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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

#191

Post by arenaninja »

Hm recruiters are fine mostly for entry-level jobs. As time goes on, dealing with middlemen is increasingly irksome. Not only that, but then you need to deal with an up-to-30% paycut because of the middleman.

It's a shame really. At my last job we would invite recruiters to send us candidates for entry-level PHP/MySQL web devs, and largely they sent people who had been working with Wordpress too long, or only knew how to function in . The mismatch was worse than putting the ad out and filtering through the resumes, but it was less effort. I also saw some of the ads the recruiters posted, and I never would've applied because of a) wording (rockstar/ninja crap), b) ridiculous skillset (10 years PHP experience... really?).

So the author here is a little harsh, but largely on point. Way too much slime, but sometimes necessary if you're entry level

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

#192

Post by pweissbrod »

Oh I'm not finished yet, but this is a hilarious read! Lots of moments I was belly laughing out loud at the author's wonderful use of metaphors.

Yeah in the USA, 2015 recruiting industry is far better than the author's depictions. I have no idea what its like in the UK.

The indian recruiting market is not unlike this.

Its still a funny read either way

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

#193

Post by jobu »

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…

In the fall of 2002 (after the dot-com bubble burst) I was laid off and looking for a job. One of the more memorable job postings had a requirement of 5 years .Net experience.

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

#194

Post by jleader »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #151
michaelt wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are rent-seekers, pure and simple, and they leech off our industry. I'm no fan of recruiters, but nothing stops you applying to the company directly, and nothing stops the company posting their own job ads.

Actually your CV can be hijacked by a recruiter, effectively keeping you out of a job. Imagine this scenario: You get a call from a recruiter. They seem to have an interesting position/client/network so you send over your CV. A couple of months later you are actively looking for a job, so you make a list of cool startups in your area and send your CV and a customized cover letter. They all answer that they got your C…

Every place I've ever worked where I had any visibility into hiring, at the start of the search the company makes a decision as to who they want to deal with: hire an inside recruiter, retain a single outside recruiter (or several), or accept referrals from all outside recruiters. Once they've made that decision, when a recruiter sends them a resume, either the recruiter they're willing to work with and whose fee they've already decided they're willing to pay, or it isn't. In the latter case, they respond saying "we've got our own recruiting arrangements, thanks" and toss the resume. In that case, if the same resume comes in through a different channel later, they're under no obligation to the recruiter, and they'd be perfectly happy to hire you.

I suppose if they were working with a recruiter, and later ended the relationship, that could cause the problem you describe, but I haven't seen it happen (as a job seeker, a member of many interview panels, and as a hiring manager a couple times).

In theory, the recruiter isn't supposed to send resumes without the job seeker's approval, which means that when they do so, they've probably broken any agreement they have with the hiring company, so the company probably isn't bound by that agreement any longer. Whether you'd be able to convince the hiring company to take the risk of a lawsuit (that they'd presumably win) is another question, of course.

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

#195

Post by jsprogrammer »

[deleted] wrote: post #171
aerovistae wrote: post #71

Alright, here's another of my tech recruiter exchanges. This one got him to stop responding immediately. ------------- Hello, My name is Seth and I am a recruiter here at [redacted]. I came across your profile in our database and wanted to touch base. Are you still in the market for potential opportunities? If so, I would enjoy speaking with you soon. Please let me know if you or anyone else you know is interested. T…

[deleted]

How do they condescend? The phrases were undefined in the original email.

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

#196

Post by robotkilla »

vonmoltke wrote: post #180
robotkilla wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I torched my linkedin account a while back after recruiters wouldn't stop hounding me. I also despise social networks of all sorts so that contributed to my decision. Before I torched it though I tried a little experiment. I left my tech skills in place, but also added things like "Blacksmithing" and "Former POTUS" as my skill set. I also said "Do not contact me" and "I hate recruiters" and something along the lines…

Meanwhile, I consider two LinkedIn hits in the same month to be a lot. :/

I never made a dime or had any positive experience with Linkedin. Just recruiter spam and "friends" begging for endorsements... so I don't think you're missing out on anything.

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

#197

Post by cookiecaper »

bitwize wrote: post #118

phone rings "Hello?" "Hello, is this Cloud Strife?" (pausing a moment to consider whether even to continue) "...Yeah." "Hey, Cloud, how's your afternoon going? My name is Michael Gravitz and I'm a recruiter for Warmbody Technical Services. I came across your résumé on Dice, and I noticed you have a lot of Buster Sword experience. We've got a great opportunity for a Bodyguard role with an established, profitable compa…

>Oh! Well! I'm so glad to hear that all your friends have jobs, Cloud!

The funny part being that often it is the case that all of the tech worker's tech friends do already have jobs.

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

#198

Post by vonmoltke »

logfromblammo wrote: post #177
michaelt wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are rent-seekers, pure and simple, and they leech off our industry. I'm no fan of recruiters, but nothing stops you applying to the company directly, and nothing stops the company posting their own job ads.

The same nothing that does not stop the companies actually seeking their own employees also does not stop 300 recruiters from copying their posted text, stripping out the original company-identifying information, and re-posting. The noise added to the signal does make it significantly more difficult. So rather than searching a central repository of job ads for opportunities specifically relevant to you, you have to v…

> "resume in Word format"

FYI, this will filter out a few companies as well. Qualcomm, for instance, insists on all resumes being Word or RTF for some reason.

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

#199

Post by Brakenshire »

mjn wrote: post #159
celticninja wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Terrible companies and terrible people? Do you know how agencies work? You do understand that employers contact them and ask them to find people, to organise their payroll, do relevant checks e.g. confirm right to work, security, skills etc. And these companies know they will be paying a % to the agency and this is because they dont want to do that work themselves they just want a competent worker in place as…

It's funny to read complaints about rent-seeking and someone taking a percentage off the top on a tech forum, where that is the business model of a large portion of tech companies themselves. When authors complain about Amazon being rent-seekers "stealing" a percentage of authors' income, they don't tend to get a lot of sympathy here.

Rent seeking means taking a percentage without bringing any value. I'm on board with many of the complaints about Amazon, but it's clearly not the case to say they don't add value.

Of course many/most recruiters will also bring value, but it's a question of degree. If someone is recruiting for a technical position and they don't have the technical understanding to make any meaningful judgment of the candidate, it's reasonable to ask whether they are worth their fee. Obviously the extent to which that applies depends on the individual, the company, and the local business culture.

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

#200

Post by teh_klev »

pjc50 wrote: post #138
ascorbic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you in the UK? If so, I'm seriously surprised this doesn't ring true. To me it exactly matches my experience both as a contractor and as an employer. As to who is being exploited here, it's the whole IT industry. They are rent-seekers, pure and simple, and they leech off our industry. They may not be sending children down mines, but that doesn't diminish the fact they are terrible companies and terrible people.

I think it sticks out because, in the UK, we're not used to people just lying directly to our faces. And in the recruitment business it seems to happen a lot. (Omission, elision and euphemism is the British way!)

> in the UK, we're not used to people just lying directly to our faces

Ahem, speak for yourself. Go check out your local newsagent's daily national press shelves. Pages upon pages of lies and spin.

Hell, the Scottish versions of The Times, Express, Mail and Mirror group papers print contradicting headlines, one version for Scotland and one for England and Wales.

I hate to do the "we're less gullible in Scotland now" thing, but since the referendum we can spot bullshit from a mile off now.

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