Understanding

Written By
Tom Parrish
MetaTech Sales Guy

“Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.”
- Eric Burdon and the Animals

Driving back home to Seattle at 3:00am in the morning after taking my 13 year old daughter and her friends to see The Cure at the Gorge, it occurred to me that Eric’s plaintive wail in this classic Animals song could be the wail of the modern day software job applicant or technical hiring manager in their desperate attempt to be understood by the legions of recruiters that seem to grow exponentially in number day-by-day.

Part of the problem here of course is that software engineering, a jargon-laden and difficult to understand affair even by its most ardent practitioners, is a domain of experts, whereas 99.9% of the recruiters who traffic in this world are laymen, having never studied, practiced or held the positions for which they recruit.

The upshot is placement by accident rather than design, and this is the reason that the vast majority of technical staffing firms consistently fail to meet their constituencies’ minimal expectations and why the staffing business’ reputation is just one notch above that of the legal profession.

At MetaTech, the people that talk to people looking for jobs and the customers looking for the technical people to fill them, are people that have written extensive amounts code, designed complex databases and applications, and managed a bunch of technical people. We deeply understand the work and the kinds of know-how it takes to get the work done.

If you’re a committed software professional or technical hiring manager just wanting to be understood, talk with a MetaTech recruiter and experience what it’s like to be heard, perhaps for the first time.