Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

37signals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 116 posts

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#21

Post by larsberg »

Tichy wrote: post #8
tocomment wrote: post #2

I never understood why they stop communicating if an opportunity doesn't pan out? Why wouldn't they be interested in cultivating a long term relationship? That's what I think I would do if I were a recruiter. I'd keep in touch with say 200 people I know are really good and keep placing them as they switched jobs. I'm guessing at least 10 or 20 of those people would be switching jobs every year.

'They' are actually robots. In my experience they never stop communicating. Once you are in the database, they'll spam you forever.

Reply with an outrageous salary that would actually encourage you to switch jobs. For example, say that you're looking for IC positions with a minimum base of $250k (and that all of your friends are in that same compensation bracket).

In my experience, that works well. As does, "I have N years left of graduate school and will not consider other opportunities until that is complete."

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#22

Post by raghus »

Speaking of career moves, this made it through GMail's spam detector this morning:

Hello Raghu,

Based on your resume, we are pleased to offer you the position of Mail Order Shipment Inspector( MOS Inspector) in our company. Your duties will include receipt and registration of packages, submission of detailed reports to our management and shipment of packages to end customers with postal labels we will send you. Depending on the number of packages you process, the monthly pay would be in the range of USD 1,500 - 2,500 Not sure if you are still looking for a job but let us know if so, so that I could get back to you with more details. Also, please add my address into your address book to prevent my messages from filtering into your junk mail folder.

Thank you, Victoria Premo

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#23

Post by larsberg »

True story: while managing a decently sized development org at MSFT, I used to regularly get contacted by the technical recruiters for the contracting agencies telling me I was oddly perfectly qualified to do some entry-level work!

Of course, this may be a successful recruiting approach, as the hourly net pay for the entry-level contractors frequently worked out to more than the salary pay for mid-level folks, due to all of the overtime. No benefits, but if you're in a situation with a spouse with a decent comp. package, it could certainly be an alternative.

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#24

Post by swilliams »

tocomment wrote: post #2

I never understood why they stop communicating if an opportunity doesn't pan out? Why wouldn't they be interested in cultivating a long term relationship? That's what I think I would do if I were a recruiter. I'd keep in touch with say 200 people I know are really good and keep placing them as they switched jobs. I'm guessing at least 10 or 20 of those people would be switching jobs every year.

Sounds more like an agent, in the sports/entertainment sense. There might just be a market there. Let the masses of mediocre/average programmers dink around with mediocre/average recruiters, while the quality ones have someone who actually cares focused on them.

The biggest issue is that an "agent" would need to not just maintain relationships with quality job candidates, but also quality employers. If all you're offering me is a crappy internal dev job doing .NET or Java for a health care giant, why should I work with you over any of the dice/careerbuilder/monster cattle calls?

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#26

Post by KoZeN »

swombat wrote: post #20
KoZeN wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a technical recruiter and I agree with the majority of this post to be honest. My background: 2.1 in Software Development from a leading Uni in Ireland. 2 years experience as a web developer for a medium sized Irish software firm and I've been in recruitment for just over 2 years now. The amount of fellow recruiters I come across who believe java & javascript are one and the same for example is ridiculous. The ma…

How are you liking it? Don't you prefer to do development yourself? What's the hardest thing about the job? Would you recommend it to other developers?

I love recruitment, I honestly do. Primarily because of the money I make!

I loved working as a developer but there was a distinct lack of social and professional interaction that eventually led to me looking at other options.

It was satisfying completing a difficult project and seeing it implemented but I get infinitely more satisfaction from finding someone their perfect job as well as landing a juicy commission payment for the privilege of doing so!

Hardest part: The sales aspect. It is still a very sales orientated career and it can be difficult to not come across as the 'cheesy salesman' and hammer home the point that I am a developer by trade but a recruiter by choice.

I don't know if I would recommend it to other developers. It's quite hard to get established in the industry and start earning enough money to realise the potential of the career.

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#27

Post by tptacek »

mikeryan wrote: post #3

Shoot he should respond to this "I created the Ruby on Rails framework. My base salary is $5,000,000 a year. Looking forward to relocating to SF"

No, because he knows the recruiter will have no idea what that means. She's just reading words off a page.

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#29

Post by kscaldef »

chow wrote: post #17

TL;DR: DHH is annoyed that there are people in the tech industry who have never heard of him.

No, he's legitimately complaining about people spamming out recruitment emails without doing any research on the people they are contacting. For example, my resume on my personal website says "I am not interested in moving from Portland. Really. Seriously." My LinkedIn profile says "I am happily located in Portland, OR. Please don't bother me with job possibilities that require moving somewhere else." And yet, I would say that only about 5% of the emails I get from recruiters are for local or telecommute jobs. The other 95% are for relocation to the Bay Area or Seattle.

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#30

Post by davidw »

dhh wrote: post #25
jbarham wrote: post #4

My guess is that DHH is primarily annoyed that the spammy email started by addressing him as "Dave".

That's just extra spice on top. I fucking hate it when people I don't know assumes it okay to make up a nickname for me.

Really? I get called Dave, David, or even Davide (I live in Italy so even David might come out as "Dah-veed") and I really don't care as long as the person is nice and respectful and otherwise pleasant to communicate with (annoying recruiters don't really count).

I mostly use it as a measure of how clued-in they are about me, but even some of the people who have mistaken me for a Davide (not the statue, unfortunately), have been very well-intentioned people with interesting things to say.

Post reply on HN