Traditional recruitment methods and lousy recruitment agencies, is the main result for the quality of the hi-tech and Internet expert in Europe. A place where officialism is more important then the person where the CV should be written perfectly (truth doesn't matter) but the person itself doesn't have to be really qualified.
Everyone with an experience like mine (25 years) will find it impossible to find a decent job in Europe. The worst is in England but the French recruitment methods are not better.
The employer hand everything to recruitment agencies which employ only clerks that has no idea about technology and therefore find it very hard to identify the real needs of the company and the right person to fulfill it.
Your CV must be perfect… yes sure with 25 years of experience it will take years to build it up, then how do you decide what important or not ?
You should have a degree in subject X or Y, fine but when i was in the university they didn't even knew these subjects exists (because they weren't). In USA the equivalent for the diploma is your experience, in Europe your experience doesn't count.
And then comes the job specification, which usually show how little the recruitment agencies knows about hi-tech. In some cases they split a simple field to hundred of little ones something like: “a web developer is needed” must have knowledge in: php, asp, sql, mysql, html, ftp, flash, java, cisco (cisco ????) etc… In other cases they simply want someone to do a job of 10 other people (at least according to the requirements). There is a complete industry around the recruitment and human resources field, this industry will actually show you how to…write a CV. In many cases they will recommend you to write several CVs , yes sure, i will write 10 of them and spend the rest of the year (the little left of it) deciding who to send what and where the hell did i save it.
And then…. you will get to the interview with the agent. He knows nothing about the job, he has no idea what to ask, he is a kid that fill a position because his CV was perfect (a perfect CV can be achieved only if you don't have any working experience).
The result is that Europe has no real professional but great CV writer (or beautiful liars) and this is exactly the reason the hi-tech in France is 10 years behind the world and the hi-tech in England is dealing with money transfer from one place to another and to secure it (well actually security they buy from Israel).
Totally Agree – Agencies have a long way to go
I could not agree more with the writer. Saddly the situation has not changed much since I was job hunting in the UK back in 1993-1993. One agency tested my software skills and were surprised when I asked for a mouse. Very Cutting edge. I did get the job, later to find that the software the agency tested was not the one the empoyer needed at all. Perhaps they should fall back on the low tech method of actually talking with the employers and potential employees face to face, a pub would be a great start.