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Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

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Re: Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

#121

Post by bitwize »

peteretep wrote: post #115
bitwize wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you see results, it should be easy to work out which jobs are posted by recruiters, and which have been posted directly by the company. Why should I do this myself? I hate sausage on pizza. If I order a pepperoni and mushroom slice, I'm gonna get mad if the guy gives me back a pepperoni, mushroom, and sausage slice and tells me "it should be easy to pick out the sausages if you don't like 'em".

So, uh, what's your solution to be able to find lots of company-advertised jobs again?

Job boards that enforce rules against recruit spam.

Near as I can tell, AngelList does this, for example.

Re: Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

#122

Post by icanhasfay »

A little late to the party but I just recently created a job board that aims for organizing the tech job market. https://www.zeroinjobs.com

I know it's a bit misaligned with the ask in the thread but thought it could be a good resources for job seekers. Personally got sick of creating pseudo regex's on job search sites.

Re: Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

#123

Post by home_boi »

zpoley wrote: post #59

I've also received a ton of recruiter spam, but leave my profile on LinkedIn as other's have mentioned to see what happens. The worst part right now, is how untargetd most inbound recruiter cold-calls are - for skills that I don't have or don't want to acquire, in locations I wouldn't even consider, or at companies that I have no interest in. We're working on this problem at Paysa [1], trying to enable employees to f…

You got me. I thought this was going to be a legit post instead of an advertisement until the third sentence in.

Re: Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

#124

Post by jghn »

encoderer wrote: post #95
Jemaclus wrote: post #16

I despise recruiters with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, so I try to avoid them as much as possible. That leaves me (and you) with a few viable options: 1) Use a matching service like interviewing.io or TripleByte to get connected directly with companies. (Effectiveness: Questionable but promising) 2) Use a job listing site like Indeed.com to find positions that you're interested in applying to. (Effectiveness…

I never read the cover letters, nor the "objective" on a resume. I do invest a lot of time finding the right people to join our team, but in a resume, my choice to move you to a phone screen will never hinge on those details, and nothing in your resume matters much once we start actually talking. I don't mean to detract from your overall assessment -- i think you've made good points. Edit: My resume advice? Give me y…

I explicitly don't include a skills summary section because it is a no win proposition. Everyone has a different idea of what it means to list a skill there and invariably at least one interviewer in a loop will ding you for however you decided to lay it out.

I might get dinged for not having one, but at least I don't have to worry about it.

Re: Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

#125

Post by jghn »

jchendy wrote: post #107
DanBC wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's potentially fraud.

I don't know about fraud, but if it comes up in the background check, they could definitely rescind your offer.

I know someone who had this happen to them.

It's total BS that a potential employer would base their offer on your current salary, but at the same time lying about what you currently make is dangerous

Re: Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

#126

Post by zhte415 »

laxatives wrote: post #82
Jemaclus wrote: post #16

I despise recruiters with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, so I try to avoid them as much as possible. That leaves me (and you) with a few viable options: 1) Use a matching service like interviewing.io or TripleByte to get connected directly with companies. (Effectiveness: Questionable but promising) 2) Use a job listing site like Indeed.com to find positions that you're interested in applying to. (Effectiveness…

The entire recruiter economy is an enormous conflict of interest. They are like realtors. They are paid by commission and make significantly more money based on quantity of hires, rather than quality. So they have no real incentive to fight for you or help with your negotiations and a strong incentive to be mildly dishonest or exaggerate without burning bridges. This is terrible for both you and your employer (but mo…

I disagree somewhat. At least, in my experience:

Experience 1: 25 years old and applying for a $200k/year job. I didn't get it :( but the recruiter had my back and significant sway with the employer. He filled around 10 roles per year. He was also buddy of the person I sat next to but this was unknown to me, I was cold-called for the role. "This is small-fry for me, I usually just fill $500k+ roles."

Experience 2: Recently (10 years later) a recruiter asked me my expectation "It's in your interest to get me as much as possible" was my response. I _know_ there's more to a job than financial package, but that was that question dealt with. She called me after each interview within the hour, and gave me status updates every 2 days over a period of 4 weeks. Happened to be in the same city on a trip, and had lunch together. Nice lady. Didn't take the role in the end. Still in contact, no bridges burned.

I also agree somewhat.

Experience 3: I sit next to an HR Ops team that staff large tech companies. A team of 20 people that download and forward CVs all day. The level of technical questioning before forwarding a CV is "How is your XXX language" and that's that. Applicants are sorted and pigeon holed into buckets depending on existing role and package, and no more. They have no bargaining power with a client (on either side) as they simply don't understand anything related to the role. Their KPI is how many roles filled, that's all, and when the client gets unhappy they email the GM.

So, in my opinion, it's mixed. But some headhunters really are good. Differentiate yourself, make yourself special, then the good headhunters will seek you out.

Re: Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

#127

Post by edwcar13 »

Recruiters are probably the worst thing on the planet. Because besides interviewing with them, giving them all your info, you still have to do all the communication with the company. I recommend this, recruiters are kind of an evil you have to live with. So allow yourself one recruiting company that has a good bearing in the area. I.e. you meet them in an office that they own and not at a star bucks because it's a one man show.

Then uses sites like indeed.com, venturefizz.com, or apply directly to the company. Use hired.com if you got a nice fancy resume for them to show off, but avoid it if you are strictly entry level.

The troublesome part is that only recruiting companies can get you in to startups that are still in stealth mode or too small to hire someone just for recruiting and hr.

Re: Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

#128

Post by giaour »

peteretep wrote: post #18

Hi, I'm a recruiter. Look for job aggregators like Adzuna, Indeed, etc, which scrape all jobs on the web. When you see results, it should be easy to work out which jobs are posted by recruiters, and which have been posted directly by the company. In my (massively biased) experience, you are better off applying for a position when you've been put forward by a recruiter: * The recruiter knows what the client's salary r…

> * The recruiter will get much much more candid feedback about you than you'll ever get directly from the client

This is why I really appreciated going through recruiters early in my career. Companies will never give feedback directly to candidates, but for some reason they feel perfectly comfortable passing it along when there's a recruiter acting as a middleman.

Re: Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

#129

Post by probinso »

I have found that most sites that promise matching to many possible positions have a two way signal-noise problems. You are likely to get too many recruiters; and companies are likely to get too many applicants.

1) Find a conference that videos presentations in a domain that you are interested in. Apply to companies that represent speakers for topics that you are interested in. (also gives you material to talk about in interview)

2) As you find interesting companies, select the ones that you have never heard of, and find them on sites like linkedin. Use tool to find similar companies (this is useless for large and well known companies).

3) Of the 'match maker' sites I've used, Craigslist is surprisingly good (this may be location specific). Some of my most interesting interviews were from random craigslist jobs.

I would be interested in knowing companies' strategies for handling the flood of applicatants to "HN: Who's Hiring"

Re: Ask HN: Do I have to go through recruiters nowadays, how do you find new jobs?

#130

Post by collyw »

peteretep wrote: post #40
collyw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, disclosing my salary to recruiter has only ever had a negative effect.

What's the negative effect it's had?

Whenever I have done that they have offered very little (or even the same) salary as I am on.

One time I was contacted about a role in London offering between 65k and 90k (can't remember exactly, but a range along those lines). I said I would only consider moving for the 90K end. He asked what I was on. I refused to tell him then eventually got wore down and told him my relatively small Spanish salary. He refused to put me through for that saying that it was not usual to get more than 10% more than what I am on.

The company was willing to pay more for "the right candidate", but my salary at the time meant I wasn't that candidate.

Don't disclose your salary to recruiters.

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