The recruiter from Akamai called me earlier today. We had a nice chat. Unfortunately, she thinks I am not a good match for the position she is recruiting for, which is a QA position (and wasn't the position I applied for).

After asking me some questions about what I'd been doing recently, she asked point blank whether I had taken the job at Nominum because I wanted to make a career move to QA, or took the job to gain experience/stay in the market. I answered honestly that it was the latter, and that I really would prefer a software engineering job. (In the back of my mind, I was wondering what the outcome would be if I'd said I wanted to switch to QA.) I did ask if there was an opportunity to switch to an engineering position after holding the QA position for a while (which was one reason I took the Nominum position), but she said that the group consists of people who are passionate about QA, and wouldn't want to bring someone aboard who's likely to switch to a more preferred position. (The implication here is that the interview can effectively screen people who are passionate about QA, ie. know a lot about it.) In closing, she said she'd talk to some of the other recruiters to see if there was a better fit available.

I wonder what would have happened if I was broke, and really needed a job. Saying one is passionate about something because they need a job may be lying, technically, but the motivations are pure. And said individual may very well work as hard as a person who's passionate about the job, as long as they have the job. But this doesn't seem to matter much any more, at least in my experience.