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

31–40 of 116 posts

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#31

Post by smiler »

KoZeN wrote: post #19
smiler wrote: post #14

I guess technical recruiters will never be any good until you find ex software developers to be technical recruiters - and I can't think you'd find many software developers willing to do that. I am convinced there are still many ways for recruiting to be fixed by disruptive startups

I am convinced there are still many ways for recruiting to be fixed by disruptive startups I couldn't agree more. I've been actively trying to tackle this problem, so far without success, for a while now.

I notice you're a recruiter in the UK. I'm not in London / SE - are you seeing many companies accept remote workers? (I'm in the East Midlands, currently a remote worker, and don't want to give that up)

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#32

Post by run4yourlives »

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.

Because being good at your job would put you out of work. :-)

If you place people into positions that they really fit with, odds are they would stay longer, ergo, less money for you.

What you would need to do is sell yourself as an agent that is constantly evaluating new gigs for a monthly fee. I think that might actually work really well for devs that consult as a primary business.

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#33

Post by ig1 »

KoZeN wrote: post #19
smiler wrote: post #14

I guess technical recruiters will never be any good until you find ex software developers to be technical recruiters - and I can't think you'd find many software developers willing to do that. I am convinced there are still many ways for recruiting to be fixed by disruptive startups

I am convinced there are still many ways for recruiting to be fixed by disruptive startups I couldn't agree more. I've been actively trying to tackle this problem, so far without success, for a while now.

I'm working on a developer recruitment based startup at the moment, if you want to grab coffee sometime give me a shout.

I'm not in London at the moment but I should be shortly (i.e. as soon as I can find somewhere in London to live !)

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#34

Post by Timothee »

swilliams wrote: post #24
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 off…

I would really like to work with that kind of person. Like everyone else, I've had useless encounters with recruiters, and I feel like someone with more experience and knowledge of the job world should be able to match me up better with a job and a salary.

Somebody was asking if he was reaching his pay limit here not long ago. One reason for that question is that it's very hard for one to know how they compare to other people. An agent/super-recruiter would know that and could do whatever is needed to fix it.

In a way, it reminds me of the idea of investing in people: instead of putting my money in a company I believe in, how could one put money on somebody who is talented and will more likely be successful? Well, such a recruiter could basically do that. Follow talented people around, know what they do and like doing, and advise them in terms of what salary they can expect, where they should be in their career...

The question is, of course: would I qualify to get a good agent? :)

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#35

Post by sokoloff »

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.

If you were a recruiter, how could you be sure the 200 people that you're investing (time/energy) in are "really good"?

I have a recruiter who placed me back in 1997, placed several excellent ex-co-workers into that same job, and whom I've continued to use (as a hiring manager) over the years and whose emails/calls I faithfully respond to when he's looking for help placing or sourcing (outside of my current company).

So, the model you're describing can definitely work, but if you try it with 200 "duds", you'll have a much harder row to hoe. The people who can't accurately identify talent may be far better served with their current one-shot shotgun methods.

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#36

Post by riffer »

bdr wrote: post #28

Maybe there's an opportunity here to build a web-based recruiter reputation system. The good recruiters would be happy to stand out from the bad.

The good recruiters would be happy to stand out from the bad.

Only if you can provide some ex-ante assurance to the good ones that your reputation system isn't going to be gamed by bad ones who focus on gaming rather than being good recruiters.

Re: Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

#38

Post by omarish »

Technical recruiters looks for different types than most of the audience on HN. The tech recruiter looks people who can write decent code, but at the end of the day, will be replaceable commodities in an organization.

As a tech recruiter, your job isn't to find the next DHH. It's to arbitrage technical talent to fill positions. I don't think that they're motivated by quality as much as they are by finding just the right quantity.

Post reply on HN