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Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

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Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#101

Post by S4M »

RogerL wrote: post #14

One 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 i…

I had once a recruiter calling me on my workplace's number. He had sent me an email couple of hours before, that I hadn't noticed (it was during work hour), and for some reason he got super carried away about some opportunity and wanted to make sure I would apply through him or something.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#102

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

navait wrote: post #55
praptak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a comment as irate, mean-spirited, and unsubstantiated as this blog post appeared in HN, it would get down-voted into oblivion. Yet this article instead of getting flagged into oblivion got upvoted to #1 as of now. Could that be that HN readers' experience with recruiters mirrors the author's experience?

i think some people read only the title and voted it up assuming it's about aggressive recruiting spam on services like linkedin.

> assuming it's about aggressive recruiting spam on services like linkedin.

... and they were right. That is mentioned, if you read right through.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#103

Post by [deleted] »

moron4hire wrote: post #61
jameshart wrote: post #30

US recruitment (at least around tech hubs) does seem a lot more civilized than the UK situation - most opportunities I see are directly advertised. I left the UK five years ago, and I still get most of my recruitment spam from UK agents. Someone clearly needs to educate those guys about aging their databases - someone who was in the market for opening level PHP gigs in 2001 is probably not still looking for opening l…

I think it depends on where you are. I've seen this sort of behavior a lot. Less so now that I'm in DC, but it was really bad back in Philly.

[deleted]

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#104

Post by chris_wot »

lukasm wrote: post #13

Had 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…

I'd go in and give them my CV at the interview.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#105

Post by dec0dedab0de »

mattzito wrote: post #5

At least in the US, the whole recruiting industry hit its nadir during the dot-com bubble of 2000. I remember getting a cold-call from a recruiter, "Hey, got a great gig at a soon-to-IPO startup for a Solaris and Linux guru", "No thanks", hang up, the phone next to me rings, same dude, literally just dialing up the extension tree. My boss at the time had a strategy where whenever a recruiter called offering "top notc…

Now we could say 5 years Go experience.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#106

Post by bakhy »

disgusting text. could not finish reading it.

the author should try appreciating the fact that IT is an industry where one can choose between jobs. many people do not have that luxury and must swallow a lot of shit to earn a living. the author comes across as an entitled brat that has absolutely no empathy or understanding for fellow human beings, all the while dishing out horrible insults at their humanity. disgusting.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#107

Post by blisterpeanuts »

joeyspn wrote: post #88
ryguytilidie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly it seems like the author has some serious problems. I know hundreds of recruiters having been at Google and Facebook and not a single one of them thinks like this at all. To say "now grovel and be exploited" about a process where the person will almost certainly end up with a fantastic offer for an engineering job in a comfortable office with great pay and great working conditions may actually be the least s…

You clearly don't have a clue about how things are here in the EU. Few weeks ago one of these charitable souls deceived a co-worker offering him an incredible opportunity to move to London and the result was: - £15k ($23k) less salary than advertised in the offer - No benefits (healthcare, dental, etc) - No free food/snacks/bevare at the company - No perks (equipment, etc) When questioned about this, the recruiter sa…

Recruiters sometimes lie or exaggerate. That's nothing new. Actually, they have to do it, to show their bosses that they're getting warm bodies into interviews.

Did your co-worker actually take this job, without doing the due diligence of reading the contract and the offer letter?

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#108

Post by chappers »

ceejayoz wrote: post #18
lukasm wrote: post #13

Had 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

Haha! Nice! A bit like if you have an infinite number of chimps on an infinite number of typewriters you'll eventualy get the works of Shakespeare - the rest is Perl.

Re: Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

#109

Post by manishsharan »

Spammy tech recruiters are bad but corrupt recruiters and hiring practices are much worse"

I live in Canada and I am amazed at the amount of corruption/nepotism I see in IT hiring for government IT jobs. They will put out job requirements for senior java dev or web developer and you are supposed to fill out a matrix of required skill. In those supposedly mandatory skills/experiences, they will put in some weird shit --stuff no one outside the hiring manager's inner circle would know; this supposedly mandatory skill is used to weed out outsiders, allowing the hiring manager to hire their chosen people. In the 15 years I have been consulting as a Java developer, I have not received one interview call for any open position with any level government despite having all the other requirements. Considering the fact that so many IT initiatives of the government are plagued with controversies and their implementation is rife with incompetence, I feel the the recruiters and the hiring managers have kickback system in place.

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