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Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

alexchesser.medium.com

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Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#91

Post by duxup »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #80
duxup wrote: post #12

My current approach: I don't have time ... the volume of messages is too high, and the amount of 'legitimate' inquiries are too low. And the odds of getting ghosted by the recruiter too high. If they're a recruiter from a company that I know and they WORK FOR that company, I'll respond. Having said that I think that is a good article and I really like that email.

Is there a decent way to determine that? I know there are two extremes: (a) recruiter is a regular employee of hiring company, vs. (z) recruiter works for an unaffiliated placement company. But i.e. if a recruiter is a temporary contractor with the hiring company, they'd still have an email address from that company, right?

I find that a lot of people working for a recruiting company actually make it clear in their email with the address or signature.

To some extent a contractor who working for the company I know ... I'd still consider that a direct company reaching out to me type situation that I'd be more inclined to respond.

I don't find that it is hidden all that often, but that's just my experience.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#92

Post by ZhangSWEFAANG »

kcarter80 wrote: post #86
ehnto wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the career advice I would give, build good bridges and make friends with people. Everyone is moving around enough that you'll be able to cross into new companies and skip whole song and dance prior. You also get the benefit of having a heads up on the company you're joining too. I don't have a professional network per se, just a bunch of friends I clicked with at various companies. I know if they're enjoying s…

That is a professional network.

I think he meant that he dosen't have a huge professional network, just something slightly informal.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#93

Post by TameAntelope »

vanusa wrote: post #67
TameAntelope wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not nepotism. That isn't even what "nepotism" means. People have always gone through their in-network to seek advice and find others to work with, since the beginning of time. It's how nearly anything really great or interesting gets done, actually.

I don't think, "It's always been done this way." is as good of an argument as you think it is, especially considering the discrimination that takes place when you hire referrals over searching for the most qualified candidates.

Maybe we should shoot for doing better than how it's been done in the past? I think we can as an industry do a lot better than where we are currently.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#94

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

I get a lot of recruiters that are trying to fill positions at defense contractors. So right away I know two things:

- I'm not interested - They aren't at liberty to talk about the technical details

So I always respond with something like:

> Oh yeah, I'm pretty decent at {language}. But I want to keep growing, so I'm really not interested in writing {very old version of language}. Can you tell me what version they're using?

I figure it's a good balance between "screw off" and bothering with a phone call that won't be fruitful for either of us. It keeps me in their rolodex (in my experience, recruiters have a very high turnover rate--so who knows who they'll be recruiting for tomorrow). Also, I like to imagine that some poor engineer is trying to convince the machine to let him upgrade, and maybe I can help them out, whoever they are, by making the old version seem like a recruiting hazard.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#95

Post by rharb »

Just today I responded to a recruiter who directly emailed me "because my LinkedIn bio looked promising", asking: 1) How he got my email address, since it is not affiliated with my LinkedIn profile (uses my work email and only contains information about my current position) 2) That I wasn't interested, thanking him for his time

He responded, seemingly offended, that I "have a Gmail account, a very public account" that his "team of Search Engineers" found.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#97

Post by qubyte »

Most of the recruiter traffic comes from LinkedIn, which is not particularly surprising. The very first line of my profile there reads:

  Please do not contact me about cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs, or associated technologies.
Almost all recruiters who contact me on LinkedIn are talking about... cryptocurrency, blockchains, or NFTs etc. If a recruiter isn't prepared to read even the first line of my profile then I think I'm fine to ignore them. For all other recruiters I'll send a polite and friendly "thanks, but I'm not looking at this time".

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#98

Post by CoastalCoder »

I'm happy to invest in a relationship with recruiters who will be around for a while. But I get the impression that most recruiters have only short stints in that work.

P.S. I would like to give credit to one recruiter though: Markus Edmunds. He'd been recruiting for a particular technical specialty a year or two ago. He really got to know my preferences and strengths, and never ghosted me when individual companies passed on my resume. I know that's indistinguishable from him acting in enlightened self-interest, but it was still a productive relationship.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#99

Post by belval »

ehnto wrote: post #78
anonygler wrote: post #26

Strong 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,…

That's the career advice I would give, build good bridges and make friends with people. Everyone is moving around enough that you'll be able to cross into new companies and skip whole song and dance prior. You also get the benefit of having a heads up on the company you're joining too. I don't have a professional network per se, just a bunch of friends I clicked with at various companies. I know if they're enjoying s…

> I don't have a professional network per se, just a bunch of friends I clicked with at various companies.

You might not want to label it as such, but that is exactly what a professional network is. People can genuinely be your friends and still be part of your network.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#100

Post by AlexC04 »

rthomas6 wrote: post #85

I wonder if it would work to respond with a link to an online form to fill out with the job details. This website would also contain your resume and descriptions/code for your software projects. Kind of a script flip, making potential employers apply to you, rather than the other way around. Obviously this will only work if you are really good, and know it.

I've heard of that being done. It's actually the thing that inspired me to write the note in the first place.

I didn't have time to take on the overhead of setting up a cool site / form to go with the response, but I could have the response.

The form version of this works as an even bigger filter. Fewer leads will come though, more leads will be higher quality.

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