For the past few years I’ve had a rather obtuse (and some might say caustic) profile on LinkedIn.  It surved it’s purpose: Hide me from the recruters.  And it mostly worked.  That is, except on the recuters that play WoW. 😉

Now as those recruters cycle through their jobs and hand over their dead leads to even greener recruters to retry – I’ve ended up on an inaccurate hodge-podge of job lists that are, well, just not my thing…

• 3 month contract job in michigan, $25k – like I’m going to relocate my familiy for that
• Multiple Stock trading firms
• Require: 10+ years C++ expert knowlege, Job: InstalShield scripter
• Consultant Jobs
• Sales support engineering
• 3D Artist – wtf?
• Archival media engineer – put the tape in the backup tape drive?
• GoogleTV media codecs

It’s taken a while.  But I’ve finally come to the conclusion that there’s a certain value in having an accurate career description.  Sure, I may get a few more recruter calls – but that’s OK.  I’ll deal with it.  It’s fun answering calls from strangers using my customer service / answering machine voice.

Over the next few months my linkedin profile should start to look a little more “professional”.  For tracking purposes, here’s some of the original text…

Title:
Jr Assistant Lemur Containment Researcher at Dalaran School of Xenobiology

Summary:
Is it me or does linkedin seem like an automated linked resume generator? I imagine that the data on this site would be lusted for by recruiters. So, I will be vague*.

I’m a win32/linux/oracle/mysql/client/server/c++ programmer, bitches**!

And no Mr(s) Recruter, Just because you may be a friend of a friend – does not mean that I will refer your friend/client to my hiring department. Thankfully, my employeer does not work with external recruters. So PLEASE STOP CALLING ME, I have NO influence over hiring and I will NOT help you. I only refer people that I worked with.

*Yes, I’ve had bad recruiter experiences. No where nearly as bad as a ‘child molester in an ice cream truck bad’ – but bad enough.

**No, I’m not worried about such a statement hurting my career. I’m happy where I’m at and if I were to leave, I wouldn’t want to work anywhere where such a statement would exclude me from consideration for employment.