Beware of ProgrammerBlaster.com!

(26 Feb. 2009) If you're a software developer looking for work, ProgrammerBlaster.com might look like a useful service. For $49, they promise to send your resume to over 10,000 recruiters overnight. They promise that

Your resume is emailed to recruiters who have opted-in to our site and have defined themselves as specialists in placing candidates in up to 3 of the following disciplines: [a list mentioning Java, Unix, ASP, Oracle, C/C++, etc.]

However, they don't deliver on their promise. If you pay for their service, you will be flooded with spam.

Here's my experience with them after paying $49 and uploading my resume.

Broken promise #1: my resume was not sent out “overnight”; nothing happed for a week. Then I finally got an email saying “your resume was successfully emailed to 8000 recruiters / employers”.

Wait a minute — didn't their website say that my resume would be sent to recruiters? I didn't ask for it to be sent to random employers in whom I might have no interest at all.

An hour or so after this email, the flood of spam began.

Broken promise #2: My resume was not sent exclusively to recruiters who are specialists in placing programmers. Apparently, it was sent to any and sundry. I was offered a part-time cleaning job; I heard from someone looking for a personal assistant; I heard back from several humanitarian aid agencies; I was offered opportunities in medical transcription, in payment processing, in hotel management, in internet marketing, and selling skin care products; I was offered positions as a health insurance agent, as a travel agent, as a home typist, and as a customer service rep; I was buried in sales pitches for all manner of work-from-home schemes and “business opportunities”; my resume was even sent to the Hillsborough County Sherriff's Office, who, they were sad to inform me, had no openings appropriate to my skill set.

There were, admittedly, a handful (if you've lost some fingers) of actual IT recruiters who responded. They were hard to pick out, however, among the piles of spam.

Please do your fellow programmers a favor and spread the word about ProgrammerBlaster.