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Ask HN: “Do's” and “don'ts” for tech recruiters?

17 points by gargarplex ↗ HN
I am thinking about a more empathetic, non-odious approach to tech recruiting. For example, subverting the principal-agent problem by hiring empathetic people who are easy to talk to, at a salary, rather than putting on commission. And to this general end I am soliciting everybody's feedback on demeanor.

What do recruiters do that you like?

What do recruiters do that you hate?

Feedback in this format would be great:

Do:

* Tell me salary figure upfront

* Tell me the name of the company

Don't:

* Stop communicating with me once you realize I'm not a good fit

32 comments

[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 72.1 ms ] thread
chrisbennet
“Don’t lie to me” would be a good start.

- Don’t place a job ad for a job that doesn’t exist.

- Don’t use my references as a way to call my former managers to ask if they are looking to hire. I had a recruiter call my references “to check my references” and then segway into asking if they were hiring - when I’m not even looking for a job. I was burned once and I will never give out references to a recruiter, just to the hiring manager.

- Don’t call me from hundreds of miles away to talk to me about a position you know nothing about.

- Don’t say you are working with a company that you aren’t.

- Don’t tell me our goals are aligned “because if I get you a higher salary, I make more in commission”.

- Please don’t call me if your English is so poor that I can’t understand you.

There are good recruiters (I’ve worked with them) so it is possible to act decently and still stay in business. [1]

[1] John Spencer at Connected Systems Partners is a guy you might ask about “doing it right”

gargarplex
Sounds like an open recruitment code of conduct might be in order, with some evidence that it is adhered-to (like maybe a reward for reporting violators).

Can you expound upon this point please?

>- Don’t call me from hundreds of miles away to talk to me about a position you know nothing about.

Shall reach out to John Spencer.

chrisbennet
I once had a recruiter from Texas call me about a position local to me (I’m in New England) who couldn’t tell me much of anything about the position. “They didn’t tell me” is what he said, referring to his employers. The same day, a “good” recruiter I’d worked with in the past, called me about the same position. “I wish you had called earlier” I told him.

The knows-nothing recruiter had already set me up with a phone screen interview for later that day. When the “good” recruiter learned that the knows-nothing recruiter hadn’t been able to prepare me for the interview, he told me all about the position and the manager, preparing me for my upcoming phone screen. Yes, he tried to help me get a job that, not only wouldn’t have earned him a commission, I would have been competing with his own candidates.

My impression is that recruiters in my area, work with companies in my area. My experience with recruiters calling from thousands of miles away, was that they didn’t seem to have a knowledge of local companies.

ccajas
Being hyped up as a good candidate and relayed from person to person only to have no leads or offers for you makes you feel like you encountered the biggest farce in your recent time.
grafelic
Don't:

* Try to lure me to your office "for coffee" in exchange for the name of the company you represent (why would I waste my time drinking coffee at your office?)

cylinder
Real estate agents and recruiters both seem to think everyone works like them: on pointless phone calls and meetings all day chatting and what not. Then they get shocked when you don't have time to speak to them during the work day.
toomuchtodo
Consider that their roles are driven by relationships, spending time networking and building new relationships, and what you see as pointless is core to their role.

When my recruiter, who landed me a very well paying job out of the blue, calls me and asks if we can get lunch, I make sure I’m free for whenever she’s free. “When’s convenient? Your pick.”

Soft skills are usually more important to get and keep a job vs technical competency, except in rare microcosms.

cylinder
I didn't indicate I don't understand their role. They don't understand mine. They seem surprised and offended when I'm short with them and say I can't talk right now when they call me in the middle of the business day to "just chat" about some property I hit "inquire" on (and expect me to remember their specific listing). They lack empathy and that's why so many are poor salespeople.
[deleted]
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ccajas
Do:

* Admit when you can't speak geek, and explain your own personal work background where it's relevant to the skills you're scouting for.

Don't:

* Hype candidates up and stroke their egos a lot, by getting them to as many interviews as they can as soon as possible. As you mostly throw them at companies who are only speculating.

bryan11
Do: * Let me know what you see as 'next steps' based on my current position. This establishes that you've looked at my background and have at least a general understanding of what my current job title means. It may also show you haven't and are likely wasting my time.

Don't: * Ask my current and expected salary requirements

scarface74
Why wouldn't you tell a recruiter your expected salary requirements? The best part of going through a recruiter is that it's hard to find out salary up front when you're interviewing. Them knowing my minimum acceptable salary keeps both of us from wasting our time.
cweagans
Recruiters are hired by the companies trying to fill positions. The company's interest is to fill the position with as low of a salary as the market will tolerate, which is direct opposition to my interest, which is getting the highest salary that the market will tolerate. That mostly only applies if the recruiter is approaching me.

If I'm approaching a recruiter, it's extremely likely that I'd at least be willing to give them a minimum salary. I've never done this though - it's always been random recruiters spamming me on LinkedIn.

scarface74
Most recruiters are agency recruiters. They get paid a commission based on your first year's salary - usually around 20% and if you don't stay at company at least 3-6 months depending on the contract they sign with the employer, they don't get paid. They are theoretically interested in getting you the highest salary possible.[1]

Regardless, if you tell them your minimum salary and they know the hiring company won't possibly reach that salary, they won't waste the company's time.

[1] theoretically when someone is paid on a commission based on you getting the highest price, the incentives should be aligned, but studies show that in reality it doesn't work like that (https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/business/yourmoney/why-a-...)

cweagans
If you tell them your minimum salary, and it's below what the company would pay, you've shot yourself in the foot.
scarface74
I know my market value. I talk to enough recruiters, former coworkers, etc. I doubt very seriously that the amount that I'm asking for is appreciably below market value. If so, it won't stay that way for long -- I'm fairly aggressive about job hopping to maximize salary.
NVRM
Do while foreach try catch explode array_push, but always boring for loops at end. Throw exceptions.\n Don't read my echo.
mattehr
Don't: * Say you're working for a real company, solving real problems for real world users.

uhh, no shit? haha.

cweagans
Just to underscore: Definitely have the comp details + company info included in the _very first contact_ with a potential candidate. Don't make me ask for it, and especially don't try to hide it until I've gone through an interview/phone screen/coffee at your office/whatever.

Don't spam me with jobs that I couldn't possibly be interested in. For instance, I work almost exclusively with open source technologies. There is no world in which I'd be interested in building .NET applications for some soulless corporation, not attending conferences, etc. Also, because this comes up frequently: don't spam people with javascript experience with java positions.

lscore720
I discuss the compensation range before the interview process begins (i.e. their resume preparation) only with candidates responding with interest to my initial contact. I make a leap in faith by sharing the company/job details in the first contact, and having been screwed over by doing this, I feel it's fair to hold off at presenting compensation details to literally every person I contact. After all of my hard work, all they need to do is take one second and respond with "looks interesting, but could they match or exceed $XYZ range?"

If they're interested and have not brought up numbers, I'll ask them to provide their expectations first and I appreciate when they do. If they don't, I'm happy to give them a broad range to see if they're at least in the same ballpark.

As an agency recruiter, I serve the employer. If I tell everyone that a job will pay $150K - $200K, far too many people will respond with "yeah, my expectation is around $200K." It's not fair to the CTO/VP Engineering.

I don't believe there's a right answer, but I'm trying to find that middle ground that serves everyone best.

I would be curious to hear what HN users think.

gumballhead
Hiding the name of the company and what they do is my biggest annoyance. Yes, I really care about that. More than their tech stack, and way more than a buzzword soup that poorly describes their tech stack.

Second biggest annoyance is keyword matching me and hundreds of other people and spamming us all, because so many times there isn't even close to a good fit other than your client uses java and I have some Android experience. Most of these people then make me feel like I'm a high pressure sales target, and in many ways I know I am so it's more understandable. But I'm not likely to want to work with you.

The best recruiters I've ever worked with make me feel like I'm the customer and they're doing me a service. Finding good opportunities can be hard, and I probably don't know the market as well as you do. Those recruiters don't outwardly care if I'm not interested in a particular role they thought was a good fit. They say that's ok, what don't you like? What should I look for when I send you opportunities?

cbanek
Do know what kind of things are required for the job, what technologies (actual names of stack, not concepts) the candidate would work on. If asked, let the candidate talk to the hiring manager of the team to see if they're a good fit. (this is usually done last, but I find it to be one of the most important parts)
timojaask
Do:

* Try to have job descriptions that make a little bit of sense. A lot of times it's just a dumb collection of somewhat related programming keywords, which just makes me cringe.

Don't:

* Don't tell me my rate should be fine, and waste my and company's time by proceeding to interview process, if my rate is way more than what the company can actually afford to pay.

* Don't mass spam people with job postings, because most of them time they are a bad match. E.g. don't send ASP.net position to an iOS developer.

I know this is a lot to ask, because recruiters are busy, and would rather send the same message to 10,000 developer than go through each profile individually and pick only the ones that really match the criteria for the job. I'm just pretty tired of receiving all the recriter spam about developer jobs that don't match my interests at all.

CM30
Do:

Tell me details about the company, like its name, where it's based and what kind of things I'll be working on.

Provide a salary figure for the role

Give feedback on things like interviews done with the company, assuming they tell those things to you. Obviously it's better to have the hiring manager respond, but to get a message from the recruiter saying either they said the interview went well because of this and that or they're looking for someone else right now is useful.

Keep your job descriptions realistic. If there's a huge laundry list of keywords for skills your applicant 'needs' to know, don't be surprised if most people are hesitant when they reply to your email.

Don't:

Provide irrelevant job offers and leads. Seriously, sending a JavaScript programmer Java related offers is a waste of time, as is sending through roles where 90% of the skills required are ones that candidate doesn't have. If someone is a PHP or Python developer, then sending them .NET roles may not be the best idea.

Try and 'encourage' applicants to sign up for training through your company. Seen quite a few 'recruiters' who were seemingly only contacting people to sell them courses, and it's an annoying waste of time.

Force people to sign up with your inhouse system to receive new jobs. We get it, job sites are a difficult thing to market. But saying you have a role and then only having said role available on another site is a hassle.

Have people come to your office for an interview. You are not a company offering jobs, and for most people don't want to spend money and time travelling to your office for nothing more than a quick chat. Especially if said office is really out of the way.

_ah
I love what your proposing and hate to be the voice of dissent, but I suspect that you will (quite ironically) have a hiring problem. The best, most knowledgeable, most empathetic, rock star recruiters will be able to make MUCH more money on commission. You'll be stuck with the second tier: recruiters willing to settle for a salary. Do you have a strategy to overcome this limitation?
gargarplex
I think it's similar to hiring customer success personnel vs. sales.
gargarplex
A little bit more detail, I think that the top of funnel needs to be engineers doing extremely intelligent, programmatic searches - aided by low cost virtual assistants to do some tedious human level filtering where required by law.

High likely match candidates are then sent to the recruiter along with the engineer's notes as to why the candidate is a good fit, from a technical perspective.

The recruiter then leads a team of customer success personnel whose jobs are to transparently communicate with the candidate and guide them along the funnel in a high EQ way.

hkmurakami
Play the long game. Build relationships that span years and begin years before a candidate is actively looking for a new role. Don't be transactional. Bring an executive recruiting mindset to tech ICs.
danieltillett
Everyone’s answers are reasonable and total obvious, yet that is not what happens in practice. The reason why is the way the recruitment industry works is completely broken. For any solution to work you need to change the incentive system for recruiters from spray-and-pray to targeted. It is a very hard problem and I don’t think anyone has solved it.
laughfactory
Your listed Do's are great, and I'll add the following:

Do: - Read my profile and make it clear in your email or message why you think the position is a good fit (referencing details from my profile)

- Be personable and real with me. The more I feel like a random number to you, the less I'm likely to respond. I'm simply too busy for low-quality inquiries.

Don't: - Require salary verification at any point in the process. These days it's offensive.

- Blast out inquiries to anyone who has a keyword in their profile

- Be uniformed about how and why I might be a tremendous fit.

- Bullshit me