Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 114 posts

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#101

Post by jules »

KoZeN wrote: post #93
jules wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

An employer is willing to pay an extra 20% to save themselves the time and effort of having to source & interview the hundreds of applications themselves. As for recruiters taking 20%, that's a comparitively low figure for such a high daily rate. If one of my clients was requesting a £500 a day calibre candidate I wouldn't touch it for anything less than 30% in reality. We are providing a service, plain and simple. T…

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean by 20%. If you get an employee for a year, do you get 20% of the yearly salary? So you have to find 5 people per year to get paid as much as the people you find? (on average)

If so, does that truly not sound ridiculous to you? If all people got employed through recruiters then the recruitment business would make up about one fifth of the total economy!

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#102

Post by danenania »

gallerytungsten wrote: post #61

When faced with such nonsense, hack the system. Invent a couple "companies." Give them a web site and an important gloss of Serious Business. Have a couple friends or clients act as the contact point for the reference. Even more amusing: hire an offshore outsourcing company to act as the "human resources" department of your reference company. They should be under strict instructions to act very haughty with the recru…

Vandelay Industries!

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#103

Post by ataggart »

KoZeN wrote: post #93
jules wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

An employer is willing to pay an extra 20% to save themselves the time and effort of having to source & interview the hundreds of applications themselves. As for recruiters taking 20%, that's a comparitively low figure for such a high daily rate. If one of my clients was requesting a £500 a day calibre candidate I wouldn't touch it for anything less than 30% in reality. We are providing a service, plain and simple. T…

>An employer is willing to pay an extra 20%...

I'm sorry, but this is an accounting fiction. The cost of an employee to an employer is the total cost; dividing up the total cost and ascribing it to this or that is irrelevant from the perspective of the employer, and disingenuous from the perspective of the employee.

In the US we have social insurance taxes which are sold as having an "employee" portion and an "employer" portion, but this too is just accounting fiction:

    Perceived:
     Gross Salary:      $100,000
     Employee Tax Rate:     7.65%
     Employee Tax Amt:    $7,650
     Net Salary:         $92,350
     Employer Tax Rate:     7.65%
     Employer Tax Amt:    $7,650

    Actual:
     Gross Salary:      $107,650
     Net Salary:         $92,350
     Tax Amount:         $15,300
     Tax Rate:              14.2%
The employee is worth $107,650 to the employer; that part of the money goes to taxes, or to a recruiter, or to a gym membership is wholly irrelevant.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#105

Post by sjtgraham »

It's not arbitrary bullshit to the recruiter, it's her bread and butter. She really wants managers because they are decision makers whom she can pitch her services to, nothing to do with the client.

Never give contact information for other people to recruiters, whether that person is a developer or employer, they will be spammed relentlessly because that is how recruiters make money. Some of them are so despicable they might claim you referred them.

Recruiters (with very few exceptions) are the lowest of the low, always keep that in mind when dealing with them and act accordingly.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#106

Post by jobmatchbox »

anthonyb wrote: post #27
geekdesigngirl wrote: post #19

I've just started working with a recruiter a former manager introduced me to. While I appreciate what they are doing, as jrockway pointed out with playing hardball regarding salary, I often feel that they don't have any interest in me whatsoever. Communication is, at best, sporadic and every time I've been to their office, I hear a bunch of yelling, see paper airplanes flying and general lackadaisical attitudes. This…

Recruiters work on commission, so they're in the same boat as real estate agents and used car salesmen. There are good ones out there, but they're all constantly looking for the next payday. It's like sharks - they have to keep swimming or they die. If you're not likely to get them cash in the immediate future, then you're exactly right - they don't care.

Recruiters are more like Doctors than used car salesmen. They are a necessary evil for some companies who have a problem that they can't solve on their own. People don't like going to the doctor and they don't like going to a recruiter, but sometimes you just have to do it to get on with things. You can self-medicate before going to the doctor and you can go to the online classifieds, but that isn't the answer for you every time. Just remember that recruiters are not all STAFFING AGENCY PEOPLE.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#107

Post by jobmatchbox »

dpio wrote: post #83

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.

Of course they don't. If the recruiter doesn't ask you for a reference then the hiring manager you are interviewing with will.

You are right about the face-to-face meetings though. A lot of staffing agencies require that their people do this. It is a core metric for many of them. If you are frustrated by this then find a good recruiter and don't bother with the others. You should want a good recruiter to know you are out there - they are going to be thinking about ways to help you. The flip side is that they only call you when you showed up in their search.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#108

Post by anthonyb »

jobmatchbox wrote: post #106
anthonyb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recruiters work on commission, so they're in the same boat as real estate agents and used car salesmen. There are good ones out there, but they're all constantly looking for the next payday. It's like sharks - they have to keep swimming or they die. If you're not likely to get them cash in the immediate future, then you're exactly right - they don't care.

Recruiters are more like Doctors than used car salesmen. They are a necessary evil for some companies who have a problem that they can't solve on their own. People don't like going to the doctor and they don't like going to a recruiter, but sometimes you just have to do it to get on with things. You can self-medicate before going to the doctor and you can go to the online classifieds, but that isn't the answer for yo…

Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this one. I've been working in the IT sector for more than 15 years and I haven't seen a recruiter yet (whether agency or in-house) that cared that much about any of their candidates ... unless they had a position open at the time and could cash in.

It's not much different from the employer's point of view either. Unless your vacancy is for something which is very low skilled, you're much better off making contacts through your existing programmers or reaching out to local user groups.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#109

Post by Dylanlacey »

angelbob wrote: post #87
patio11 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

And also tell you they'll email you and then never do.

Re: Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

#110

Post by Dylanlacey »

wccrawford wrote: post #5

You have failed to understand her job. Her clients are requiring these things. I know this, because the company I work for has had to draw hard lines on recruiters. Before that, they would send us utter crap and waste our time. Now, we don't get many hits, but most of them are actually worth talking to. She asked you all those questions because when she assumes things, her customers get really angry. Sending bad recr…

Then perhaps she should have educated the clients on the desirability of her client, rather then just kowtow. That's what she's there for, after all.
Post reply on HN