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If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

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Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#21

Post by empath75 »

TamDenholm wrote: post #12

I get at least 5 phone calls from recruiters a week, being a contractor. The amount of times i get someone that asks me something like: Recruiter: "We're looking for someone with React experience, do you have that?" Me: "Yes" Them: "Ok, how about Javascript?" I want to explain to them but i end up just saying yes to every acronym on their list since they've no idea what they're asking for.

Actual recruiting call:

"I have an opening for someone with mesosphere and machine learning experience."

"Well, I don't have any of those, but I have used docker a little bit."

"Great, I'd like you to interview."

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#22

Post by justin_vanw »

jordanpg wrote: post #20

When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want and that the reason was unfair interview questions. In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant. To continue with the recruiting example, I susp…

Yes I think you are right, buuuut...

Lots of times the initial screen is done by someone totally non-technical, and they are asking questions from a sheet and judging whether you are saying what is in the answer field for their sheet. This is super stupid, but I have seen it, usually when some headhunting firm is deciding whether to add your resume to their database which they pull resume's from to send to clients.

The moral: Don't use headhunting firms, because they will basically never send you a decent candidate. In the very rare cases where they by pure luck do send a good candidate, this is rarely worth the dozens of crap candidates they have sent you (not to mention that they will try to push candidates on you if they think they can get away with it).

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#24

Post by dsr_ »

I am, now and on occasion, a hiring manager. Naturally, every freelance recruiter wants to be my friend.

They often start cold calls with a description of a person's technical abilities, and then ask if I would be interested in interviewing that person.

When that happens, I ask them to define one of the buzzwords that they have just used. "Could you tell me what 'big data' means?" or "What's the difference between AWS and GCE?"

I don't do business with technical recruiters who aren't familiar with the meanings of the terms that they throw around. They have never been more valuable than a regex.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#26

Post by creepydata »

shubb wrote: post #10
pulse7 wrote: post #7

Recruiters usually aren't good at programming. If they were - in most cases - they wouldn't be recruiting, but writing code... So their "identification of good programmers" is somehow limited...

There are places where good technical recruiters earn substantially more than programmers - if they get 10% year salary (which I understand is not the highest number you might see), they only need ~1 successful placement a month to make reach parity.

Not only that but they may just enjoy recruiting more than they enjoy (or don't enjoy) programing.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#27

Post by quantumhobbit »

jordanpg wrote: post #20

When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want and that the reason was unfair interview questions. In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant. To continue with the recruiting example, I susp…

Sure, but I've just had an interview with a recruiter who literally did the "Do you know Reactjs? Yes. But do you know JavaScript?" face-palm to me. Only with Angular instead of React. Not all recruiters are this dumb, but I promise you I have encountered plenty who are.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#28

Post by minxomat »

justin_vanw wrote: post #22
jordanpg wrote: post #20

When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want and that the reason was unfair interview questions. In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant. To continue with the recruiting example, I susp…

Yes I think you are right, buuuut... Lots of times the initial screen is done by someone totally non-technical, and they are asking questions from a sheet and judging whether you are saying what is in the answer field for their sheet. This is super stupid, but I have seen it, usually when some headhunting firm is deciding whether to add your resume to their database which they pull resume's from to send to clients. T…

Yep on the first point. I was once asked to bend a comically large paper clip out of pipe cleaners. Next I was to solve some physics questions.

This was for an analyst job at a bank.

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