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Ask HN - Do we really need recruiters?

6 points by vijayr ↗ HN
Say one gets paid $75 an hour, out of which the recruiter keeps 10-15, which works out to 20-30k a year. They use questionable tactics (many of them), treat the very programmers/designers that bring them money badly. Other than pushing resumes and making a few phonecalls to arrange interviews, in most cases they don't do anything else.

In other industries like housing for example, brokers do quite a bit of work (at least, much more than recruiters). Even they don't take 20% of the billing rate, hour after hour (My broker charges one month rent, sometimes even less, when he helps someone find an apt).

Why do we still need them? Isn't there any way we can at least reduce our dependency on them?

4 comments

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[dead] cancelbubble
Because businesses use them as a filtering mechanism.
ig1
Because they use questionable tactics.

While you can't be seen to buy your competitors internal phone book from a disgruntled ex-employee and cold-call of their developers, you can use a recruiter who does that and thus get the same benefit without the reputational and legal risk the first approach would involve.

Jacquass12321
Who says we still need them? I can't say I've ever even thought of using one. This seems like a mountain out of a molehill, they are only taking advantage of people who make the mistake of using them.
piccadilly
We don't "really need" recruiters specifically. But finding a job is ridiculously more complex and old-school (dependent on who you know, etc.) than finding a restaurant or a vendor for a replacement part. If that friction weren't so high, the market for recruiters would dry up as everyone did it themselves.

Now the question to ask is why that friction is so high. It's not a law of nature. It's not because of the perfidy of the government. It sure isn't because job seekers want it increased. But it might just have to do with the interest employers have in maintaining leverage over employees; the same reason job interviews are usually demeaning.