Thu 7 Jun 2007
I had a recruiter cold call me at work today. I told him I was busy at the moment, but that he could email me at my cornell.edu address. I like to give a cursory glance at the pitches by head hunters on the theory that eventually one of them will be interesting. This is the approximate conversation that followed:
Recruiter: “Oh, did you go to Cornell?”
Me: “Yes”
Recruiter: “I went to Dartmouth. Ivy League for the win!”
Me: “Are you a World of Warcraft player?”
Recruiter: “Yeah, I play on the Bronzebeard server.”
Me: “Nice. I’m over on Garona.”
I’d say that qualified as the oddest conversation I’ve had with a cold caller, but the interesting thing is the extent to which MMORPG and WoW vocabulary is now transferring over to RL. (real life) Also, to be perfectly honest, I’m now far more inclined to see what the guy has to say…Hilarious.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Nice! I often wonder where all the Ivy Leaguers are hanging out; WoW wouldn’t have been my first guess.
They’re also not hanging out at my company; I was at a presentation by a dozen of our “rising stars” yesterday, and it was most definitely a state school crowd. (As long as I’m still paying off Ivy League loans, I’m allowed to be an elitist bastard.)
June 9th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
I was the cold calling recruiting Ivy League WoW player. That short interaction was easily the highlight of what turned out to be a very productive day.
Funny thing was, I didn’t say FTW with the intention of making a connection with the gaming community. I’m still pretty new to recruiting and the conversation was consequently a bit awkward, so my nervousness turned my usual business prose into the language that lies beneath.
On one hand this is scary because it means I probably employ my WoW vocabulary daily without realizing it, but on the other hand, if it leads to situations such as this I’m almost tempted to do it more often. I make a LOT of phone calls every day, and I’ve been wishing for a long time that I could just shoot the shit with people about WoW instead of questioning them about their technical environment.
I don’t come across many Ivy League guys in WoW, so this was a special treat. I’ll send you a LinkedIn invitation, and if you know of someone looking for IT work in Chicago, you can send them over to Thorinoxe on Bronzebeard, Alliance side.
Dartmouth > Cornell JK GG
June 9th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Hey Jeff,
Your comments made my day, too. Honestly, by throwing in the Dartmouth + WoW thing, you went from being Yet Another Annoying Recruiter to a real human being.
Grats.