I hate my current corporate job and I've been trying for quite a while to find a new one (within EU, mostly targeting Croatia and Austria) and it's been really really hard to penetrate the wall of nonsense that are recruiters and so-called talent specialists.
You see, I'm a theoretical physicist and I've been studying some of the most hardcore math you could imagine, things that reeeeaaally put my monkey brain cells to work. I was programming complex stuff on the side before I even got to high school and I've always been playing with electronics, building and repairing stuff, I'm usually very quick to learn and adapt to anything STEM.
If you're a fellow STEM person, you already see the value in that, of course.
But it's nearly IMPOSSIBLE to get that stuff across recruiters, they don't seem to understand that skills are transferable and that expertise in one field carries over to other similar fields. Sure, they say that in their job descriptions, but they don't seem to believe it, they'd rather hire a freshly out of college software engineer than a physicist with years of experience. I don't mean to insult or demean, I honestly don't, but in most cases the software engineer will peak early and not have that much capacity to improve, whereas a physicist with a problem-solving mindset will knock it out of the park simply because of how most physicists are.
I only got my current job because I knew a fellow physicist in the company and I got a recommendation. I have no issues when it comes to my skill, I'm even teaching and helping people who are software engineers by education.
The only company that wanted to talk to me now, again, did so only because an acquaintance, who's an electronics engineer, recommended me. They hired someone else, regardless.
What I'm trying to get at, is that it really seems to me that most recruiters simply go over CVs and see if they can find buzzwords and official qualification that matches their list, without any thought to anything else.
Do they really believe that college degrees actually mean anything about someone's knowledge and skill? I know I've seen my share of freshman students in one field that are so obviously more capable than PhDs in another similar field.
I'm not alone in this, a lot of physicists seem to be struggling with this. For example, an acquaintance of mine couldn't convince a recruiter that a physicist can do as much, if not more, as mathematicians when it comes to analyzing data and constructing theoretical models.
I emphatize with all of my fellow STEM people and everyone else, even the recruiters, because we're all in this shitty system that's been imposed on us, so please don't interpret anything as intentionally wishing to demean anyone.
I'm just curious to see what you think about the issue of recruiters very often not having a clue about the technical side of things. Do you have any similar experiences or stories where recruiters didn't understand the value of a candidate? Do you have any advice for dealing with such situations? Recruiters, how about you, any thoughts from your side?
It's so tough, man…