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Ask HN: What things that tech recruiters do, annoy you the most as an engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: What things that tech recruiters do, annoy you the most as an engineer?

#12
Starting with „the manager of Team xyz has an interesting position and wants to talk to you informally“. And as soon as one agrees, they schedule a full interview loop which contains lots of leetcode madness and zero information about the actual position.

Re: Ask HN: What things that tech recruiters do, annoy you the most as an engineer?

#13
I am on the other side of this. As a hiring manager using recruiters, I am annoyed by:

- lack of diversity in candidates. (not just virtue signaling. if all I see are nearly identical resumes, I assume the recruiter is just phoning it in.)

- candidates “just a little out of your price range” who are 30% over the top end of my budget.

- “confidentially” telling me what other offers a candidate has because then I know they are also leaking my offers to my competitors

- telling me every candidate is great

- telling me every candidate is a hot commodity like they are hotels.com

Re: Ask HN: What things that tech recruiters do, annoy you the most as an engineer?

#14
Persistently messaging you to get you to apply but ghosting you and being unable to provide any status updates after you do.

Will add to the OP’s list by saying they often also leave out even the hiring company’s name and if it’s a defined length contract in the initial message. Why do I need to get on a call for this?

Re: Ask HN: What things that tech recruiters do, annoy you the most as an engineer?

#15

- Ghosting - Sending totally unsuitable vacancies - Refusing to disclose company name - Refusing to disclose salary - Not respecting your time - Fishing for your information without disclosing anything to you Generally having a kind of condescending, slimy, sales like approach in communication, although this is far less common then it used to be.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What things that tech recruiters do, annoy you the most as an engineer?

#17
Sadly I think the biggest pain I've suffered is from recruiters calling and making every conversation a rambly/chatty/friendly call that doesn't actually give any details.

I've been called by recruiters who won't name the company they're recruiting for, the salary range, and are incapable of actually describing the daily-expections beyond buzzwords.

I've found the best approach for me is to google "sysadmin helsinki", etc, and applying directly to companies. Any time I see an application form that wants facebook/linkedin/github details I just close the window.

Dealing with people (in-house recruiters possible) in the actual company cuts actually allows you to have a decent conversation about expected skillsets, areas that are involved, working hours, on-call schedules, salary, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What things that tech recruiters do, annoy you the most as an engineer?

#18

Sending automated messages based on your LinkedIn profile, without actually reading it?

My "one weird trick" for spotting this behavior is using my middle initial on LinkedIn. LinkedIn stores it as a part of my first name, so their spam always starts off with "Hey Mark P.!"

Those emails get ignored. I ignore most automated agency emails as well.

I will always reply to personal emails from in-house recruiters or employees, however. I am starting a new job soon, though, so it's only to thank them for writing.

Re: Ask HN: What things that tech recruiters do, annoy you the most as an engineer?

#19
post #16

Calls. Everyone wants to talk or even video chat. It’s the most annoying thing, not only by recruiters; everything is a voice/video meeting nowadays instead of mail or text.

One 3rd party recruiter told me once that this is so they get paid in case the lead bypasses them and applies directly to company. Anyone aware if this is common?
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