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Ask HN: How Do Recruiters Still Have Jobs?

12 points by b8 ↗ HN
Candidly, it doesn't make sense for recruiters to do "screen" calls to "go over" stuff that's already on my resume and re-confirm that I don't require a visa, despite indicating that I can work legally in the US (US Citizen) in my application on Lever or Workday. Recruiters screening calls etc. seem like a waste of time.

I agree that recruiters help reduce noise, but as per Sturgeon's law 90% of applications for jobs are noise. AI can and already do (ATS systems) screen out unqualified candid ants. The application process would be more streamlined without recruiters. AI should and will replace recruiters in the future.

9 comments

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dvt
In-house recruiters are always worthwhile imo. I think they can really screen for culture fit, get context from hiring managers, make new employees & candidates feel welcome, etc. However, I do think that "recruiting firms" are, and have always been, a waste of time.
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legitster
Hard disagree.

The job I currently have, I applied for on the company website. And they flat out rejected me. Then a recruiter contacted me directly and offered me the same position at more money. I don't think people can wrap their head around the ineptitude HR departments are capable of when developing these "automated" solutions.

Especially given that a person-to-person phone call is cheap, fast, and humanizes all involved parties.

LenaAn
> I applied for on the company website. And they flat out rejected me. Then a recruiter contacted me directly and offered me the same position at more money.

I hear that a lot. Is it because recruiters get commission for candidates they “found themselves”? Why did they reject you when you applied yourself?

blablabla123
Depends on the recruiter, some get commissions, others are hired with a flat rate. The problem I've sometimes seen with companies hiring while working there is they have expectations that are impossible to fulfill. E.g. some niche knowledge or an ancient hiring process that doesn't really work, so hiring by themselves takes forever.
blablabla123
I just wanted to say this. If the recruiter sees a fit with a job I'm actually interested in they are doing all the work of chasing the other company. Automation or not, I think many companies aren't able or willing to put in the (team)work to create a working hiring process.
pavel_lishin
With no offense intended, it sounds like you are making a lot of assumptions about how difficult or easy someone else's job is, without any experience in that particular field.
datadrivenangel
People lie and embellish on their resumes, and having a set of basic questions about the role/topic that a recruiter can ask can radically reduce the amount of no-hire technical interviews.
LinuxBender
I have done many thousands of interviews and found that the pre-screening is bypassed by search engines. Even when I phone screen people myself they are trying to quietly Google things in the background so I would ask open ended questions that I know Google will trip over itself on. Even that is not great now given how much LLM's have improved. In the end I found that the persons chances of being hired had more to do with how desperate management were to stuff positions to elevate themselves. At least I was able to document my results where management could not remove it so if a problem came up it was not on me.