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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?

#21

Post by stuckonempty »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #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…

Probably annoying as a hiring manager, but one of the best ways for workers wages to rise is by using competing, “leaked” offers against each other.

This is in effect how you gauge what your talents are worth in the labor market. I’m glad offers get leaked for this reason

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

#22

Post by 71a54xd »

stevekemp wrote: post #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"…

This is because in most cases recruiters chase buzzwords and are not technical in nature at all.

I've had a handful of good experiences with recruiters, this seems to mostly be with recruiters who at one point were engineers or have been hired by FAANG. However, my best experience with a recruiter lead to a job that after about two weeks didn't fit the description of the job at hand. In short, I was under the impression I'd be writing Go and Elixir and within two weeks was writing glue code to hold together a shit-tier ruby app expected to "scale to 9-9's reliability". Other times, I've ascertained I haven't gotten a job after a botched interview and heard "officially" from the recruiter weeks later. Sometimes they're genuinely just idiots or incompetent (which is mostly annoying because it sucks when your time is wasted by someone incompetent). In short, I no longer trust recruiters.

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

#23

Post by avmich »

For me it's what company does - does it do something useful enough, meaningful for people - and how the team in the company approaches reaching goals - do people in the company have a good, healthy, positive dynamic and attitude.

Salary range is more a function of the market (yes, there are companies which seem to under- or even overpay), tech stack is changeable if needed, team size's flexible - if it's too big, it splits into parts.

The most annoying thing... is that you often don't know what was not good from the company standpoint.

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

#24

Post by garmaine »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #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…

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

The only problem here is that they're claiming confidentiality which is obviously not true. Workers and their agents should be playing offers off each other.

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

#25

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

A simple solution to the problem of recruiters always wanting to speak over the telephone is to set up a premium rate phone number and have them call you through that. You can sit at home on the sofa and chat with people about their hot new gig while the dollars roll in.

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

#27

Post by b9a2cab5 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #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…

You aren't getting what you want if nobody in those demographics is choosing to get a degree in CS in college. I choose to believe this is a cultural problem (which is why Nigerians are even more overrepresented relative to U.S. population in higher education than Asians, despite being black [1]), but certainly there are many factors that play into it.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-10-13/it-isn...

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

#28

Post by cerved »

stevekemp wrote: post #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"…

They're not saying the company name because they don't want you going there directly and applying without them getting their hefty bonus

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

#29

Post by beforeolives »

- having calls for the sole purpose of getting my name in their pipeline with no intention to actually help me find a job

- ghosting

- asking for my current salary

- asking for my desired salary for a job that I know very little about

- not sharing the actual salary range for the position we're discussing

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