Markinekt (Score 1)

Everytime I used a headhunter, I felt taken advantage of and swore I would never use one again. If I said "I would really prefer to work in the city", rather then "I only want to see jobs in manhattan, no exceptions," they would try to shuffle me off to some smelly job in New Jersey with a bunch of cultural cretins or to upstate New York to work with name-tag wearing Fundamentalists.

I mean, I was a piece of meat. They said that they wanted to get the best job with the highest salary for me, and that they had incentive to do so because their commission was based on my salary. In fact, they were so worried that someone else might be able to manipulate me into accepting another offer, that in practice, they would pressure me to take the first job offer at whatever salary was offered.

A few would ask me to come in to meet them, and inevitably the office would be lined with drones in front of monitors, making call after call. They were telemarketers, I was product. The uspoken truth.

But, just when I had consigned them to the same category as real estate agents, I met Marielle. I couldn't believe she was a recruiter. We bacame friends right away. But a year or so later my dot com took a nose dive, and she offered to help me find new work.

This was what a recruiter was supposed to be all along. She was really a life and career counselor. She found jobs for me where I would be able to excell, and when I found one I really liked, she would talk to them, and I had the job. Like magic. And she got me the salaries that I had never realized I deserved.

It's growing up on spagettie out of a can, and wondering what the big deals is, and why people even bother, and then, one day, you move to the city and eat at a Northern Italian restraunt where they make fresh pasta, and you realize that this was what it was supposed to be all along, and that pasta does indeed have a reason for existance.

I was really sad when Marielle moved to LA after 9/11. But she now has her own recruiting/placement firm, Markinekt and works with people and companies on both coasts. And I really can't see myself working with anyone else. I'm never going back to those banks of evil telemarketers. If I can't work with her, I'd rather just do it myself with craigslist.