The absurdity of cold call selling has reached new depths at my workplace; my voicemail is full of messages from recruitment agents who are desperate to get in touch with me.  Still, I’ve kept the barriers up. So, they’ve gravitated towards my Development Manager. He too has put them off. So finally, they found out the name of my lead developer, and yesterday they started calling him and asking if he wanted contractors.

This is just ridiculous; if they keep going down the company structure, the cleaning people are going to be assaulted by recruitment consultants in the parking lot at knifepoint and asked if they want C# / .NET contractors.  

There is some logic behind the madness, albeit, it’s tenuous.  According to today’s Guardian:

Britain’s jobs market is suffering from the slowdown in the economy as a new report out today shows the number of permanent jobs available has plunged to its lowest level since 2001.

And:

The Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s latest survey today says permanent placements contracted for the fifth consecutive month in August while temporary jobs fell for the first time since May 2003.

This includes, I assume, IT contractors. Anyone involved in this business is bound to be particularly jumpy. There hasn’t been a recession for fifteen years and they didn’t plan for the possibility.

Just a hint to any recruitment consultants reading this blog: if you don’t stop harassing potential customers and don’t provide innovative services, your firms will die. Employers like myself will laugh at your demise.