One thing that annoys me is when a recruiter doesn’t pronounce something correctly. I mean, Apple has been saying the “X” in Mac OS X as “10" for over 15 years, and when a recruiter refuses to change what they’re saying when I’ve corrected them repeatedly, that shows they don’t listen and won’t represent me or their client well.

Another thing are third-party call-center recruiters. These are the ones who saw a posting and are trying to get a finder’s fee by placing me with a consulting agency that will place me with a client. The tell here? They are recruiting for their “direct client.” I only care about the “end client.” I usually do a search on Dice or Monster for the exact phrases and find the first- or second-party recruiter who have a legitimate means of getting me the job.

Then there are the scrapers who say they have a job for me, but when I call them back, they say the position they called for 30 minutes ago has been filled, but they want to go ahead and meet in person, because their clients say they must (not sure how they know their future client will expect this), and want the names of two manager-level references (find me a job that everyone agrees is a good fit, then I’ll give you references — that’s how it works). These I just say I don’t want to waste my time or theirs until they have an opening that matches my skills and interests. The last time I encountered a scraper, I had to say that four times and almost hung up, but she finally got the clue.