How will you guarantee that the data manually entered in your system is true or false? I had the same idea though, so many bad recruiters out there it's hard to find the good ones.
Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters
121–130 of 147 posts
Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can you release the all the data about bad recruiters publicly without making it a public shaming list?
We will only release data about companies, not individual recruiters. We will then use their name to (try to) get their contact details and send them a link to the data so that they can be more aware of how their actions affected (and how many) people. What we're doing should ideally benefit both sides, not just us. Hence why I said we should make this more clear, as in: we're not going to publish the names of the in…
You're currently collecting this data under false pretenses. If you care about unprofessional behavior and giving people bad experiences, you should remove the line about releasing all the data to the public from the start of your survey.
Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters
#123Dear 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…
This is simply not true. I’m no fan of any kind of recruiter, but 3rd party ones are almost always better than internal full-time recruiters - naturally, since they do the same thing but get paid much more.
Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters
#124I 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.…
I've had my current recruiter tell potential employers that I "view QA courses on Udemy.com to lower coding mistakes before it goes to QA dept."
I don't do QA courses. I do TDD development. And I never mentioned Udemy.com to them either.
They put words in my mouth.
Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters
#125Wish 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…
Well that's a funny story :) We're very aware that the market is filled with harassing cutthroats and that's exactly what we're trying to put an end to.
If you have time it would be great if you could share one or two of your stories with us (you can fill out the form multiple times). Like I wrote in other comments the more data is in the open the easier it will be to show agencies that certain practices are not just useless but can also damage their image.
Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters
#126I 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…
That's terrible! I'm glad you're doing ok now. The golden rule is to never quit your job until you have a signed contract in your hand. I'm pretty sure that in most countries companies can't legally mandate that employees are not allowed to sign other employment contracts, also to prevent situations like yours.
I really hope you took the time to share your story with us. It would help lots of people avoid shady companies like this one. Thanks!
Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters
#127Question 5 alerted me > Don't worry, we'll keep this bit of information private So the rest isn't? And then... there's lots of mention of 'we' in this thread and on the form, but no mention of who 'we' are. This is harder to trust than a recruiter that at least states who they are.
It's clearly written in the beginning of the form:
> We are collecting stories from devs all over the world and plan to release all data to the public (for free!) so that no more fellow devs will have to suffer
We never ask you to disclose sensitive information (your name for example) and this being completely anonymous means you don't have to "trust" anyone. But you are right about telling more about ourselves, I'll add our profiles to the form somehow.
Meanwhile my profile on HN has a link to my personal website where you can see who I am (no comment on the profile picture :) ). Cheers!
Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters
#128How will you guarantee that the data manually entered in your system is true or false? I had the same idea though, so many bad recruiters out there it's hard to find the good ones.
The same way websites like Glassdoor guarantee that the reviews posted on their websites are real.
Hint: they don't :) A company's reputation isn't ruined by 1 or 2 nasty reviews (which will be deleted in a timely fashion should they be blatantly false). Statistically speaking the chances that someone would purposely make a bad story up to damage a company's reputation is negligible and so all of these "review" websites (and we) rely on a sort of "honor system", assuming that the majority of users will be honest.
EDIT: replaced Yelp and Trip Advisor with Glassdoor (better example).
Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters
#129Fun reading, however why not turn this into an authoritative source for something akin to a donotcall registry? If something like that got some traction, and you were able to secure some endorsements from big tech players, these irritants would become less of an issue, and recruiters would be more effective in their efforts instead of wasting time with people who don't want to be bothered.
That is actually one of our goals but first we have to prove that there is an actual widespread interest in the community to put an end to this kind of behavior (this is what we need the data for) and that we tried to get in touch with these "bad" companies, provided them with all the data they need, hoping they will fix the problem internally, before adding them to a sort of "blacklist". That should be the last resort.
Re: Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters
#130I understand the motivation, but this seems like a lawsuit magnet.
We've already done our research, of course, but before releasing any data we will lawyer up properly and make sure we're not in violation of any law or regulation ;)