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I had a phone message the other day from a headhunter. It said "I saw your resume on Bostonworks and I may have some jobs I'd like to talk to you about."
Well, this seems encouraging, I thought. So I called them back, an outfit called Complete Staffing with an office in Framingham. When I got through to the guy who called, he asked what kind of job I was looking for (I told him what it said on my resume - Systems Analyst, Project Leader). He wondered if I would send him a copy of my resume. It sounded like an odd request.
"Didn't you say you got the info off the job board?" I asked. He hemmed and hawed a bit about the amount of data he actually had. Finally I asked him what jobs he had that prompted his call. More hemming and hawing. I concluded that he actually had no jobs, and was simply trolling for candidates. I figured out that he was probably a rookie, just starting out. They try the new guys by fire, making them call from old lists trying to find a live one.

It reminded me of my first job after graduating college in 1968 . I was getting married and needed a job. But there were not many options for English majors at the time. So, I took a job with Shamrock Personnel as a recruiter. it was a 100% commission job. They told me guys were earning up to $14k per year. As a rookie, they gave you crap for leads and you had to be on the phone all the time. The days were sometimes 12 hours long. I lasted less than a month on that odious job. I never placed anyone. Made no money and learned a lot about how sleazy some people in the recruiting industry were. Luckily I soon got a job at my alma mater as an Assistant to the Registrar, making $7,800 more than I did as a rookie recruiter.

Remembering those unpleasant days, I felt compassion for the rookie who had called me with no jobs. Hell he was probably a former IT guy himself, whose job went to India. In desparation, he found himself dialing numbers, using an old list, trying to fool old farts like me that he had jobs for us.
So, what the heck, instead of blowing him off completely, I gave him the gift of my resume. Let's see what he can do with it.