21:32 Wednesday, September 09 2007

no Google, I'm not interested

For reasons that boggle my mind, Google (and/or their paid recruiters) seem to think that its ok to poach people from other companies. No fewer than two times over the past 4 years, a Google recruiter has contacted me out of no where, attempting to entice me enter their interviewing process. Both times, I've turned them down, primarily because the entire encounter felt slimy. I just don't get why they feel that its ok to continue this practice when they must surely get hundreds, if not thousands of resumes each week from people who actually want to work there.
So a few days ago, they strike again, only now they're apparently trolling LinkedIn. I get this message via LinkedIn from a Jennifer Farris stating:

My name is Jennifer Farris and I am a Sourcer-Recruiter supporting the Platforms Staffing Group at Google in Mountain View. This group is the collection of teams that design and manufacture Google's computing platform and help build the world's largest and most cost-effective computing infrastructure.
I came across your profile online while searching for exceptional engineers for our Platforms group and you certainly seem to have an impressive background. I wanted to reach out to you and see if you might be interested in exploring opportunities with Google. If you are open to this kind of conversation or just interested in networking, if you could please send me an updated resume and suggest a good time and number for us to connect.
Thank you. I look forward to your reply! Please feel free to contact me if I may be of any assistance.

I just don't get it. Clearly they're sending this same pitch to many many others, so its not like I can feel honored that they reached out to me. Is their pool of applicants so poor that they need to resort to effectively 'cold calling' people? Its just strange and a bit insulting.