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

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101–110 of 147 posts

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

#101
post #20

I particularly love recruiters who insist that you send them a resume in MS Word format, so that they can remove your contact details and stick their agency's ugly letterhead on top (or "improve" your resume for you if they're particularly unethical). "I'll need your resume in Word Format." "I can give you a PDF" "Give me the original in Word Format." "There is no original in Word Format, I wrote my resume in LaTeX.…

Besides, why do you need to be able to edit my resume?

I can't speak for tech recruiting companies, but at the company I work for removing the header is a method of anonymizing the resume to prevent unconscious gender/race/etc... bias based on someone's name, city, ZIP Code, etc...

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

#102

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…

Wow. Just wow. Because I've actually seen this happen elsewhere (not financial), and I thought it was a one-off.

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

#103

As the owner of a small business I like to point out that recruiters' fees come straight out of your salary - if I have a budget of £30k for a junior developer position and interview someone myself, I'll offer £30k. If I interview someone through a recruiter and know they'll charge me 15% I'll not only offer less to try to bring the fees down but also so I don't go over my budget including fees . If you're job huntin…

I'd like to apply to an company's own listing directly (whether it be LinkedIn, StackOverflow, the company's own web site, etc.) but this seems to be a straight ticket into a black hole.

At this point in my career, I've probably interviewed at 200-300 companies. I think I can count the number of times I've received a positive response for a position I applied to directly with one hand.

All my interviews have been from recruiters (whether it be third-party or in-house) reaching out to me, or friends referring me.

Maybe my resume just sucks?

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

#104

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?"

A non-chronological CV is somewhat unusual, to be fair to the recruiter (not something I’d often say!)

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

#105
Wish you luck on this, but I don't see it helping a lot of candidates. There's a large number of (and will always be a large number of) "ambulance chaser" boiler room recruiters working in a very large English-speaking country that shall remain nameless, and they'll often cold call me up for the same certain roles (that don't pay well) as the last one 5 minutes prior.

I could write a whole book of these stories (as I'm sure many others reading this post could as well) but I'll recount one of my favorites.

I had interviewed with Abbott Diabetes Care in Alameda, CA, and gotten a job offer, but went with a different opportunity. Fine.

Recruiters would still blow up my inbox and phone with that role for months to come. And being employed, I was getting really short with them. Like, say "not interested" in half a second, hang up in a second, super-rude short. The trouble was it took 3 minutes squeezing the details about the job out of the person before I could get there.

One recruiter with a very thick accent was being exceptionally coy with the details after he cold-called me. The role was in "California", and then once pressed he said, "Alameda, California". Alameda's not all that big, and it's a bedroom community more so than most Bay Area cities, with the exception of a couple business parks next to the airport, where Abbott is.

I asked, "is this with Abbott?" "No, no, no.." "Ok, who is it with? What's the company's name?"

It's with.. (shuffling of papers).. "uh-BOT".

"That's Abbott.. Dumb ass."

40+ years old and I'd never called anyone dumbass on the phone before.

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

#106
I applied for a software developer role through this recruiting agency and was offered a contract to full time. After I quit my job, I was told my contract was terminated because the company had budget issues and as a result I was left jobless. I spent two months looking for a new job and finally found one at a startup company. In the mean time this recruiting agency keep contacting me and tried to low ball me with a salary that was significantly lower than what my previous companies offered.

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

#107
post #64
post #20

I particularly love recruiters who insist that you send them a resume in MS Word format, so that they can remove your contact details and stick their agency's ugly letterhead on top (or "improve" your resume for you if they're particularly unethical). "I'll need your resume in Word Format." "I can give you a PDF" "Give me the original in Word Format." "There is no original in Word Format, I wrote my resume in LaTeX.…

> "Give me the original in Word Format." Since they're all but certainly going to ghost you anyway, why not just "Sure, here's the original. This is using features that aren't in the ancient Debian distribution of TeXlive; you'll want to follow the excellent instructions at https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV to get XeLaTeX configured correctly (or it'll bomb out with the most inscrutable of errors). I'm having a…

You forgot to ask for their public PGP key!

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

#109
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Give me the original in Word Format." Since they're all but certainly going to ghost you anyway, why not just "Sure, here's the original. This is using features that aren't in the ancient Debian distribution of TeXlive; you'll want to follow the excellent instructions at https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV to get XeLaTeX configured correctly (or it'll bomb out with the most inscrutable of errors). I'm having a…

You forgot to ask for their public PGP key!

That is an excellent suggestion.

In fact, that would be a great catalyst to weed out 99% of recruiters who aren't willing to make any sort of effort.

I'm not joking. I might just apply this one...

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

#110

I applied for a software developer role through this recruiting agency and was offered a contract to full time. After I quit my job, I was told my contract was terminated because the company had budget issues and as a result I was left jobless. I spent two months looking for a new job and finally found one at a startup company. In the mean time this recruiting agency keep contacting me and tried to low ball me with a…

The name of the recruiting agency was experis-veritaaq btw, for those who are curious.
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