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Ask HN: Developer FAQ for recruiters

4 points by lsiebert ↗ HN
I'm considering creating a FAQ for recruiters, to handle the bog standard questions, the inane BS, and the questions that I find uncomfortable like where they try to pin me down on expected salary before they assess my worth or I know a thing about the job.

Does anybody else do this? Any thoughts, from the recruiter or from the dev side?

4 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 28.1 ms ] thread
andymoe
No, but I'm considering putting together a survey to reply to recruiters with. Sort of a modified and updated "Joel Test."[1] I still reply politely to all credible inquiries. I think I'd still do this but it might be fun to see if anyone fills out my survey ;-)

I'd also mention that learning how to answer questions (or deflect properly) that make you uncomfortable or that you don't want to answer is a good skill to have.

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

lsiebert
It is, but occasionally I get thrown a question that I don't expect and I give a suboptimal answer. And occasionally I don't know what their takeaway from different answers are. Like when they ask how hard I'm looking or what has me looking.
ratfacemcgee
Not to sound like a jerk, but do you really think a recruiter is going to bother reading an FAQ about you before they contact you?

What result do you want? They're either going to contact you anyways, or not contact you at all. If you want no contact, then just reply with a picture of a kitten or something. If you want contact, then you might have to put up with the occasional inane question.

liquidcool
You want to keep out the bad recruiters, who won't read your FAQ. They don't even read the first line of my LinkedIn summary to find out we compete before trying to sell me their services.

What might be useful is some sort of recruiter CAPTCHA that asks them questions about the position. Recruiters need you to self-qualify because naught but a handful can do that (none if your LI profile is blank). This would automate that.

Keep in mind they might not have something like salary info because the hiring manager doesn't want to set a range for a high-need position.

But at the same time, it would filter out shockingly high percentage of recruiters who ask for "full stack" developers and think that's the whole thing. They literally don't know that there are different stacks. One asked if I could find her any since I run a Java user group. Turns out, she needed Node.js developers. This is common.

So just by asking the primary language and framework, you could filter out the ignorant ones. However, that won't stop them from messaging you in the first place