You know the emails: Urgent Requirement, Interview today, Great opening, (all irrelevant to your core skill set) ad nauseam.

After giving it considerable thought, I removed all IT recruiters with foreign names or photographs from my LinkedIn today. Why? Well, one of my misguided acquaintances immediately jumped to the disgusting and completely incorrect conclusion that I was *gasp* a filthy racist! Nothing could be further from the truth: My parents were first generation immigrants from the middle east; just look at my name. I have numerous close friends from various ethnic, social, and other backgrounds. I speak multiple languages fluently, and I have lived (years) in several foreign countries. Anyway, enough of that; let me tell you the actual reasons I decided to stop working with foreign recruiters:

Foreign recruiters seem to only keyword search, and do not make any attempt to try to understand what it is that I DO or what I am good at.

or what I am good at. Foreign recruiters demand .doc (editable) copies of a resume after calling. Wait, how did you get my phone number? It's in the resume...

A total lack of phone skills:

They call within a minute of sending an email, which I personally find spectacularly rude. They use pressure tactics, asking when I will reply to an email that they just sent. They ask questions which are clearly enumerated in my resume. They are nearly impossible to understand, and I have broad experience with foreign accents!

Nearly every email contains a "Read Receipt" request which is another thing commonly considered discourteous.

Jobs they are offering are usually several states away, most often short term contracts, with no relocation package/assistance.

I have seen data that indicates some of them are here on an H1B visa scam.

Others have expressed opinions that some may be attempting to steal your resume/identity for their own use.

Many are often actually located in a foreign country, using VoIP to get a US telephone number.

Lastly and most importantly, none of the positions that have been offered to me by a foreign recruiter EVER resulted in a meaningful employment offer.

I realize that the observations I have concerning phone and email etiquette are a "cultural" thing. No offence, if someone is going to operate in the recruiting space here in the US, they should make some attempt conform to our professional social standards. I won't even get into the total lack of proper spelling, punctuation, usage and grammar.

The million dollar question:

Will this cost me potential employment? Possibly, but somehow, I very sincerely doubt it. My qualifications, experience, and integrity speak for themselves. Yours should too.

So, that's it in a nutshell. Going forward, if I am ever in the job market again, I will only work with (and therefore have placement fees paid to) a stateside, American recruiter unless the above points are addressed by the foreign IT recruiting community as a whole. I strongly encourage you to do the same.

Finally, a note to employers:

You should endeavour to never use an offshore recruiting firm, and make sure that the recruiting firm you retain specifically forbids subcontracting the candidate selection process. Your potential future employees will respect and thank you for it, even though you may not actually hear the words said out loud.