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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

#221

Post by d23 »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #133

Bad career advice I received early in my career: Don't talk compensation until late in the interviewing process after you've already convinced them to hire you. Compensation is the first thing I bring up now. "I currently make X salary, Y annual bonus, and Z equity. This position will need to exceed all 3 by at least 20% before I even consider it. Does that sound doable? If not, let's not waste any more of each other…

Unless you're already extremely out of band and are pretty sure your range will be higher than 95% of your incoming offers, I do not recommend doing this. Never give first numbers, and if you're in software and haven't gotten past the middling, typical startup salary numbers and onto the mind-blowingly high numbers, you will not feel confident enough to handle a negotiation where you've already given away too much information.

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

#222

Post by actually_a_dog »

fecak wrote: post #49
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,…

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 tha…

That's actually the problem with third party recruiters: the bad ones so greatly outnumber the good ones that it's extremely hard to filter out the bad from the good. I could easily spend half an afternoon or more every week on random calls with third party recruiters and never get anywhere.

What I've started doing is only dealing with the ones who both show a little evidence of having seen my profile on LinkedIn (since this is generally the ultimate source of these contacts), and mention a specific opportunity (not just "full time Python role with my direct client").

That brings me to the second problem, which is that most of these third party recruiters are working for companies that are still series C and earlier. I've done the startup game twice now, and figured out that working for a company that's going to pay me partially in lottery tickets that won't pay out for 7-10 years isn't that great of an opportunity. There are the odd exceptions out there, but they are few and far between.

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

#223

Post by delecti »

taormina wrote: post #161
derwiki wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP but I can’t shake that it feels rude, even if expected. But more practically: if I decline after the first, I don’t get the other 4 emails they have queued up for me

I can tell Amazon isn't banging down your door. Seriously, it's insane how no one at Amazon Recruiting talks to anyone else in Amazon Recruiting.

I've started getting very firm with them. I respond to each email with "no thank you, also stop contacting me, also here's the last person I asked to stop contacting me, but who didn't." We'll see how long it works, if at all, but after 3 separate Amazon recruiters contacted me last month I was fed up.

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

#224

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

What is sad, is what has happened to the industry, over time.

When I was younger, recruiters would woo you, and would act as your advocate. They would sing your praises (sometimes, with a bit of “embellishment”) to the prospective employer.

They also made quite a bit of money.

I suspect that outfits like monster.com devastated the “concierge” type of recruiter.

Also, there were contractor specialists. They acted almost exactly like talent agents, getting a commission, whenever they successfully found a contract for their clients. I dealt with a number of them (as an employer) over the years.

I think the “agents” are a thing of the past. Not exactly sure what killed them.

These days, everybody, in every profession, is obsessed with scale. Lots of small numbers, as opposed to a few big ones.

I assume that “self-service” sites have accelerated that transition.

If anyone ever saw the movie Jerry Maguire, it sort of laments the same kind of metamorphosis, in the sports agent field.

I have been rather shocked at the uncouth behavior that has been directed my way, by recruiters. I’ve been told that it’s because I’m older. They haven’t done or said anything to dissuade me from that point of view.

Dealing with today’s recruiters was one of a number of reasons that I threw in the towel on looking for work, and just accepted that I’m in early retirement.

In any case, I am sad to see the change, but folks seem OK with the state of the industry, so I guess that it’s really just sour grapes, on my part.

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

#226

Post by colmvp »

TameAntelope wrote: post #93
vanusa wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A person who is referred (especially in SWE) doesn't automatically mean they'll get the job, they'll still have to pass checks from members who may have never even interacted with the referrer. The advantage lies in the fact that it means their resume/cover gets reviewed while the 200th applicant doesn't. The reality is companies get tons of applicants and on paper most of them might be qualified.

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

#227

Post by datavirtue »

boringg wrote: post #48
frockington1 wrote: post #35

Add 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.

I love city energy. Just have to opt out of the pollution. The automotive exhaust alone is rediculous (as a truck rolls coal in front of my house).

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

#228

Post by matsemann »

mabbo wrote: post #217

A simpler approach: just be nice to recruiters. Even the cold-calling, working-for-an-agency, just-wants-10%-of-your-salary recruiters. Most of them are simply nice people who are trying to make a living in a difficult and incredibly competitive business. Some are assholes, no doubt, but just being polite until they prove that they are cost you very little. I had a recruiter reach out this morning to tell me about gr…

> It took 30 seconds.

I don't want to deal with that multiple times a day, though. They're not "nice people" when they disregard the only thing written in my Linkedin profile: "please no unsolicited calls". If they didn't even bother to read that single sentence, they probably know nothing about me and have nothing to offer. It's arrogant of them to waste my time.

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

#229

Post by datavirtue »

wnolens wrote: post #117
CoastalCoder wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No" reason is probably an overstatement. But it's certainly a different lifestyle than e.g. living in a suburban / rural area and working remotely. Many of us would consider it a step backwards unless the net increase in income was life-changing.

Step backwards in take home pay and square footage. Step forwards in social life, romantic life, culture (if you weren't getting it elsewhere). If you're married with kids, NYC doesn't make sense. If you're single with passions outside work - it's great.

What if my passion is goat husbandry?

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

#230

Post by obmelvin »

kodah wrote: post #155
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,…

> I've made it my policy to never work with a recruiter that isn't affiliated with the company they're hiring for. This is a massive privilege. A lot of companies interview in a way that I couldn't pass years ago, so I depended on external recruiters to get me jobs. This was basically how I made a living in the South without a CS or CE degree. The universal truth I see throughout every career advice thread is always…

Yes, it's interesting to see how many people here are 100% against 3rd party recruiters rather than recognizing there are those good and bad at their job - just like anything else. My best friend from growing up had a 3rd party recruiter go completely out of their way to help him, and he was very appreciative of that.
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