Joanna (Barker) Montes - formerly Onward Search/Blackbaud, Austin

Infuriation: Incomprehensible, obstinate refusal to respond to emails and phone calls that she personally requested

Update: This waste of oxygen bounces from tech firm to tech firm, never landing long enough to actually learn a company's needs or culture or even its industry, but one thing that won't change is HER. In her frequent job hunts, we can only hope that justice or karma or (your term here) will prevail, and that she'll be snubbed and treated as incomprehensibly rudely as she treats candidates. Hey Joanna - behind the 7-Eleven counter, you don't have to worry about returning phone calls or emails, so stick to work you can handle.

Why would a recruiter reach out to a candidate with a job, inviting a response, and then refuse to accept any response? There are several possible reasons why the job itself may have "gone away," (see below) but there's only one reason for the recruiter's refusal to react: rudely unprofessional and arrogant contempt for applicants. That goes beyond stubborn stupidity, that goes beyond lack of business communication skills, it comes from the ugly personal natures of the wastes of oxygen polluting recruiter ranks.

Joanna Barker, a self-proclaimed senior recruiter simultaneously for both Onward Search and Blackbaud, is one such waste of oxygen, depriving her own employer of candidates while alienating those very candidates.

She emailed a likely job description for a demanding position to a senior-level candidate based on a job bank resume, and invited the candidate to "reach out." He did so, first with a professional phone call within the same business day, then followed up with an email the next business day, and finally with a third phone call on the fifth business day after Ms. Barker first contacted him. He provided his own contact information, of course, and his hours of availability, as well as expressing appropriate interest in the position.

The result? Ms. Barker ignored his responses as REQUESTED BY HER, on behalf of her employer who's in need of candidates to fill the position.

As senior professionals ourselves, we know that there are sometimes coincidental reasons why a job offer is closed. The position may have been advertised too far in advance of its proper budgeting within the employer's finances; it may have been filled serendipitously by an internal candidate, or through another recruiter; or any of several possible reasons. But the complete lack of reaction, even a terse, one-line-email, is entirely Ms. Barker's fault.

Ms. Barker is a typical "senior recruiter," a person with minimal education and no experience in a bottom-line-focused corporate role. She's never created or managed, never had to hone her communications skills in real-world production meetings, never been part of a team, never held accountable or even supervised by anyone other than recruiters. She recruits people who are better educated and more skilled than she is, for roles that she cannot understand. Given her tenure in the recruiter ranks, she's never going to be able to learn any better behavior, so beware dealing with either Onward Search or Blackbaud if she's involved.