I stopped answering the phone to unknown numbers because of this.
Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
11–20 of 335 posts
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#12This is an angry angry rant... and I'm not sure I agree. Some recruiters are pretty good. I was placed by one and I consider another an excellent giver of advice; he actually advised me to take a competing offer from another recruiter (of which I did not mention the name or deal, just the parameters). Generally my experience has been positive.
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#13Had really bad experience with recruiters in London
- Lies. From "They have a free gym pass" to complete bs like salary and position.
- Screwed up formatting of CV that I've sent (they wanted .doc) I've written that I have basic perl skills, recruiter changed it to good and destroyed the layout of CV making it unreadable. Good luck with perl question during the interview.
- Constant phone calls with no new information.
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#14One fairly recently cold emailed me 4 times in one day, the last email quite put out and angry that I hadn't responded yet; this was followed by numerous cajoling to censorious emails in the following days, and then a letter mailed to my home castigating me for not responding. And then more emails. He finally went away.
Then there is the current one - scheduling an interview without my say so, I demanded she cancel it immediately, yet I subsequently get a call from the company "Roger, where are you". She didn't cancel it. I told her to she was not to represent me in any way, to not contact me again. Yesterday, what shows up in my inbox? Demands to respond to her email with regards to a client with clear evidence that she is still shopping/talking about me. All this against a backdrop of me telling them my dog is diagnosed with a brain tumor, my life is occupied with dealing with it, and just leave me alone (true story, not made up to make them go away). Holy fuck.
I had an absolutely great recruiter once, he spent hours talking to me, working to find a good fit (something I found myself ended up working), but don't ask me how to find someone like that. Unfortunately his specialty is in an area (HFT) that I decided that I don't want to participate in.
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#15And yet they are our only weapon against business owners who are just as clueless but lack the incentive to pay a competitive wage. When it comes to salary negotiation, it's nice to have Shithead in your corner.
Angel list with open salary range policy, glassdoor, friends, BATNA
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#16About 10 weeks ago, I got an email from such a company, the payload being
"Our database consists of over 2 million resumes of qualified consultants that we rigorously screen and are ready to be deployed. Our footprint is Nationwide.
* is a company that specializes in providing Project/Program Manager, Architect, QA/Code Testing, Business Analyst, DBA, ETL, Virtualization, Disaster Recovery, Storage/Backup, Cyber Security, Analytics, Cloud, Financials, HRMS, ERP/MRP, Business Intelligence, Business Objects, Data Warehousing, Front end/Web/Mobile Development/Design, Middleware, Supply Chain, Logistics, Warehouse Management, Inventory Management, E-Commerce, SDLC, Networking, etc. specified contractors/consultants for contract/contract to hire projects."
I had to like the use of "specialize".
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#17This is mostly an angry rant, pretty amusing to me how upset the author actually becomes at times, I think its quite harsh.
I did like this idea towards the end of it: "To employers – ask your staff to help find new hires. Offer a bounty – enough to get their attention, say a fortnight’s salary. It’s a lot less than [a recruiter] would cost. And their incentives are all positive: no-one will hire an idiot if they have to work alongside them and new staff with social ties to your team are far more likely to stay. You’ll be amazed how effective this can be."
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#18Had really bad experience with recruiters in London - Lies. From "They have a free gym pass" to complete bs like salary and position. - Screwed up formatting of CV that I've sent (they wanted .doc) I've written that I have basic perl skills, recruiter changed it to good and destroyed the layout of CV making it unreadable. Good luck with perl question during the interview. - Constant phone calls with no new informatio…
> Screwed up formatting of CV that I've sent (they wanted .doc) I've written that I have basic perl skills
Isn't unreadable a plus in Perl? :-p
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#19This is an angry angry rant... and I'm not sure I agree. Some recruiters are pretty good. I was placed by one and I consider another an excellent giver of advice; he actually advised me to take a competing offer from another recruiter (of which I did not mention the name or deal, just the parameters). Generally my experience has been positive.
Yes this is a rant. However, the first point is a good one.
95% of the author's [limited sample] where recruiters earning a large amount of money for doing very little technically.
Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation
#20And yet they are our only weapon against business owners who are just as clueless but lack the incentive to pay a competitive wage. When it comes to salary negotiation, it's nice to have Shithead in your corner.
Angel list with open salary range policy, glassdoor, friends, BATNA
Open salary ranges tend towards the lower end, out of necessity.