not worth it - they have a very high turn over, making connections there with everyone is a waste of time
Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
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Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#22The typical recruiting-house recruiter has a script that was given to them by someone else, has no particular job in mind for you, and does not know the difference between Java and JavaScript. They are, in short, one small step above spammers. Unless you are currently thinking about changing jobs, you should definitely ignore them. None of that applies to an in-house recruiter. Someone who works in HR for the hiring…
Hmmm... maybe I should have been clearer and more explicit about the fact that there are times when you ignore the script entirely.
Companies that are known to pay top of market... Like you're not going to hammer Facebook or Netflix by saying "how much sucker?" if you're in a bottom of the market bracket.
I also ignore the script when it is a company that I'm really interested in and excited by.
I should clean that up. Thanks for the comments.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#23I also recommend a response to every recruiter, but you don't need to explain your privilege, you don't need to suck up to them, and you don't need to justify your actions. "Hey ____. Before we move forward, can you provide me with the company name, a job description, and the expected compensation. Regards"
This is what I do. That email in OP is gross.
"Hi, thanks for the message. I would appreciate as much detail as you can via message. Interested in location, compensation, and what specific problems they need help solving. Thanks!"
I don't take a call unless the work description is specific enough. I don't want to work on your "backend". If asked, I tell them my comp expectation is min +50k over what I currently make. And I sure as hell am not moving to the bay area.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#24The typical recruiting-house recruiter has a script that was given to them by someone else, has no particular job in mind for you, and does not know the difference between Java and JavaScript. They are, in short, one small step above spammers. Unless you are currently thinking about changing jobs, you should definitely ignore them. None of that applies to an in-house recruiter. Someone who works in HR for the hiring…
Absolutely true. 3rd party recruiting agencies have very different motives than an in-house HR department recruitment.
An easy tell-tale sign is that they withhold the name of the company until they get you on the phone. They have a contract saying once you're in direct contact with the recruiter, you are in their pipeline and they get rights to bill a portion of your contract.
3rd party agencies are incentivized to get you the most amount of money they can, so they can skim off the top. They are highly motivated to move you through and get you signed as quickly as possible, qualified or not.
In house recruiting doesn't have this constant need to move candidates, and will be fast or slow depending on the needs within the company.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#25The problem I have is that almost every recruiter that emails me lists the positions they are trying to fill. Almost all of those positions are ones to which I am morally opposed. It's a waste of both of our time to respond positively and interview for positions that I won't accept under any realistic circumstance.
I'm not sure how you go from "Never ignore a recruiter" to "Always respond positively and interview with a recruiter". There is a middle-ground where you can reply, without being positive and not setting up an interview, while not burning bridges that you might want to cross in the future.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#26Strong disagree. I've made it my policy to never work with a recruiter that isn't affiliated with the company they're hiring for. Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do everything in their power to waste your time out of sheer incompetence and disinterest.
I've "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy.
But the real secret sauce is referrals. Companies always prioritize a strong referral, ignoring mediocre interview performance, and will even skip the reference checks so I don't have to bug my network.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#27That's a pretty big wall of text when most recruiters reach out with a single sentence or few sentences.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#28Possibly, but they left out the possible outcomes of "simply refuse to talk salary, or to talk salary in email" and "just lie about the salary and/or the job".
I did have that in there at one point. In my case I tend to either practice refining my script, or just thank them and walk away. It's in the autoresponse "without that data I'm unable to continue further discussions"
You do have to stick to that, but it's IMO pretty clear but also concise enough that you don't well on it.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#29Strong disagree. I've made it my policy to never work with a recruiter that isn't affiliated with the company they're hiring for. Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do everything in their power to waste your time out of sheer incompetence and disinterest. I've "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy. But the real secret sauce is referrals. Companies always prioritize a strong referral,…
Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do everything in their power to waste your time
Or share your data.
I made a throwaway, but not obnoxious email on my domain just for recruiters a few years ago, so I could try tracking who I was talking to.
Via three consecutive third-party recruiters I started getting cold calls and e-mails from recruiters I’d never contacted, never met, or never before engaged with from agencies that weren’t the ones I spoke to or sent a CV to. Soon I started getting other completely irrelevant email. Then the robocalls came. I later found that email address among five different data leak sources.
Just so happened to be a different popular recruiting company that has “Cyber” in the name.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#30A recruiter got me my first job a decade ago when I was fresh out of college and my internship place didn't hire me and I was panicking to find something as I didn't have a backup plan. He helped me interview at multiple places until he found one for me (the pay sucked but it was a job). So yeah, they're annoying, but I do understand their place.