching up" to a phone released months ago, you may want to get to work on wowing us a little more next time. I think Apple can do it, clearly they've put a lot of thought into the underpinnings of the OS with things like moving to 64bit architecture etc, so there is definitely more to the update than just fancy UI elements. Speaking of other elements, how the hell did the lock screen vulnerability get past Apple? I can't imagine that would have ever flown with Jobs at the helm, especially with one of big features release on the iPhone 5s was a new security feature!!!!

Which brings me to the new iPhone. The lines are forming, but they usually do for new iDevices, because after all they are luxury "must have" item. Apple devices always have been sold at a premium. in 20 years I have never looked at an Apple device and thought of it as cheap. Even when the company was struggling in the 90s! That being said, Tim Cook taking shots at Android and the "cheap" market seemed strangely defensive to me. I mean by now you should know that Apple products aren't cheap. I'm still not sure what people expected out of the iPhone 5c. I certainly didn't expect a new $50 iPhone. I expected it to be cheaper than the iPhone 5s but where they priced it is about where I expected it. Realistically it's a way of cutting some of the costs of manufacturing the iPhone 5 to keep the margin on those devices where they were.

The iPhone 5C is simultaneously a way of taking trying to make a play on the used phone market. Right now the iPhone 5 starts at around $400 on eBay. While the iPhone 5c is a little pricier at $549 unlocked, you can guarantee that is new, works, and won't have any issues during activation! Alternatively you can buy it on contract with one of these new upgrade plans that the carriers are offering! That's where the brilliance of this move comes into play!

So I think rumors of Apple's demise might have been largely overplayed. They seem to be playing the media and marketing game better than anyone at the moment. Despite Tim Cook being defensive when it comes to talking about Android, Apple is still making the right moves for them. While I'd love to see some huge technological innovation from Apple, I just think in the mobile market were not going to see the level of innovation we've been used to over the last few years. I would have liked to see something more distinctly Apple in iOS7 rather than doing Android Apple Edition. I do believe that Apple is still Innovating, just maybe not in ways that we expected.

Standing up to Patent Trolls

With all that goes on around the world today it really is easy to forget about the vulture's known as Patent Trolls. It's amazing that since the advent of being able to patent a process these "businesses" have come in and raped and pillaged across the board. They really are nothing but fucking vultures extorting companies with vague process patents claiming ownership of an idea that most of the time wasn't even theirs to begin with! They just bought the patent with the intent of clobbering companies for money.

The whole point of the patent system originally was to protect the little inventor from businesses stealing their idea and the little inventor getting nothing, but now patents are being used as a knife to draw blood from anything that it can! The reality is patents are no longer protecting innovation they are stifling it!

That's why I felt I had to give special recognition to companies like NewEgg, FindTheBest (Who is actually filing a civil RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization] suit against them), RackSpace to name a few! Please keep up the good work!