Really, the breakdown was with the recruiter doing that without telling you.
Flip side: I helped interview someone to replace me for an old position. He was put forward by a recruiting company as having had .NET and Ruby on Rails experience. I asked if he had done any Rails projects. "Oh yes, 2 or 3." Because of time, I didn't press further. We knew we were hiring a junior guy, and I didn't want to tangle with specifics, or trying to smoke out how much he knew through technical questions. I'm a brutally honest person, and I can never quite catch myself being naive at the wrong moment...
When the time came to hand off the Rails project to him, I told him it was written in Rails, and he literally opened a browser, went to Google, and typed in "Ruby on Rails" in front of me. And that's when I knew the recruiter had lied FOR him, and coached him to just go along with the lie. At least THIS guy had THAT going for him.
When I told my new management about the lie, knowing what was coming, I just got a stupid look, and a "Well, this can be an opportunity to learn something new."
It took him 3 years to rewrite my 3-month Rails app in .NET, and I've heard it doesn't work.
Yes, recruitment is broken. In this example, it was an utter lack of care to follow up on malfeasance from a recruiting firm. They got what they ultimately wanted -- a warm body on an H1-B visa -- and that's what they'll continue to get with their process.
Flip side: I helped interview someone to replace me for an old position. He was put forward by a recruiting company as having had .NET and Ruby on Rails experience. I asked if he had done any Rails projects. "Oh yes, 2 or 3." Because of time, I didn't press further. We knew we were hiring a junior guy, and I didn't want to tangle with specifics, or trying to smoke out how much he knew through technical questions. I'm a brutally honest person, and I can never quite catch myself being naive at the wrong moment...
When the time came to hand off the Rails project to him, I told him it was written in Rails, and he literally opened a browser, went to Google, and typed in "Ruby on Rails" in front of me. And that's when I knew the recruiter had lied FOR him, and coached him to just go along with the lie. At least THIS guy had THAT going for him.
When I told my new management about the lie, knowing what was coming, I just got a stupid look, and a "Well, this can be an opportunity to learn something new."
It took him 3 years to rewrite my 3-month Rails app in .NET, and I've heard it doesn't work.
Yes, recruitment is broken. In this example, it was an utter lack of care to follow up on malfeasance from a recruiting firm. They got what they ultimately wanted -- a warm body on an H1-B visa -- and that's what they'll continue to get with their process.