I recently received an unsolicited call from a recruiter who had found my resume online and wanted to discuss a c-level position. This was of interest because I hadn’t considered myself a candidate for such a position.

We spoke for 30 minutes and he requested a current resume, so I set about researching the details of the position to write a resume from my work history that matched the expectations of that position.

A few days of research gave me a very good understanding of what is necessary to success at this c-level position. While my experience and certifications matched many of the desirable attributes, especially if you were just using search terms to find resumes, I had three obvious shortcomings that made clear I was not a great match for their listing. This made me question the knowledge of the recruiter.

At that point I realized the recruiter was a fool. Nearly anyone who calls or answers a phone as part of the business is a fool. He talks all day to candidates and gives out his phone number to be contacted, but does not understand the world he interacts with. This causes him to collect resumes that have some words he recognizes, but cannot granularly understand them to value them appropriately, nor can he understand what employers are really looking for. His approach gets him close, like a wandering man with blurred vision bumping into to things as he stumbles towards a presumed destination others have described but he is unable to comprehend.

He wasn’t an agent of truth, but just a guy trying to make a living by putting together something beyond he awareness that he hoped might work.

Similarly, every time you call a business and accept advice from someone answering a phone, you are probably not getting helpful wisdom from someone who grasps your situation, but instead are hearing the thoughts of someone whose problem solving technique is so handicapped that they answer a phone for a living.

You are forever talking to fools. Our good-natured empathy often causes us to think we are receiving thoughtful and valuable information from professionals, when more correctly we are having pointless conversations with animals staring at us because we can give them food.

If they were rich with good advice, they would not be answering the phone for a living.