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Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters

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Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters

#91

Post by joezydeco »

dsr_ wrote: post #66

Dear people who are in charge of hiring processes (there will be some of you in this audience, I'm sure): External recruiters are generally expensive and bad. By using them, you reduce the quality of your reputation. They charge 25% or more of the first year salary per placement. If you are big enough to afford it -- that is, you're making more than four hires a year -- use an actual employee as your recruiter. Make…

Also: we notice when you hire more than 1 external recruiter at a time.

When I get 8 contacts over 2 weeks for the exact same position, that lets me know there are huge red flags ahead. Or, and this is more fun, you're contacting me for a position I already interviewed with and turned down.

Are you in a death spiral and need bodies ASAP? Does your comp suck? Does your office suck? Does your location suck? Are you too picky in your interview process? Maybe a mix of all of these?

Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters

#93

Post by Jeremy1026 »

carlmr wrote: post #29
codingdave wrote: post #22

I appreciate the idea - I've had some bad experiences with recruiters myself, and the temptation to shame them to the world certainly has some raw emotional appeal. But I've also had wonderful experiences with recruiters, that resulted in great jobs that lasted for years. So I have some concerns: 1) Specifically seeking out bad reviews is likely to attract angry rants. Yelp has their share of bitter people lashing ou…

>2) People grow and improve. I don't want to be judged for my work or my behavior from my early days in the field. How are you going to be sure this isn't unfairly capturing the worst moments of someone's career just because they are new at it and haven't learned any better yet? Or are currently in a bad company which forces/encourages this kind of behavior. I wouldn't mind recruiting company reviews though. Because…

Only one on my blacklist is Cyber Coders. They just sent me a listing for a Davenport Machine Operator four states away, based on my skills. My skills are all in software development. No idea why this recruiter thinks I'd be a good fit for operating a giant piece of machinery.

Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters

#94

Post by thanatropism »

projectramo wrote: post #85
benbristow wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably 'ghosted' for mentioning the word 'latex'

That's a good point. They may have been ignorant of the technology and thought OP was making a lewd joke!

But LaTeX is pronounced differently from latex.

Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters

#95

Post by dsr_ »

It occurs to me that YC could offer a centralized recruiting system for their newly minted vassals. They all need one, and it would improve their prospects if they could get the mechanical details handled efficiently and competently.

I suppose the downside is that to some degree they are competing with each other for talented people, so the trust relationship with YC isn't completely transitive.

Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters

#96

Post by icedchai »

randyzwitch wrote: post #55
kernx16 wrote: post #25

This is more nitpicky if anything, but developers are not the only ones that get blasted and ghosted with recruiters. I'm a DBA, but I also get recruiters always telling me how I am perfect for a Sr. full stack engineer.

As a DBA, you don't consider yourself a developer?

DBA's are closer to sysadmins than developers.

Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters

#98

Post by icedchai »

lowercased wrote: post #74
randyzwitch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a DBA, you don't consider yourself a developer?

just went through a process audit with a major financial company. they were vetting our setup to connect and grab info from them for use in a product. The auditor flipped out when he learned that "developers" would potentially have access to our live production database (not theirs mind you - our own). "This is unacceptable, developers can write code and could exfiltrate data". "Umm... someone needs to be doing datab…

Did you ask them why a DBA would write code to exfiltrate the data, when they could just copy the backup off site and do it at their leisure?

Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters

#99

Post by james_s_tayler »

Recently an ex-colleague of mine who is still working and has been looking put out his CV and it's in non-chronological order so a recruiter thought he was currently unemployed.

She asked him directly "would you be willing to take less because you're not working?"

Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters

#100

Post by icedchai »

bastard_op wrote: post #88

I remember a little site called fuckedcompany.com circa 1999 that was a great dirt rag on businesses in the bay area at the time to know whether or not to go work there. People started disclosing way too much info about companies and people in particular, and lawyers came out with fangs bared. It didn't end well for the people running the site, but it was sad to see go eventually. Now there's glassdoor, a cleaner ver…

I loved that site. Hilarious stuff for the time.
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