Who else has real and direct insight into how much money any given role pays?
Your union?
Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
41–50 of 633 posts
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#42Great advice, in my opinion.
The incentives for recruiters are clear; to get you hired. They cannot however force a hire and there's a threshold for submitting duds -- their clients will stop working with them.
I look at recruiters as a helping hand in the hiring process. That said I've had a couple that have wasted my time, so there's that.
Typically, unless you're getting flooded, it takes almost nothing to engage with them temporarily. I like the approach the author recommends. Recruiters are folks that are trying to make a living too, there's no need to be nasty.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#43Strong 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,…
Ah, but if someone doesn't have the secret sauce, are you then suggesting that person is doomed?
Industry sanctioned nepotism doesn't feel like a good look for the SWE industry, especially given our diversity problems.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#44Recruiters need to pass the bozo test to prove that they have read and understood the first sentence of my LinkedIn profile before they rate anything beyond having their email reported as spam.
It's a high bar for them to cross; I've only seen two or three in the past few years, and those I think were sold my data by Triplebyte instead.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#45Counterpoint: Always ignore recruiters.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#46I ignore recruiters all the time lol.
I haven't had issues with finding good paying work - history, references, and a good bit of research in the places where I apply has served me well /shrug
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#47I 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"
Or just a canned, "Thanks for getting in touch, but I'm not looking for a change right now."
If it's just that you might as well just ignore it and not cause any additional noise.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#48Add NYC to that list as well. There's no reason to move to either of those cities in 2022.
Outside of the fact that if you like the city, the surrounding land and the people that live there. As well as many other great reasons to live in the cities.
Just because you guys don't like them doesn't mean many other people love those areas, please stop unnecessarily dumping on cities you don't like.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#49Strong 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,…
Former recruiter here. You are spot-on about referrals, and having an insider advocating for you or just their willingness to make the recommendation starts things off at a great spot.
Here's where I disagree. You haven't doubled your salary BECAUSE of your policy of not working with recruiters, but rather DESPITE this policy.
Deciding to disregard any recruiter opportunity is just shutting out quite a few things that you probably won't hear about otherwise, especially at the higher levels. Exec roles are often handled by retained recruiting firms and aren't as well publicized as entry level and junior roles. So just saying "I will never work with a third party recruiter" can certainly be your policy, and you may save yourself a fair amount of time by sticking with it, but that policy is doing nothing to advance your position (career, earnings, etc.)
The reasons that there are so many incompetent recruiters are many, but a few are:
- low cost: companies hire entry level recruiters and pay them next to nothing in guaranteed compensation (mostly commission-based). The good ones will make the company a lot of money, and the bad ones can't afford to stay in the industry because they aren't making enough in commission - so they 'go away'.
- low skill: the skills required to be a good recruiter aren't typically taught in school, so they aren't coming out of college with a strong foundation. They need to learn and be successful quickly (because it's commission-based)
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#50Add NYC to that list as well. There's no reason to move to either of those cities in 2022.
I can understand the Bay Area, but it's a little bit crazy to think there's no reason to live in NYC.