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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?

#181

Post by jlokier »

SkipperCat wrote: post #168

It seems like most folks here are not inclined to talk on the phone with recruiters. I think that is a mistake. I get pinged about once every other month by a recruiter in the FinTech space and I usually speak with them on the phone. They are usually senior recruiters who know about the industry. I find out what skills companies are looking for, what salaries they are willing to pay and other tips about hiring practi…

I agree with you, when it's not so often. Having a certain rate of calls is worth it, even if you don't like calls much, and it can even be enjoyable with the subset of recruiters who behave like empathic human beings.

It can become too much when it's several call requests a day, and some of them can become rather pushy, e.g. demanding references up front before you've even applied for something. I don't get many approaches at the moment, but last year the number ramped up to a point where I had to be selective about phone calls.

Part of it is that a 15 minute call isn't just 15 minutes. If you want good outcomes, there's some preparation involved. A bit of research on the company helps. Refreshing what you recall about $X that they mentioned. And just getting into a good frame of mind to have a productive call. Maybe get a nice drink ready. Even finding somewhere quiet to take a call, if you aren't normally in a suitable place. And there's stopping what else you were doing.

Personally I've enjoyed chatting with many recruiters over the last couple of years, and it has led to some pleasant relationships, and a much better understanding of what's realistically out there. It's also been an opportunity for me to share with recruiters things they didn't know but were interested in, mostly technology areas and terminology.

My current role came from taking a long call with a recruiter more than a year earlier about a different role in a different company. I enjoyed the chat, we talked about the industry in general, technology trends, different skill areas, how to manage projects and so on, as they tried to figure out how to pitch me to the company. That one didn't work out. But a year later I came to their mind for a role somewhere else, I remembered them as well so the new call started out well, and the role turned out to be a great fit for me. They also ended up negotiating for me, undoubtedly helped by the chat from a year before, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. As a result of all the positive interactions I ended up enthusiastic about the new job too.

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

#182

Post by rendall »

hiq wrote: post #156
rendall wrote: post #77

I don't mind tech recruiters as a class. I despise the rare ones who dangle a job they do not actually have in order to get my information in their database. These always seem to be the same ones who gaslight and neg: e.g. "We're looking for people who know what they're doing" and such. Not sure what they accomplish with that, but conversation is over. That's comparatively rare, though. Most are just decent people, m…

> However, I'm of a mind these days that full-time, salaried jobs are rarely the best option. Freelancing, bootstrapping, or founding are all usually better given today's market. Interesting, why do you think that? What has changed? Naively I would tend to think that the quality of freelancing opportunities and that of full-time jobs are correlated, but your comment imply that they're not. What am I missing?

Whether freelancing is better for you really depends on if you can charge a rate that (a) covers necessaries like insurance and pension and (b) is higher than you would receive as a full-timer, and (c) also pay a lower tax rate as a consultancy than as a full-timer. If you can do that, then you also get: every moment on the clock is compensated. Mandatory, boring meeting? Groovy team-building weekend? Stay up late to zoom clients on another continent? All paid. No reason to drag your feet, or complain about management, or worry about being passed up for a promotion. You smile, nod, and send an invoice. People tend to respect your time.

Bootstrapping or founding? Everything that you do is an investment in your future. It's like buying a house rather than renting.

There are exceptions, of course.

> What has changed?

I'm not sure anything has changed. Software is an ever-expanding demand. If you know how to write it, you can charge a premium for this skill.

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

#183

Post by rsj_hn »

bartread wrote: post #145
rsj_hn wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are replying to someone requiring recruiters to use their communication method. Not employers. Imagine I send you an email offering you the rough details of some "opportunity", and you reply with some questions, but then instead of answering those questions directly I reply to you with an invitation for a phone call and a refusal to give a direct answer via email/message. Now who is being entitled? You contacted…

Yes, but as an employer I use both external recruiters, as well as an in-house recruiter, and we all talk to eachother. Recruiters don't operate in a vacuum. It's really no skin off the recruiter's nose if you choose to be difficult: you just won't get any further. Remember that I'm using them to offload some of the considerable effort required to find good candidates who are worth talking to. The context of the GP p…

> Remember that I'm using them to offload some of the considerable effort required to find good candidates who are worth talking to.

Right, because it's very hard trying to find a good candidate now.

> The context of the GP post is getting back to a recruiter to find out more about a job, which suggests you're at least interested in that job.

No, I am open to being persuaded. But without basic details like the name of the company, salary range, rough description of what the job is and location/WFH situation, I cannot say that I am interested or not. I am not going to take time off work and start an interview process -- which costs me vacation time and effort -- with a company that isn't willing to try to prove to me that they are better than my current employer. So if I have a question, then you should answer it if you want me to consider taking the leap to interview with you. You are trying to recruit me. Don't do that with a chip on your shoulder. What kind of salesman tries to make his leads jump through hoops? You are the salesmen here.

On the other hand when I am unemployed and I reach out to you to convince me to hire you, I will give you all my contact info and I will be willing to jump through hoops to convince you to hire me, just as you should be willing to jump through hoops when you are trying to recruit someone to quit their current job and come work for you.

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

#184

Post by valbaca »

Here's my recent gripes:

1. Nonsense spam messages. No content about their company or anything that shows they know anything about me. "Your experience at $COMPANY" doesn't count either.

2. Not using the Calendly (https://calendly.com/) link I send them for scheduling and instead trying to have a email chain of "What's your availability like?" "Does 8:30am work for you?" "What's the best # to reach you?" OMFG use the calendar schedule link I sent you at the beginning of our conversation! Also, my # is at the very top of my resume, so you just showed you didn't even glance at it.

3. Having blinders on when looking at a candidate. One thing I run into a lot is recruiters or interviewers trying to pigeon-hole me into some box like "backend Java developer" or "front-end react developer" or "swift iOS developer" I mean it when I say senior full-stack web and app software engineer. Don't try to reduce my experience and skills and scoff at me when I know what my time is worth and what salary I can expect, because I'm already making that much! You want a candidate that can do *everything* but at intern rates? Don't waste my time and don't ever, ever neg me for having standards that reflect my reality.

4. "Why do you want to work for this company?" Because you're hiring and money is a requisite for existence. Give up this whole "passion for the product or tech" nonsense. You sell a service that pipes data; anyone that pretends to be passionate about that is full of it.

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

#185

Post by edmundsauto »

MillenialMan wrote: post #111
bartread wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any time I see an application form that wants facebook/linkedin/github details I just close the window. You might be doing yourself a disservice there. It varies by company but I ask our HR team to offer the option of LinkedIn profile as an alternative to uploading a CV/resume in case you have the former but don't have the latter to hand or prepared. It's still a minority but I do see people come through who use th…

Why do you find GitHub useless? Doesn't having access to a good chunk of code samples help guide the decision, even if it isn't their whole body of open-source work?

I don't use my Github as something public facing, so if you saw my account, it would look like a random mish-mash of forks, partially started projects, etc. Because it's a tool I use everyday, I don't want to spend the time making it a presentation layer. That's what Linkedin is for.

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

#186

Post by leipert »

Soliciting via emails scraped from git commits. There seem to be tools that help recruiters identify email addresses based on GitHub profiles. I never asked for that. Please don't do it, it is even illegal in Europe. Furthermore it is super unprofessional to send emails to my current place of employment as well.

On LinkedIn, etc. reaching out may still be fine (even though I have set my profile to: "I am not interested in opportunities right now"), because you have no other chance me because of the pandemic (no places to mingle with engineers).

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

#187

Post by sloaken »

makeitdouble wrote: post #172
sloaken wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For legal reasons, if a company receives a resume for a given person from 2 sources, it tosses them all and marks you as a no hire. When 2 recruiters sends in your info, the company does not know whom to compensate. They have been sued for this. 15 years ago, the common practice, because lawsuits and fraud are expensive, it was safer to pass on the candidate.

It looks to me like another incentive to avoid recruiters as much as you can. Getting your application thrown away because you happened to postulate a the company the recruiter didn't disclose you is just horrible.

Good form, is for the recruiter to tell you before they submit, so you can de conflict. Specifically tell them you are working with more than one recruiter, and need to avoid problems.

Between a recruiter and me submitting, I prefer the recruiter, as they should be pushing to get the job, its in their interest. If I get the job, it is no skin off of me.

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

#188

Post by dave_sid »

nindalf wrote: post #69

There’s a lot of people in here complaining about various things recruiters do. Let me give a different perspective. For the first couple of years of my career, recruiters just ignored me. It was like I simply didn’t exist. I hadn’t studied computer science and didn’t work at a well known company. Meanwhile, my coworkers with CS degrees constantly complained about having to bat away recruiters offering them crazy mon…

I completely agree. If getting emails from a recruiter is your biggest problem then you’re doing just fine.

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

#189

Post by touristtam »

austincheney wrote: post #124

Normally recruiters are super excited about their tech stack, framework, and tools. Somehow they are looking for a senior developer to be thrilled by tools. There is no such thing as a senior hammer user or a senior shovel user, so I don’t know why software gets this so blazingly wrong. Worse is when this becomes a conversation with a hiring manager and they are somehow shocked by your complete lack of total exciteme…

Once told the recruiting party during an interview that software languages and framework are tools for a job. The interview ended then and there.
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