Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#81

Post by paolomaffei » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 4:06 PM UTC

KoZeN wrote: post #65

koevet wrote: post #10

I have been freelancing in Europe for the last 10 years and I have learned to avoid recruiters as much as I can. In the last 4 years I have managed to get contracts through connections and skip middlemen all-together. It takes more time but it's rewarding. Few rules I use when I deal with recruiters (in Europe): 1) There are really an handful of recruitment companies with a good reputation and history. By default, I…

Most of the time, recruiters end up being recruiters just because they failed at everything else. Ouch. You cut me deep koevet. In reference to point 6, allow me to dispell a myth here. Let's say I am approached by a client who is looking for someone to do XYZ for three months and they want to pay the candidate £500 per day (nice round number). If you are the candidate, I don't then offer you £400 a day and take 20%.…

That's the same trick as "you're not paying more for using a credit card, the SELLER is paying for it", except of course the seller will have higher prices because of this.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#82

Post by Tycho » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 4:06 PM UTC

So many hoops to jump for. The last company I worked for demanded full references for the last five years (it was a bank so apparently this was a legal requirement), but later I found out that their company policy is to 'never give personal references.' (ie. the reference would just go to the HR department who would confirm your presence, your actual managers wouldn't get to say anything) I thought at first this must be something to do with liability, but then I wondered if it was merely another barrier to discourage employees from leaving their lowly jobs, to make it harder for rival banks to employ them, and to eliminate the man-hours cost of providing references. Either way, one minute they're requiring all these references, but when its their turn to provide, they opt out.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#83

Post by dpio » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 4:22 PM UTC

I agree. Recruiters suck. They never ask for references for your benefit, it's always to extend their sales reach. They tend to drag you out to their offices for a 'face-to-face', for no relevant reason whatsoever because all of that 'stuff' you had to do there could've been done online anyway.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#84

Post by charlesdm » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 4:24 PM UTC

KoZeN wrote: post #78

charlesdm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you guys make per placement in general? Lets say you have someone with a salary of £60-70k. On average, how much do you earn when you place them and how long do you spend to fill a position? I know that there are extremes, but still. Looking at the amount of spam I get on LinkedIn, I'm always under the impression that recruiters are looking for like 100 different positions at a time, but that's probably w…

That's so hard to quantify but I'll do my best. Assume that my example is based on a recruiter working for a specialist agency in London. I'll base my estimate on that: Salary of £60k would probably give you a fee of about £15k meaning the total charge to the client would be about £75k, probably a bit more but you get the drift. From that £15k fee, the recruiters cut would vary based on his companies bonus structure…

Interesting, why not start your own firm then? Is it that hard to get the actual vacancies?

If you know what you're talking about in comparison to 90% of the other people, wouldn't it be a lot easier to place one candidate and get £15k from him rather than the £1k you're getting now.

You say that the general aim is to earn your salary in bonusses, so that means that an average recruiter has to place around 60 candidates per year. If they earn around £15k per person for the company, that makes +- £900k of which they take home £60k. Rough calculations of course, but seems like pretty good margins for people that know what they're doing.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#85

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 4:30 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #73

tomjen3 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, most people would properly assume that "a multinational software company" was a bit bigger than bingocardcreator.com. So I wouldn't blame the recruiter.

Hundreds of thousands of elementary schoolteachers manage to find my website and read the about page. It's on the blue Googles and the green Googles, and the blue texty clicky thingy on my resume will take you to it, too. If reading that prior to contacting me about my desire for a job is not in the recruiter's job description, what do they do all day?

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#86

Post by mediaman » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 4:38 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #38

thomas11 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that's a generous and tempting offer, but how would it actually work? First, they usually want to know about the work relation you had with the reference. Just inventing something is dangerous and ethically questionable, recruiters or not. Then, what if the hiring company actually contacted you?

but how would it actually work? Exactly as I propose in grandparent. Reread it if necessary. they usually want to know about the work relation you had with the reference. I will tell them that we are colleagues on-line. Although we have never met in real life, we participate in Hacker News together. Believe me, I know much more about lots of people here than many I know in real life. For example, I would heartily rec…

What is the point of checking references only after providing an offer?

Is it an offer contingent on references? (Edit: re-reading your post, I see that is the case.) If so, that seems not much of an offer at all.

This is an unusual practice and I have never seen it in that sequence, but then again, I am more exposed to professional non-technical services, so perhaps things work differently.

I find good reference checking -- and it is hard to do it well -- is excellent to identify traits that are difficult to test for during interviews, such as timeliness and integrity.

Edit number two: I do understand however not providing references until the final stage, when only two or three candidates remain.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#87

Post by angelbob » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 4:50 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #73

tomjen3 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, most people would properly assume that "a multinational software company" was a bit bigger than bingocardcreator.com. So I wouldn't blame the recruiter.

Hundreds of thousands of elementary schoolteachers manage to find my website and read the about page. It's on the blue Googles and the green Googles, and the blue texty clicky thingy on my resume will take you to it, too. If reading that prior to contacting me about my desire for a job is not in the recruiter's job description, what do they do all day?

I have always, always wondered that. The answer seems to be "have lunch".

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#88

Post by angelbob » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 4:54 PM UTC

Most recruiters really are terrible. What we need is some kind of peer-to-peer job-hunting site that will let you find out what jobs other people are doing in software engineering, and just go straight to other engineers who know what the job actually requires.

I call it wantmyjob.com, and I launched it a couple of days ago. The current (few) jobs on it are US-based, but you can be the first to change that if you like.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#89

Post by jules » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 5:05 PM UTC

KoZeN wrote: post #65

koevet wrote: post #10

I have been freelancing in Europe for the last 10 years and I have learned to avoid recruiters as much as I can. In the last 4 years I have managed to get contracts through connections and skip middlemen all-together. It takes more time but it's rewarding. Few rules I use when I deal with recruiters (in Europe): 1) There are really an handful of recruitment companies with a good reputation and history. By default, I…

Most of the time, recruiters end up being recruiters just because they failed at everything else. Ouch. You cut me deep koevet. In reference to point 6, allow me to dispell a myth here. Let's say I am approached by a client who is looking for someone to do XYZ for three months and they want to pay the candidate £500 per day (nice round number). If you are the candidate, I don't then offer you £400 a day and take 20%.…

I accidentally upvoted instead of downvoted. It it of course nonsense that you are adding to the salary. If the employer is willing to pay £600, then you are taking X% of £600 and giving the employee (100-X)% of £600. The £500 figure that you are "adding" to is just an imaginary number that has no real significance.

Do recruiters really take as much as 20%? This seems ridiculously high to me. How much of their time are they investing compared to the employee?

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#90

Post by mikeryan » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 5:09 PM UTC

leftnode wrote: post #55

Also, remember the old recruiter line: "The more money you make, the more money I make, so I'm going to do my best to get you the best salary possible!" While it's true: the more you make the more they make (usually, its about 30% of your first years salary, which is huge), what is also true is that they're more determined to get you hired at any amount than the amount you want. This is why you'll see recruiters offe…

This reminds me of the bit from freakonomics about real estate agents. Basically when they're getting 3% of the sale price of your house, holding out for 1 month to get you $20K (and them $600) isn't worth it to them.

http://www.wisebread.com/why-you-cant-trust-a-real-estate-ag...