Some of things the newbie wannabee saleweasels, sorry, recruitment professionals, will do are truly awful.
I have personally seen candidates blown out of the water for a role just because the agent can get a bigger payoff for another candidate. Even though the process was basically complete - the agent lied to both client and candidate to accomplish this.
They will try to pump and harvest new candidates for their network of contacts to spam them for leads.
They will advertise fake roles to harvest CVs.
They will nuke your application with big companies when you are represented by an alternative rival agency (usually accomplished by forwarding your CV again for the same role, to make your overall application look unprofessional).
They are scum. But it seems today we are stuck with them...
You're stuck with them only if you don't build good networks. This doesn't happen overnight, but over time, you should be able to get a heads-up on new opportunities without having to deal with recruiters.
Most recruiters are terrible. Turnover in their industry seems to be sky-high. If you find even one who is good at what they do, maintain contact with them. Otherwise, they often aren't worth the time you'll inevitably waste.
I do not understand this. Who/What are these recruiters and in which fields are they relevant?
I work in tech, and when I'm looking for work somewhere I don't have any contacts yet I'll just send them my cv directly. No need for a middle man or escrow service or things like that.
Edit: Perhaps my comments seems rude, sarcastic or condescending. That's not how I meant it.
I'm genuinely curious about how this all works, since I've never seen or been contacted by a recruiter. Nor have I heard such things from colleagues. I do not live the the states, perhaps this is not a common practice in Europe?
These recruiters act as matchmakers. The basic idea is that you don't know about all the companies that might want to hire you, so you can't send them your cv. You talk to one (or a few) recruiters and they do the leg work to talk to lots of companies to find the few that you would be interested in. If you accept an offer, the recruiter gets a substantial payout from the company that hired you. If the recruiter is good they save time for both the candidate and the hiring company. If the recruiter is bad they waste you time by trying to get you to talk to lots of companies when randomly sending out your cv would have worked just as well.
I get a few emails from recruiters on linkedin and most of them are actually pretty nice... I realize most if not all of the emails are templated, but it's fine, usually if you respond, you get a human response back.
If I can help them (and help a friend or myself who is looking for a job), then I do, if not, I tell them I don't know anyone, being polite goes a long way, I think.
Recruiters are doing their jobs, in a pretty hostile environment (with posts like this), and just like any other job, there are those that will make the profession look bad, or aren't very good (yet).
[EDIT] - Is it possible that I'm somehow insulated from these really really bad recruiters somehow? I'm in Austin, TX (not SV), so maybe that's somehow it? Never had recruitment emails as ridiculous as what I have been reading
Can't say for sure but I imagine the ratio of candidates to jobs is better most places than in SV. Right now skilled SV engineers have so many options without even thinking about answering cold calls from recruiters that the situation just devolves... recruiters get desperate, "creative", start spamming, candidates ignore them, bills keep coming in, cycle escalates and repeats.
Recruiter: "Dave the Cxx is a great guy and will really like you."
..fast forward to the interview..
Recruiter: "Dave, it's nice to meet you."
It turns out Dave did like me, but he specifically asked for someone local and I had a 45 minute commute. At that point neither of us were sure why I was there.
It wasn't a bad drive. This guy just really hated his 1hr drive at a previous company so assumed his employees would also hate it and not like the job.
This demonstrates the outrageous entitlement of tech workers these days. It's absurd that the way you treat people who offer you opportunity and employment is by mocking them and embarrassing them! At best, you can be flattered and find an amazing place to work, and at worst, you trash an email without a response. Act like global citizens and realize how truly amazing it is that you have a job let alone many offers, and instead of spending time spewing derision and cruelty, spend it building something great.
I disagree. Humour is a method of dealing with frustration. Having unsolicited recruiters contact you with vague terms, simply to meet a quota is frustrating. The recruiters who are doing a good job are not speaking in cliches, or mass soliciting, and so they won't appear on this website.
That's one way of looking at it, sure. While tech workers might be entitled, we're also a hot commodity and work hard to be so. These slimy recruiters are like the family that pops up when you win the lottery. Opportunists who lie and manipulate to try and get their chunk of the tech money.
Not all recruiters are this way, but the good ones aren't the ones being made fun of. The ones who went straight from a used car lot to becoming a tech recruiter "because there's money there" are the ones being targeted here. Do you really expect hard working intelligent people to respect slimy smooth talkers?
I think the unfortunate logical outcome of your theory is "You have no right to criticize the practice's employed by recruiters but rather you should just be completely thankful you're wanted" Not what you're probably after but the natural outcome of trying to create only black and white vs a shade of grey on issues.
This is the major thing. The bad ones don't do any homeworks and basically just spam based on keywords. The good ones at the least look at my profile/resume and can articulate why I would be a good fit for position X based on my history. I'm always polite but some of these people clearly have no idea about the positions they are recruiting for, especially the differences in technology. Then you have the pushy ones. "How much are you making now? Well this position pays 20% less I want to submit you for it", no thanks.
I think you have a point about the entitlement that tech workers have. This is a problem that many would kill to have. We should keep that in mind.
As years pass, though, it is easy to get snarky about the nonsense that passes for recruiting. I'm always polite to anyone contacting me, even thanking them for reaching out, but I can't suppress shaking my head at some of the things I've seen.
Head hunters are the real estate agents of employment. If you think their motives have anything to do with altruism, you're definitely sucking what they're blowing.
I think overall those recruiters get off lightly. Most graduates don't realize what's going on at the beginning and take those interviews seriously, and later won't call them out on their BS.
Do I have skills in "Server"? Took me a little to realize they meant "SQL Server", but I can see how you could glance over these weird letters and just read that one familiar word "server"...
Of course you have to play the game, and if they are the gatekeepers to the job you want do that course with certificate so they can tick off that box and let you in...
Five years in the industry here and I've gone through about that many jobs, too.
Not once, ever, have I had a conversation with a third-party recruiter lead to a job offer. Every job I've gotten, I've had to do the legwork myself. Meanwhile, all that these recruiters do is waste the time that I could have spent doing actual job hunting.
I disagree. The cost isn't always just "trashing an email without a response." Many times recruiters will mislead you and waste your time with downright deceptive practices.
I once had a recruiter contact me about a product management job with a fairly well known company in New York City. After a couple of emails and a phone conversation it came to light that he wasn't actually recruiting for the PM position he contacted me for, but rather a junior programming position in their office in Utah.
When I laughed and said I was only (possibly) interested in the position that he had originally contacted me for, he went so far as to try to explain to me why I was unqualified for a PM job and that I should seriously consider a job which, quite frankly, I was rather overqualified for and for which they would not have been able to afford my services. Besides being insulting, he wasted my time by intentionally misleading me, which angered me more than anything. Stories like these are the reason the recruiting profession has a bad name.
I know of and have worked with some very high-quality recruiters who were earnest and upfront and understood the position for which they were recruiting very well. I think that the few horrible recruiters who waste everyone's time destroy the reputation of the occupation.
The recruiters are not the ones offering the opportunity and employment. Most of the time, they are actually forcefully interposing themselves between me and that opportunity.
My "outrageous entitlement" stems from the fact that I have a specialist skill that is relatively rare, yet also highly in demand, at least for today. That combination allows me to charge more for my skill than most other workers can charge for theirs.
This means that companies may have difficulty renting that skill as a price low enough to justify the expense, as they can be outbid by other businesses. Those high-bidding businesses do not need recruiters. They publicly advertise, and get enough responses to filter their own candidate pool. The recruiter offers a company a more directed advertisement, aimed at folks who might not necessarily be looking for a particular opportunity, but might be willing to pursue it anyway.
Recruiting is advertising and sales.
We are not mocking the company offering the opportunity. If they are embarrassed, it would only be because sleazy, inept, and ignorant people, operating under the color of agency, spread the word about it.
This situation is very much like a person that offers to do all my Amazon shopping for me, who helpfully takes several hours of my time to figure out what I want, then ignores all that and buys for me everything listed in his own store, with the occasional outside purchase completed through an affiliate program. In all cases, I would be better served by declining the offer and doing my own shopping.
Recruiters aren't here to offer anyone opportunity or employment. They're here to make a big commission off of hiring a high-salary techie, and can be very pushy in achieving that goal.
"Hey, I realize you're not probably looking for a job, but I'd really love to connect with you to talk about finding a new job! We are an early-stage startup that's funded by <name dropping goes here>."
"You still haven't responded to my email. Just wanted to make sure you saw it! We have a super-great culture and are working on big problems using fancy technologies and you should feel privileged just to be hearing from us. You know, if you aren't looking for a job, you can also give me contact information for your friends so I can hassle them as well."
"Ok, you still haven't responded to me. I hope you don't think I'm spamming you because I'm not. I understand that you're probably happy at <current employer>, but could you please just give us a chance? We really need you."
I should add that it's not just recruiters doing this stuff. In fact, startup executives do much the same thing, but also add an "I'm the CEO and I chose you personally! Don't you feel lucky?"
If they were actually offering me employment, this would be rude.
Most of them aren't offering me employment. They are offering to have me do a bunch of work for a position I might have no chance of getting or is otherwise completely inappropriate for me.
Lottery salesman aren't offering me a million dollars.
For me, the biggest gripe is the "Company - Confidential" stuff. I can handle buzzword bingo. Nine times out of ten, the recruiter is reading from a script that he or she did not write. No sense in shooting the messenger over that. But I think we've reached peak ridiculousness in terms of "stealth" and confidential companies. Are you recruiting me for an undisclosed company in Langley, VA? Fair. If not, let's drop the top-secrecy. [1]
If you can't tell me anything about what company I'd be working for, I can't tell you if I'm genuinely interested. I'm not a faceless program that responds automatically to the right salary, equity, and title inputs. It's a bit more complex than that. At the very least, I need to know what company and what product I'm going to be working with. (And no, "it's a ___ app" is not sufficient. Show me the actual product).
Some recruiters are awesome, btw. My general experience is that in-house recruiters are better than hired guns. The in-house people know the company and its culture, and they often have direct lines into the hiring manager. Not all of them are great, of course, but there's a better wheat/chaff ratio there.
[1] I realize there's often a political need for secrecy, such as when you're replacing someone currently in a role. Or if you're trying to poach from a competitor for a given role, and you don't want it known that you're doing so. That said, both of these scenarios will out themselves eventually. In my experience, any veneer of confidentiality will evaporate the second you approach your first serious candidate. Especially if you're talking to candidates at a competitor.
I always assumed it had more to do with the recruiter trying to make sure you don't cut them out of the loop and negotiate directly with the company for a position.
The reason why recruiters don't want to share the company name is because they are afraid you will circumvent them, apply directly to the company and they won't get their commission.
It's a pretty unfounded fear IMO and they would be better off just sharing the company name. I have friends who are recruiters who get a much higher response rate when they share more details about the job. Hopefully it becomes the new norm.
Shameless plug: I'm building a job search tool for developers that screens out jobs from 3rd party recruiters and staffing agencies: http://www.codejobs.io/
"I have friends who are recruiters who get a much higher response rate when they share more details about the job. Hopefully it becomes the new norm."
Yeah, I'd think the fear would be mostly unfounded. It's understandable, but it strikes me as an edge case. If you're telling me about a role, and I wasn't aware the company was hiring for that role, then it logically follows that I don't have deep, active connections into that company. So the danger that I'm going to maneuver around you is low. I'm sure it happens from time to time, but disclosure probably has a higher expected value than secrecy. Especially if disclosure improves response rates.
I realize things are different on job sites. If you disclose the company, then anyone who comes across your posting can just go to the company's site and circumvent you. But axiomatically, you shouldn't be relying too heavily on job sites if you're a recruiter. The company hired you for your network, and for your ability to find (and vet) interesting people. If it wanted to post listings online, it wouldn't need a third party to do so.
Why not just give the recruiter the commission if they can prove they contacted the prospect before the prospect contacted the company (i.e. that they were circumvented), or at least redirect the prospect back to the recruiter for any negotiations?
What @seanflyon said. Plus part of the perceived value of working with a 3rd party recruiter as a company is that they are actively sourcing and screening candidates to make sure they are a good fit. Just simply contacting them doesn't mean you screened them up front.
There are situations where a candidate learns about the job through a recruiter, speaks with them, and then applies to the job on their own. In those cases a recruiter have a more legitimate claim, depending on the contract they've negotiated with the company.
For the company, there is a strong incentive not to pay a 20-25% finders fee if they don't have to so recruiters have to be their own advocates in these situations.
I agree 20% is excessive if the recruiter just told someone about the job, but it seems like they should still get something for finding the future employee in the first place.
Many times it's also because the companies want to keep the positions secret. If a company wants to quietly replace their VP of Engineering, it won't be on any job boards, and they don't want anyone who isn't interviewing for the position to know about it.
Everyone will ultimately give up the firm name prior to sending the resume, but there are reputable firms who wait until they know you're serious. (If 100 candidates know the firm name, word will leak out. If only 5 do, then perhaps not)
That's true. There are plenty of jobs that are never posted online either because they are trying to fill a role on the sly or the company just simply does not want to deal with the flood of unqualified applicants they'll get from job boards.
"If 100 candidates know the firm name, word will leak out. If only 5 do, then perhaps not"
I would imagine that after a certain inflection point, p(leak) scales exponentially as n(people you've told) scales linearly. Obviously your probability of a leak is extremely high if you've told 100 people -- but after a certain number n, practically speaking, your probability is high enough. That n might be as few as 5 people, or as many as 50, but it's probably pretty low.
Definitely not linear. I'm pretty sure it's similar math to "If X of your friends have seen Viral Junk Z, then you most likely will have too." That's why I chose two very far apart #s. :-)
I think I got one of these a few months ago. A recruiter at "an executive search firm" emailed saying my name "was mentioned in connection with a CTO/SVP Eng brief" they were trying to fill, specifying that "It’s a confidential search". Which at the time I assumed just meant they couldn't mention the company name, but then in an (unsolicited) followup email they told me the company name, so possibly they did mean they were trying to keep it quiet.
The kicker is I'm a junior dev not long out of uni, and not qualified to be CTO of a ham sandwich. If they were trying to keep it quiet, they were doing a pretty terrible job of it.
Sooner or later I'm going to need to know the name of the company (unless they want to hire me sight unseen). What stops me from circumventing them then?
I think this is a ridiculous fear, and I've often told recruiters 'no thanks', because of this practice. I don't know you, you don't know me. If you don't want to trust me w/ the details which can directly impact both our lives (my potential future employer, your potential commission), why would I trust you with the details that impact just my life (my future career)?
To set up the interview, the recruiter sends your contact details to the company. Once that happens, as far as that company is concerned, the recruiter owns you.
Actually, the fear of circumventing wasn't the historical reason. I believe the bigger fear for most recruiters was other recruiters coming in and taking that client's business.
Now that applying for jobs has become so easy, circumventing is an issue, but the trend of hiding company names goes back to when applying for jobs was much more time consuming.
I do list my clients names publicly, but they also provide me some fee up front which helps justify this risk. Pure contingency search, which makes up the large majority of recruiting, comes with 100% risk on the recruiter and contingency firms are less likely to post names.
For the longest time I thought this was entirely unfounded as well. Then I applied for a position with a start-up that seemed quite interesting and I had only found out about it due to the recruiter.
I went through the whole interview process and the company, who I shall leave unnamed, wanted to hire me. They didn't however want to pay the recruiter fee even though they had explicitly reached out to the agency to do their recruiting.
The company's take was that recruiters were worthless and just fucking them out of money; so now that the work was done they wanted to bypass the recruiting firm and hire me directly and pocket the fees.
Ultimately I walked away from the whole thing because I didn't want to work somewhere with such questionable ethics at the top.
Yeah, I would definitely consider that a red flag, and it sounds as though you made the right decision. If a company is willing to "cheat" on that front, what else is it willing to do to gain marginal advantage over employees and partners? There's a fine line between being a scrappy, rule-breaking kind of company and being a company without an ethical compass.
I always like to piss them off by asking why they should get a cut of my hourly rate, since the don't know what they are talking about, how can they possibly add value?
Or another fun thing to do: send them your CV in PDF format, so they can't "improve" your CV for their clients, that usually pisses them off. I once had a "Professional international recruitment bureau" with "more then 40 years of combined experience" that told me they did not know how to open a PDF file...
These days most of them seem to know how to edit PDFs.
I kind of want to add a PGP signature to my resume, and add an opening line that warns the recipient not to trust the resume unless the signature matches up. Naturally, the recruiters would just nuke any mention of the signature and carry on.
Maybe just include the checksum of the .pdf, without loudly mentioning what it is? The right people will know what to do with that, and the wrong ones won't.
Good idea, but if you're including the checksum in the file, you can't use too good an algorithm and still expect to find a collision. I guess for some positions collision-finding would be impressive?
I mean, shouldn't your CV come off of the LaTeX presses in .pdf format anyway?
Though continuing your line of reasoning, you could output it as .dvi or something more exotic, such that the hiring manager will have no trouble running through his command line to look at, but non-technical peoples' attempts to view/modify it will be wholly stymied.
> you could output it as .dvi or something more exotic, such that the hiring manager will have no trouble running through his command line to look at, but non-technical peoples' attempts to view/modify it will be wholly stymied.
That's more likely to backfire than prove to be a good strategy. Because the non-technical are usually on the frontline weeding out "bad" applicants. If you make it tough for them, you're done.
I speak from experience. (Remarkably similar experience to what we're talking about now actually... I was almost not hired, until I went on to jump over the HR and speak directly to the technical higher-ups (I could do this because my I had contacts within the company)).
I had a recruiter contact me 10 years ago, asked what I was interested in. Didn't contact me again, then 2 years later called me with a really interesting job, (underwater robots!) I didn't get it sadly.
When I was looking to change positions a year ago, I went to look for him, but he had "retired" and became a preacher in New Hampshire. Not sure what to make of that.
Headhunting is a strange field. 90% of the recruiters are less than garbage, while 10% are worth their weight in gold.
The one comment I'll add is, like any cold calling, it's a very tough job. At the very least, I try to be polite to everyone, because you never know how hard it is to be in their shoes. In addition, if they're remotely reputable, I'll give them names that fit their search. (In my field I tend to know who is looking)
The key is to shut them down as soon as they start doing anything that smells of being unethical:
- Asking for where else you are interviewing.
- Asking for information not relevant to the position.
- Not telling you which company the resume is getting sent to prior to their submission.
- Pulling lines from Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room, the Wolf of Wallstreet or similar.
It is amazing that many of these folks can keep jobs, but I guess it's like being a gym membership salesperson. Only the best last.
I hadn't lived in Chicago for years, but I still get calls from the area from companies I've never submitted my resume to, and almost never in dribs and drabs, always several in a day.
One disgruntled recruiter must have sold their entire database of resumes to a few other firms, and they put their respective B-teams on chewing through it.
I mentioned an internship with Lotus Notes at the bottom of my resume, and I get calls: "Lotus Notes Administrator 8+ Years"
I get this too - I will get a few quiet months, then a couple calls at the same time. I attributed it to a network effect of a couple folks reaching through the same group of friends. Why would someone sell a list when you can get it for free on LinkedIn?
You don't want to be submitted by two different recruiters for the same job. It's awkward for the job's HR and for everyone else involved, and could potentially invalidate your resume submission. But recruiting firms also use this mechanism to feel out their competition.
Rec: "I have a position with AAA Airline you might be interested in."
Me: :"Sorry I was already submitted to them via Firm B."
Rec: "Oh, you should have gone with us instead. It's always amusing watching them try to work the AAA Airline jobs. Are you working with SoAndSo?"
I think it's acceptable to ask where else you're interviewing, but not inquire as to how you got the interviews or what other recruiters you're working with. And I'm not sure it's fair to classify this as a dealbreaker. You can't blame them for trying and it's easy to bypass by simply saying "I'm sorry I'm not comfortable with sharing that information."
If you're working with multiple recruiters and recruiter B tells you about an opportunity you're already pursuing through recruiter A you can then explain you're already pursuing it.
This is perfectly acceptable. Where it isn't acceptable is for them to say, "Just so I don't send your resume to the wrong place, where else are you interviewing?"
This can be them trolling for new leads.
The proper answer is, "How about you just let me know about companies first?"
I'm happy to share the list of the other places I'm considering with any recruiters who will also share their list of candidates they have under consideration. It's only fair.
- Asking for where else you are interviewing.
This is important to a recruiter. If you are actively looking for work, it tells them how far down the road you are with other applications. If you're a good fit for the job they are asking about then this will push them to get things down as quickly as possible. They don't want you taking a different offer in the middle of the interviewing process. However, yes, this can also be fishing for leads. To me, it's acceptable to ask though.
- Not telling you which company the resume is getting sent to prior to their submission.
A recruiter is paid an "introduction fee". If they are not the one that introduces you to the client then they're not getting a fee. Imagine though, you're down to the last two at interview stage. You applied directly for the position and the other guy is through a recruiter. It's a very close decision for the job but taking the other guy would cost the client $8k. That may be enough to swing it in your favour and for the recruiter to lose out. When I was a recruiter, I can remember a time where I told somebody the client before submitting them and they got off the call then immediately went direct to the client for the above reason. For me, it's acceptable for the recruiter not to tell me the company if they tell me at least their size and market sector. They must tell me as soon as they have submitted my CV though. If I'm not happy, I'll cancel my application at that point.
Hmm I've worked with about 6 different recruiters so far, and all of them have been really helpful. It seems that only the bad apples make it on HN's front page, and a lot of people ride the hate-train.
I really don't understand why the majority dislikes recruiters.
I've had the pleasure of working with a recruiter who spent the time to get to know me personally and to make sure I get exactly what I'm looking for. He back-channeled and worked as a mediator giving me details and information. It was actually a very pleasant experience.
Everyone that hates on recruiters should be thankful that our industry is full of opportunities and embrace the fact that it's pretty damn nice to be able to have the jobs come to you. Who cares if you got a few emails or messages on LinkedIn. Change your LinkedIn privacy settings and email them explaining you're not interested instead of writing a shitty blog post trying to bash people. I bet if you were in a different industry, you'd be on HN bitching about how hard it is to find a job and how unfair employers were. So shut the fuck up and stop complaining. No one wants to hear your childish rants.
I agree that we should be thankful that our skills are in such high demand, and aggressive recruiters are just a sign of that.
That said, I've seen my fair share of horror stories with bad recruiters. I think the award for "worst recruiter ever" goes to one who blasted a developer Meetup mailing list, then (upon being told off by the group) proceeded to harass them and send death treats to them, copying the entire mailing list (eg "I will be waiting for you on Monday morning at <your office address> ready to push you off the balcony).
That was certainly an extreme example, but unfortunately there are enough recruiters that, even if bad apples are relatively rare, everyone has had horror stories, just by the sheer number alone. The bad recruiters are the most visible because they're the ones who send generic spam and blast developer lists, whereas the good recruiters contact fewer people and are more personal and targeted in their approach.
In other words, a person is more likely to interact with bad recruiters, not necessarily because most recruiters are bad, but because the bad ones interact with more people.
I'm thankful that our industry is full of opportunities, but that's not because of recruiters; they're just middlemen. The opportunities still exist without them. If there weren't so many recruiters doing a less effective job of matching qualified candidates with available positions than the candidates could do by searching on their own, there wouldn't be so much ridicule and hostility towards recruiters.
I had exactly one good experience with a recruiter. It got all the way to the offer stage, and then the CEO of the prospective employer told me point blank that he could not offer me more than 75% of what I was already earning at my existing job, because I was working with a recruiter, who would be paid based on that rate. He also subtly implied that I might be offered a fat pay raise after six months. With great difficulty, I avoided calling him an unethical asshole to his face. Then I told my recruiter about it, her company summarily dropped the client, and she went on medical leave with a Lupus diagnosis.
In that case, it was not the recruiter who was the sleazy douchebag, but it still didn't result in a new job.
Employers are unfair, too. We complain because we want life to be fair, no matter how often it shows itself to be otherwise.
I've had similar experiences with recruiters, so I don't really understand all the hate. If you're not looking you can be direct and get rid of them quickly without being rude, and if you are looking you just need to be smart like any other business transaction and keep an eye out for time-wasters and scams. The more I work with them, the more I appreciate their services and the better I get at spotting the 'real' professionals.
My biggest two problems with recruiters.
1. They aren't technical in the least (90% of the time) and waste my time by trying to act like they are. You should understand the field your recruiting for. Not saying they have to know much, but have a basic understanding of programming and can write a 'hello world' app.
2. At least part of their commission would go to me if they weren't there. I'm not saying it would be everything, but I'm losing out on some pay everytime I go through a recruiter.
If we're talking about LinkedIn messages, it is easy to shrug those off. You can either ignore them, or fire off a quick reply to tell them you aren't interested.
What is outrageous, on the other hand, is receiving calls at a work/office number or at your company email address. To me that shows a remarkable lack of tact.
I find the complaining about recruiters to be pretty obnoxious. Might as well enjoy the attention while it lasts. Soon enough Zuck's PAC will succeed in flooding the U.S. market with software engineers from India and China, and you won't be getting those bothersome recruiting calls.
You really think Zuck's PAC will succeed? Right now the political climate is being more controlled by the right, and it seems they're dead set on combating any immigration reform of any sort anytime in the foreseeable future. I'm pretty sure it's not happening, but would like to hear your thoughts on why it might.
I'm afraid it may be a compromise that allows the left to trumpet forward progress in immigration reform, while allowing the right to give ground in a way that doesn't involve any compromise on their core opposition to immigration from Mexico and Latin America.
My favorite term to use against the bad ones: "That's privileged information".
I love the stupid look they get on their face when they finally realize they are talking to the real deal and their salesmen and Alpha-dog bullshit is not going to fool anyone. I go easy only on the recent college grads (they get a first-timer credit from me), but only if I can still spot remnants of a soul.
Knowledge is power and I know more about their industry than they know about mine, 100x fold.
Listen up nerds: When the bubble pops, and the recruiters stop calling you'll miss them. Think about how lucky you are right now to work in an industry that has basically an insatiable demand for talent.
Sure, most recruiters suck, but they are here because things are good right now.
Not sure if you are calling me a nerd? Well because I'm not and I can happily guarantee you wouldn't say that to my face.
Regardless, the programming bubble will pop... I don't know when or how, black swan per chance? However, a little professionalism can go a long way in the recruiter industry or any industry for that matter.
Yes, I am specifically calling you a nerd. Not the 1000s of nerds, including myself, who regularly congregate at Hacker News to read about things of interest to nerds.
So despite all the evidence to the contrary, I actually meant to call chad_strategic a nerd. Kudos for figuring that one out.
My favorite emails are recruiters asking me to apply to positions which require a college degree and 5+ years experience even though I clearly state pretty much everywhere (LinkedIn, personal site, Twitter, etc) that I'm a student. Needless to say, I don't end up responding to those.
I do not actually believe in karma or any other form of cosmic justice. But blowing off easy employment prospects in public strikes me as the kind of collective sin that we will all be struck down for eventually. It's bad form.
With that disclaimer, the thing that personally gets to me about recruiting emails is name-dropping distasteful investors. I worry about the teams out there being created from programmers responding positively to the idea of working for the guy who's trying to keep poor people off of his private beach. Or the guy trying to build his own offshore platform for monkey knife fighting tournaments. Or the guy trying to split up California to make new republican senators. Or the guy who's a notorious patent troll.
It's not necessarily easy employment prospects though. Recruiters are playing a numbers game, too. For a given job opening, it's in their best financial interest to pitch as many potential candidates as possible, in case one sticks. There is no real cost to them to solicit a multitude of résumés, and no immediate benefit whether the position is a good fit on either side, as long as a hire occurs through them.
The point is really that this experience isn't shared by other people in other industries. I'd feel silly explaining how many unsolicited recruiting emails I get to the folks I know in entertainment, fashion, marketing, or whatever. They have to hustle just to get interviews. They get laid off. They're unemployed for long stretches. They have to suffer through horrifying unpaid internships.
Sure, you're being spammed at the top end of the recruiter's funnel here. But the funnel doesn't even exist for a lot of non-tech job descriptions.
114 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadI have personally seen candidates blown out of the water for a role just because the agent can get a bigger payoff for another candidate. Even though the process was basically complete - the agent lied to both client and candidate to accomplish this.
They will try to pump and harvest new candidates for their network of contacts to spam them for leads.
They will advertise fake roles to harvest CVs.
They will nuke your application with big companies when you are represented by an alternative rival agency (usually accomplished by forwarding your CV again for the same role, to make your overall application look unprofessional).
They are scum. But it seems today we are stuck with them...
Most recruiters are terrible. Turnover in their industry seems to be sky-high. If you find even one who is good at what they do, maintain contact with them. Otherwise, they often aren't worth the time you'll inevitably waste.
I work in tech, and when I'm looking for work somewhere I don't have any contacts yet I'll just send them my cv directly. No need for a middle man or escrow service or things like that.
Edit: Perhaps my comments seems rude, sarcastic or condescending. That's not how I meant it.
I'm genuinely curious about how this all works, since I've never seen or been contacted by a recruiter. Nor have I heard such things from colleagues. I do not live the the states, perhaps this is not a common practice in Europe?
If I can help them (and help a friend or myself who is looking for a job), then I do, if not, I tell them I don't know anyone, being polite goes a long way, I think.
Recruiters are doing their jobs, in a pretty hostile environment (with posts like this), and just like any other job, there are those that will make the profession look bad, or aren't very good (yet).
[EDIT] - Is it possible that I'm somehow insulated from these really really bad recruiters somehow? I'm in Austin, TX (not SV), so maybe that's somehow it? Never had recruitment emails as ridiculous as what I have been reading
..fast forward to the interview..
Recruiter: "Dave, it's nice to meet you."
It turns out Dave did like me, but he specifically asked for someone local and I had a 45 minute commute. At that point neither of us were sure why I was there.
Not all recruiters are this way, but the good ones aren't the ones being made fun of. The ones who went straight from a used car lot to becoming a tech recruiter "because there's money there" are the ones being targeted here. Do you really expect hard working intelligent people to respect slimy smooth talkers?
As years pass, though, it is easy to get snarky about the nonsense that passes for recruiting. I'm always polite to anyone contacting me, even thanking them for reaching out, but I can't suppress shaking my head at some of the things I've seen.
Do I have skills in "Server"? Took me a little to realize they meant "SQL Server", but I can see how you could glance over these weird letters and just read that one familiar word "server"...
Of course you have to play the game, and if they are the gatekeepers to the job you want do that course with certificate so they can tick off that box and let you in...
I have excellent opportunity in a place two thousand miles away for a 3 month contract with possibility of extension $45/hr C2C.
Not once, ever, have I had a conversation with a third-party recruiter lead to a job offer. Every job I've gotten, I've had to do the legwork myself. Meanwhile, all that these recruiters do is waste the time that I could have spent doing actual job hunting.
I once had a recruiter contact me about a product management job with a fairly well known company in New York City. After a couple of emails and a phone conversation it came to light that he wasn't actually recruiting for the PM position he contacted me for, but rather a junior programming position in their office in Utah.
When I laughed and said I was only (possibly) interested in the position that he had originally contacted me for, he went so far as to try to explain to me why I was unqualified for a PM job and that I should seriously consider a job which, quite frankly, I was rather overqualified for and for which they would not have been able to afford my services. Besides being insulting, he wasted my time by intentionally misleading me, which angered me more than anything. Stories like these are the reason the recruiting profession has a bad name.
I know of and have worked with some very high-quality recruiters who were earnest and upfront and understood the position for which they were recruiting very well. I think that the few horrible recruiters who waste everyone's time destroy the reputation of the occupation.
My "outrageous entitlement" stems from the fact that I have a specialist skill that is relatively rare, yet also highly in demand, at least for today. That combination allows me to charge more for my skill than most other workers can charge for theirs.
This means that companies may have difficulty renting that skill as a price low enough to justify the expense, as they can be outbid by other businesses. Those high-bidding businesses do not need recruiters. They publicly advertise, and get enough responses to filter their own candidate pool. The recruiter offers a company a more directed advertisement, aimed at folks who might not necessarily be looking for a particular opportunity, but might be willing to pursue it anyway.
Recruiting is advertising and sales.
We are not mocking the company offering the opportunity. If they are embarrassed, it would only be because sleazy, inept, and ignorant people, operating under the color of agency, spread the word about it.
This situation is very much like a person that offers to do all my Amazon shopping for me, who helpfully takes several hours of my time to figure out what I want, then ignores all that and buys for me everything listed in his own store, with the occasional outside purchase completed through an affiliate program. In all cases, I would be better served by declining the offer and doing my own shopping.
"Hey, I realize you're not probably looking for a job, but I'd really love to connect with you to talk about finding a new job! We are an early-stage startup that's funded by <name dropping goes here>."
"You still haven't responded to my email. Just wanted to make sure you saw it! We have a super-great culture and are working on big problems using fancy technologies and you should feel privileged just to be hearing from us. You know, if you aren't looking for a job, you can also give me contact information for your friends so I can hassle them as well."
"Ok, you still haven't responded to me. I hope you don't think I'm spamming you because I'm not. I understand that you're probably happy at <current employer>, but could you please just give us a chance? We really need you."
I should add that it's not just recruiters doing this stuff. In fact, startup executives do much the same thing, but also add an "I'm the CEO and I chose you personally! Don't you feel lucky?"
If they were actually offering me employment, this would be rude.
Most of them aren't offering me employment. They are offering to have me do a bunch of work for a position I might have no chance of getting or is otherwise completely inappropriate for me.
Lottery salesman aren't offering me a million dollars.
"Dear Philip,
Must have the following:
At least one strong OO language - (C#, C++ or Java)
AND
At least one strong scripting language - (python, perl, ruby, PHP, javascript)
Include REST & API in search terms.
It will likely be easier to find someone who's specialty is in scripting, but has experience in an OO language as well.
We want someone who has picked up multiple languages and has a desire to do more.
2+ years experience minimum in professional requirement.
Hacker mentality...use the language that works for the specific situation. "
If you can't tell me anything about what company I'd be working for, I can't tell you if I'm genuinely interested. I'm not a faceless program that responds automatically to the right salary, equity, and title inputs. It's a bit more complex than that. At the very least, I need to know what company and what product I'm going to be working with. (And no, "it's a ___ app" is not sufficient. Show me the actual product).
Some recruiters are awesome, btw. My general experience is that in-house recruiters are better than hired guns. The in-house people know the company and its culture, and they often have direct lines into the hiring manager. Not all of them are great, of course, but there's a better wheat/chaff ratio there.
[1] I realize there's often a political need for secrecy, such as when you're replacing someone currently in a role. Or if you're trying to poach from a competitor for a given role, and you don't want it known that you're doing so. That said, both of these scenarios will out themselves eventually. In my experience, any veneer of confidentiality will evaporate the second you approach your first serious candidate. Especially if you're talking to candidates at a competitor.
All people get motivated by both their work and money, but the relative weights of those factors can differ a lot.
It's a pretty unfounded fear IMO and they would be better off just sharing the company name. I have friends who are recruiters who get a much higher response rate when they share more details about the job. Hopefully it becomes the new norm.
Shameless plug: I'm building a job search tool for developers that screens out jobs from 3rd party recruiters and staffing agencies: http://www.codejobs.io/
Yeah, I'd think the fear would be mostly unfounded. It's understandable, but it strikes me as an edge case. If you're telling me about a role, and I wasn't aware the company was hiring for that role, then it logically follows that I don't have deep, active connections into that company. So the danger that I'm going to maneuver around you is low. I'm sure it happens from time to time, but disclosure probably has a higher expected value than secrecy. Especially if disclosure improves response rates.
I realize things are different on job sites. If you disclose the company, then anyone who comes across your posting can just go to the company's site and circumvent you. But axiomatically, you shouldn't be relying too heavily on job sites if you're a recruiter. The company hired you for your network, and for your ability to find (and vet) interesting people. If it wanted to post listings online, it wouldn't need a third party to do so.
There are situations where a candidate learns about the job through a recruiter, speaks with them, and then applies to the job on their own. In those cases a recruiter have a more legitimate claim, depending on the contract they've negotiated with the company.
For the company, there is a strong incentive not to pay a 20-25% finders fee if they don't have to so recruiters have to be their own advocates in these situations.
Everyone will ultimately give up the firm name prior to sending the resume, but there are reputable firms who wait until they know you're serious. (If 100 candidates know the firm name, word will leak out. If only 5 do, then perhaps not)
1) Confidentiality in the search
2) Access to people not currently looking
3) Access to candidates that are perfectly suited for the job
4) Strategic advice
For better or worse, most are only capable of #1. The ones that can do #3 and #4 are worth their weight in gold.
I would imagine that after a certain inflection point, p(leak) scales exponentially as n(people you've told) scales linearly. Obviously your probability of a leak is extremely high if you've told 100 people -- but after a certain number n, practically speaking, your probability is high enough. That n might be as few as 5 people, or as many as 50, but it's probably pretty low.
The kicker is I'm a junior dev not long out of uni, and not qualified to be CTO of a ham sandwich. If they were trying to keep it quiet, they were doing a pretty terrible job of it.
I think this is a ridiculous fear, and I've often told recruiters 'no thanks', because of this practice. I don't know you, you don't know me. If you don't want to trust me w/ the details which can directly impact both our lives (my potential future employer, your potential commission), why would I trust you with the details that impact just my life (my future career)?
Now that applying for jobs has become so easy, circumventing is an issue, but the trend of hiding company names goes back to when applying for jobs was much more time consuming.
I do list my clients names publicly, but they also provide me some fee up front which helps justify this risk. Pure contingency search, which makes up the large majority of recruiting, comes with 100% risk on the recruiter and contingency firms are less likely to post names.
I went through the whole interview process and the company, who I shall leave unnamed, wanted to hire me. They didn't however want to pay the recruiter fee even though they had explicitly reached out to the agency to do their recruiting.
The company's take was that recruiters were worthless and just fucking them out of money; so now that the work was done they wanted to bypass the recruiting firm and hire me directly and pocket the fees.
Ultimately I walked away from the whole thing because I didn't want to work somewhere with such questionable ethics at the top.
I always like to piss them off by asking why they should get a cut of my hourly rate, since the don't know what they are talking about, how can they possibly add value?
Or another fun thing to do: send them your CV in PDF format, so they can't "improve" your CV for their clients, that usually pisses them off. I once had a "Professional international recruitment bureau" with "more then 40 years of combined experience" that told me they did not know how to open a PDF file...
I kind of want to add a PGP signature to my resume, and add an opening line that warns the recipient not to trust the resume unless the signature matches up. Naturally, the recruiters would just nuke any mention of the signature and carry on.
Though continuing your line of reasoning, you could output it as .dvi or something more exotic, such that the hiring manager will have no trouble running through his command line to look at, but non-technical peoples' attempts to view/modify it will be wholly stymied.
That's more likely to backfire than prove to be a good strategy. Because the non-technical are usually on the frontline weeding out "bad" applicants. If you make it tough for them, you're done.
I speak from experience. (Remarkably similar experience to what we're talking about now actually... I was almost not hired, until I went on to jump over the HR and speak directly to the technical higher-ups (I could do this because my I had contacts within the company)).
When I was looking to change positions a year ago, I went to look for him, but he had "retired" and became a preacher in New Hampshire. Not sure what to make of that.
The one comment I'll add is, like any cold calling, it's a very tough job. At the very least, I try to be polite to everyone, because you never know how hard it is to be in their shoes. In addition, if they're remotely reputable, I'll give them names that fit their search. (In my field I tend to know who is looking)
The key is to shut them down as soon as they start doing anything that smells of being unethical:
- Asking for where else you are interviewing.
- Asking for information not relevant to the position.
- Not telling you which company the resume is getting sent to prior to their submission.
- Pulling lines from Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room, the Wolf of Wallstreet or similar.
It is amazing that many of these folks can keep jobs, but I guess it's like being a gym membership salesperson. Only the best last.
I hadn't lived in Chicago for years, but I still get calls from the area from companies I've never submitted my resume to, and almost never in dribs and drabs, always several in a day.
One disgruntled recruiter must have sold their entire database of resumes to a few other firms, and they put their respective B-teams on chewing through it. I mentioned an internship with Lotus Notes at the bottom of my resume, and I get calls: "Lotus Notes Administrator 8+ Years"
spam spam spam spam spam
"Any interest in the below position, please contact me with updated resume.
W2 Contract only. US Citizens, GC, or EADs ONLY! Pay rate depends on experience.
Please don't reply to tell me you are not interested or asking the pay."
I wonder how long you have to work there before they tell you your pay.
Why exactly is this unethical? I've gotten that from pretty much every company I've interviewed with for internships.
Rec: "I have a position with AAA Airline you might be interested in."
Me: :"Sorry I was already submitted to them via Firm B."
Rec: "Oh, you should have gone with us instead. It's always amusing watching them try to work the AAA Airline jobs. Are you working with SoAndSo?"
Me :"Yes..."
Rec :"ha ha ha, best of luck to you guy"
I think it's acceptable to ask where else you're interviewing, but not inquire as to how you got the interviews or what other recruiters you're working with. And I'm not sure it's fair to classify this as a dealbreaker. You can't blame them for trying and it's easy to bypass by simply saying "I'm sorry I'm not comfortable with sharing that information."
If you're working with multiple recruiters and recruiter B tells you about an opportunity you're already pursuing through recruiter A you can then explain you're already pursuing it.
This can be them trolling for new leads.
The proper answer is, "How about you just let me know about companies first?"
If they don't accept that, they're scamming.
- Asking for where else you are interviewing. This is important to a recruiter. If you are actively looking for work, it tells them how far down the road you are with other applications. If you're a good fit for the job they are asking about then this will push them to get things down as quickly as possible. They don't want you taking a different offer in the middle of the interviewing process. However, yes, this can also be fishing for leads. To me, it's acceptable to ask though.
- Not telling you which company the resume is getting sent to prior to their submission. A recruiter is paid an "introduction fee". If they are not the one that introduces you to the client then they're not getting a fee. Imagine though, you're down to the last two at interview stage. You applied directly for the position and the other guy is through a recruiter. It's a very close decision for the job but taking the other guy would cost the client $8k. That may be enough to swing it in your favour and for the recruiter to lose out. When I was a recruiter, I can remember a time where I told somebody the client before submitting them and they got off the call then immediately went direct to the client for the above reason. For me, it's acceptable for the recruiter not to tell me the company if they tell me at least their size and market sector. They must tell me as soon as they have submitted my CV though. If I'm not happy, I'll cancel my application at that point.
http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/are-you-lamp-stack-...
https://twitter.com/bertjwregeer/status/506185678175367168
I really don't understand why the majority dislikes recruiters. I've had the pleasure of working with a recruiter who spent the time to get to know me personally and to make sure I get exactly what I'm looking for. He back-channeled and worked as a mediator giving me details and information. It was actually a very pleasant experience.
Everyone that hates on recruiters should be thankful that our industry is full of opportunities and embrace the fact that it's pretty damn nice to be able to have the jobs come to you. Who cares if you got a few emails or messages on LinkedIn. Change your LinkedIn privacy settings and email them explaining you're not interested instead of writing a shitty blog post trying to bash people. I bet if you were in a different industry, you'd be on HN bitching about how hard it is to find a job and how unfair employers were. So shut the fuck up and stop complaining. No one wants to hear your childish rants.
That said, I've seen my fair share of horror stories with bad recruiters. I think the award for "worst recruiter ever" goes to one who blasted a developer Meetup mailing list, then (upon being told off by the group) proceeded to harass them and send death treats to them, copying the entire mailing list (eg "I will be waiting for you on Monday morning at <your office address> ready to push you off the balcony).
That was certainly an extreme example, but unfortunately there are enough recruiters that, even if bad apples are relatively rare, everyone has had horror stories, just by the sheer number alone. The bad recruiters are the most visible because they're the ones who send generic spam and blast developer lists, whereas the good recruiters contact fewer people and are more personal and targeted in their approach.
In other words, a person is more likely to interact with bad recruiters, not necessarily because most recruiters are bad, but because the bad ones interact with more people.
In that case, it was not the recruiter who was the sleazy douchebag, but it still didn't result in a new job.
Employers are unfair, too. We complain because we want life to be fair, no matter how often it shows itself to be otherwise.
What is outrageous, on the other hand, is receiving calls at a work/office number or at your company email address. To me that shows a remarkable lack of tact.
I love the stupid look they get on their face when they finally realize they are talking to the real deal and their salesmen and Alpha-dog bullshit is not going to fool anyone. I go easy only on the recent college grads (they get a first-timer credit from me), but only if I can still spot remnants of a soul.
Knowledge is power and I know more about their industry than they know about mine, 100x fold.
Sure, most recruiters suck, but they are here because things are good right now.
Regardless, the programming bubble will pop... I don't know when or how, black swan per chance? However, a little professionalism can go a long way in the recruiter industry or any industry for that matter.
So despite all the evidence to the contrary, I actually meant to call chad_strategic a nerd. Kudos for figuring that one out.
With that disclaimer, the thing that personally gets to me about recruiting emails is name-dropping distasteful investors. I worry about the teams out there being created from programmers responding positively to the idea of working for the guy who's trying to keep poor people off of his private beach. Or the guy trying to build his own offshore platform for monkey knife fighting tournaments. Or the guy trying to split up California to make new republican senators. Or the guy who's a notorious patent troll.
Sure, you're being spammed at the top end of the recruiter's funnel here. But the funnel doesn't even exist for a lot of non-tech job descriptions.
twitter.com/actualrecruiter