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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

#321

Post by fecak »

scarface74 wrote: post #316
fecak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I stayed at one job too long until 2008. I was looking to restart my career and I spammed every ATS I could find. I didn’t have a network and I had no choice. I found a job that paid around $80K as a mid level .Net dev - still more then I was making. But about $10K below the local market. Over the next three years, I did build out my network of local external recruiters who had relationships with the hiring managers.…

I'd bet your LinkedIn isn't optimized at all for discovery. Populate a skills section with languages and tools you use, and you'll often see an immediate uptick.

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

#322

Post by Tehchops »

0des wrote: post #293
Tehchops wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Truth" and "rings true in your experience" aren't necessarily overlapping values. Sure, it's a confrontational response, because I've seen too many solid, empathetic, capable individuals run out of tech by toxic gatekeeping bullshit just like this . Then all I'm left to manage and work with are toxic, self-aggrandizing, "um akshually" engineers who rate appearing smarter than others over working well with others and…

What is the need to interject the word 'manage' in there? Is that a powermove? edit: Have a great day, I'm going to let this one go. Things to do, code to write :)

Have a good day as well!

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

#323

Post by jeremywho »

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #11

I 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"

Yes, his response template is way too verbose.

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

#324

Post by valdiorn »

mulmen wrote: post #308
michelb wrote: post #299

Obviously this is geared towards software development, and my personal experience with recruiters for software jobs is similar to most here. However, I sometimes help out my client's HR departments and the recruitment experience for other jobs is vastly different. Like searching for expert welders or other specific skillsets, not unlike the ones that exists in software development (+10 years java, +15 years embedded…

The uncomfortable truth is that quality doesn't matter in software. When you need something welded you need an expert. Most companies don't need or even want a candidate with 10 years of Java experience. They want someone with barely enough skills to ship the minimum portion of the feature the business will accept. It's an evolutionary process. If companies wanted high quality candidates the market would deliver a so…

I'd argue that it does matter, however it's incredibly difficult to measure "quality" of a software project, so there's no real way to distinguish crappy software engineers from good ones. Even people with 15+ years of experience have often just been delivering dogshit for 15+ years.

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

#325

Post by LinearEntropy »

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 completely agree with you. Every single job offer I have received has come through direct listings from the company itself.

Safe to say the quality of tech recruiters in New Zealand is even lower than those elsewhere.

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

#326

Post by TameAntelope »

vanusa wrote: post #280
TameAntelope wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it is not; this is how the term is defined: > nep·o·tism - /ˈnepəˌtizəm/ - noun - the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs. [0] > Nepotism is a form of favoritism which is granted to relatives and friends in various fields, including business, politics, entertainment, sports, fitness, religion, and other activities. [1] [0] https://www.…

The practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, That's precisely the point - "close" relations. When we talk about business referrals, it by no means implied that the person being referred is a "friend" in the usual sense of the term (let alone relative). Usually it's just someone you vaguely know (by their work , and/or a chance encounter at a meetup or conference), but don't know…

We may be violently agreeing here; what is bad is the idea that someone can get a job because they know someone else, over a more qualified candidate who doesn't know that person already. We agree this is bad, yes?

Our industry is uniquely, as in above-replacement-industry, plagued by a diversity problem, and I'm asserting the practice among those in power of favoring relatives, friends, or even friends of friends over other, more qualified candidates is a contributing factor to that diversity problem.

It is not guaranteed that this always happens, but I am asserting it often is (as evinced by the "lack of interview" or "going by reputation only" as reputation is rife with bias), and that is a bad thing.

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

#327

Post by scarface74 »

fecak wrote: post #321
scarface74 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stayed at one job too long until 2008. I was looking to restart my career and I spammed every ATS I could find. I didn’t have a network and I had no choice. I found a job that paid around $80K as a mid level .Net dev - still more then I was making. But about $10K below the local market. Over the next three years, I did build out my network of local external recruiters who had relationships with the hiring managers.…

I'd bet your LinkedIn isn't optimized at all for discovery. Populate a skills section with languages and tools you use, and you'll often see an immediate uptick.

The companies paying in the BigTech compensation range don’t care about what languages or tools you are using.

The same recruiters see I work for BigTech and they are still sending me “exciting opportunities for .Net leads paying up to $150K”.

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

#328

Post by TameAntelope »

datavirtue wrote: post #215
TameAntelope wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You make it seem like straight white men conspired to take over the industry and box everyone else out. Last few teams I have been on were very skin diverse. They all had privileged cushy backgrounds though...except for one of the white men who was self-made. The power base in the US is white middle class. It's not just software that is dominated by white men. Law, medicine, construction, management at corporations.…

Thanks, I appreciate it.

It's not very important, when you focus on outcome, whether or not a group of people conspired to create that outcome, or if that outcome was simply a consequence of other factors. The impact here is that straight white men over-represent the software industry as a whole, and there are things we can do to fix or improve that.

It's a super bad idea to hire anyone who is not qualified for a position, but I'm not going to pretend there's any kind of even remotely objective or precise way of determining who maximally fits into that position.

Instead, it seems optimal to acknowledge that there will always be more qualified candidates than there are open positions, and once you've found each qualified candidate, selecting the candidate that brings the largest difference in perspective (regardless of representation group) will be the best candidate. Given the saturation of straight white men in the SWE field, the odds that another straight white male will give the largest new perspective is not super high (though it is not zero).

The "action" here, if we need to walk away with one "thing" to do, is to saturate your pipeline with candidates from very diverse backgrounds, and then select the best candidate. It's a bullshit move to say, "only straight white men applied" if you did no work at all to reach out to other communities explicitly.

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

#329

Post by hn_version_0023 »

qubyte wrote: post #97

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…

I explicitly state in my LinkedIn profile “do not contact me I’m not seeking new opportunities at this time” and I still get a half dozen a week.

Recruiters are the laziest humans on earth.

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

#330

Post by jedberg »

alkonaut wrote: post #295
jedberg wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to start with salary, at least don't tell them what you currently make, because that will instantly be their baseline. Just tell them what you desire and don't tell them that it is 20% or whatever more than what you currently make. But really you shouldn't start with giving a number. They already have a huge advantage because they negotiate salary all day and you do it once every few years. Just ask t…

Does the baseline matter though? If I’m not switching for less than 1.2x does it matter if they know what $current pay is? Either they can offer it or they can’t?

It still matters because of mental anchoring. In their mind they are being very generous by giving you 20% more than you make so their offer will be the minimum.

If they don’t know what you’re making now, they will think the minimum might be too little and if they really like you they will go higher than the 1.2x.

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