Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
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Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
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Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
#2This has been going on for a quite some time. There's another side-effect of this strategy that the author doesn't explicitly mention. Even if you're willing to pay the recruiter's fee, you'll sometimes get to the point of making an offer to a candidate and they'll essentially be offended by the offer, since it's lower than the amount listed in the recruiter-overhauled job description that they saw.
I had one candidate ask me point-blank if I was low-balling him because I thought he was under-qualified in some way. It turns out that perception was based on the job description he saw and after I explained that the number he saw wasn't ours, he accepted the offer. But I refuse to work with that recruiter any more.
Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
#3Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
#4Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
This is the same thing I think every time someone says "Why is it so danged hard to find a developer that knows SEO or an SEO who can program their way out of a paper bag. It's like nobody has even heard of any, when we'd gladly reward any with $80k and all the soda they could drink!"
If you think you are paying market, and you can't find a candidate despite using all the normal channels, you by definition are not paying market.
Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
#5Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
I don't know about the UK in particular, but salaries in Europe are in general lower than in the US.
40k gbp is almost 46k eur, which is not a bad salary in Vienna.
Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
#6Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
Irrespective of the appropriateness or not of the rate actually offered, the edited version is quite simply a lie perpetrated by lying liers and unfortunately this sort of behaviour seems to be the norm for the recruitment industry in my limited experience.
The amount of blatant untruths I've had to be polite about as I've taken calls from recruiters trying to hawk their wares. Actually, I've stopped being polite: responses like "speaking to him an hour ago were you you lying git? Only he is sat opposite me all morning and hasn't taken a single call. Would you like to start telling the truth or just hang up now and save us both some time?" are common from me.
Next time I'm looking for work I plan to try stay as far away from that sort of company as possible - I'd feel morally dirty just thinking abut dealing with them. Unfortunately I'm not sure how effective other paths are, but fortunately I don't expect to need to know for some time! Opus is most definitely on the "would not deal with even if desperate" list after having read this post.
Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
#7Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
I don't know about the UK in particular, but salaries in Europe are in general lower than in the US. 40k gbp is almost 46k eur, which is not a bad salary in Vienna.
Yeah, but thats still more than 11000 pound less than the starting salary for a Danish computer programmer.
For a senior programmer, thats a joke.
Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
#8Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.
I don't know about the UK in particular, but salaries in Europe are in general lower than in the US. 40k gbp is almost 46k eur, which is not a bad salary in Vienna.
It depends where you are living. In London 40K is a lot less attractive than in York (where I live and work) where it is probably very good, and in somewhere like Grimsby it might be considered particularly high. The cost and hassle of working in a particular place (i.e. either rent or property purchase prices, and/or the convenience/availability/cost of transport options, access to good social facilities, and so on) make a huge difference and vary by a surprising amount from place to place even within a relatively small country and this factors into what an acceptable salary is. Of course a good benefits package can affect the acceptability of a given rate significantly too, potentially offsetting the geographical differences - you need to consider a lot more than the one headline figure when judging if the offer is fair.
Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
#9I've had numerous interesting interactions with recruiters over the years, as well as directly with hiring companies. The biggest benefit agencies seem to offer is initial screening, but it's also where they seem to fall down the most. When a recruiter can't tell me anything more than "MySQL, PHP, JavaScript", they don't really understand the client's needs or the position involved.
I find that perhaps 1 in 10 or 15 calls I get from a recruiter involves someone with a clue. Sometimes they know the tech and can talk about the client's architecture and needs, other times they will admit they're not technical, but they have had some dealings with the company directly (often for extended periods) and have a good idea about the type of person who would be a good fit. But it's still rare that I'm talking to a recruiter who, imo, is actually providing some degree of service to the hiring company (let alone my side of the equation).
More companies might be able to 'go direct' without needing a recruiter, but many don't know how to sell their own company to a potential employee. Money helps, certainly, and they'd be able to offer more if they weren't involving a recruiting agency, but it typically takes a committed involvement from the company to do the initial screening.
I used to think recruiters had no place, and that companies should always go direct. I've found that strategically, it makes sense in a few cases if they need a specific skill and don't want to broadcast to the wider market (their competition) about upcoming plans. However, those instances are pretty rare.
Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know about the UK in particular, but salaries in Europe are in general lower than in the US. 40k gbp is almost 46k eur, which is not a bad salary in Vienna.
Yeah, but thats still more than 11000 pound less than the starting salary for a Danish computer programmer. For a senior programmer, thats a joke.
Denmark has an unusually strong economy, iirc it has the best employment market in the EU.
Even in Malmö which is right next door 46k euros/year is not a bad a salary for a programmer.