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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

#361

Post by jnwatson »

codegeek wrote: post #262
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,…

There are 3 types of recruiters: 1. Internal company recruiters. They couldn't care less about contacting you directly unless things have changed in today's market (My last interaction with in house recruiter was circa 2010). 2. Scummy recruiting farms where they hire a bunch of people on commissions and they spam anyone and everyone 3. Recruiters who actually have relationships with a customer, prospect good candida…

That’s a great categorization.

I’ve accepted a job through a very good internal recruiter once in 2015.

I can distinguish between a 2 and a 3 in a 5 minute phone call.

I don’t understand all the hate about recruiters. I cut off the bad ones and the folks left are great. The overhead is quite low.

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

#362

Post by opportune »

jedberg wrote: post #263
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…

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…

I don’t think this true if you are already near top of band (very lucky place to be in). Right now I have golden handcuffs and just ignore almost all recruiters because I know only a few select big companies (plus quant) can match my pay.

Startups are a bit more hit or miss though, and if they are small enough they probably won’t even have pay bands. You need to do more due diligence there

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

#363

Post by hn_version_0023 »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #333
hn_version_0023 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Recruiters work super hard with archaic, shitty tools. You may not like their methods, but (mostly) they are anything but lazy.

If they can’t be bothered to read the all-caps text stating I don’t wish to be contacted, then yes, they are lazy.

If they read it and contact me anyway? Then they’re disrespectful of my wishes and not worth my time. But I’ll concede that isn’t lazy!

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

#364

Post by ThalesX »

polote wrote: post #353
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 "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy. Let say you started at 50k (which is very low) and you doubled your salary 4 times (what is plenty ?). Then you make now 800k. Which is unlikely, so your main argument is probably wrong

I've doubled my income some times but I started out at around $200

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

#365

Post by acjohnson55 »

omgmajk wrote: post #343

I reply to InMail so that they get their LinkedIn credit back. They are usually thankful for that. Other offers there's a 50/50 chance I have the energy to reply.

I simply turned my InMail off. I've never gotten a useful message in however many years I've been on LinkedIn.

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

#366

Post by stretchwithme »

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,…

My policy is if you hear 18 other recruiters murmuring in the background, decline, then block that number and that email.

Sometimes you get multiple contacts from different recruiters with the same company on the same day.

If they won't tell you what company is interested, they don't have a contract with that company.

Don't be open and honest with a recruiter if they aren't open and honest with you.

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

#368

Post by larkost »

picture_view wrote: post #60
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 was recently talking to a 3rd party recruiter who started asking me for detailed salary info of all my past jobs. I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable answering that, then when he pushed back I told him I’m legally not required to give him that info in my state (and the potential employer’s state.) He abruptly cut the call off and ghosted me. I decided to apply to the company directly. They were happy to talk…

It is ok that you did not feel comfortable with that, but pay negotiations are exactly why you would want to have a recruiter: they handle that for you, and are generally incentivized to get you as much money as they can since they generally get a percentage of your yearly salary as their pay. So by telling the recruiter you were not going to share that with them you were hamstringing them... of course they thought you were a bad candidate (for them).

It is a bit petty that they told the company that you were a poor candidate, but you seem to not understand what was happening. And it could have been they had already mentioned your name to them, and then had to explain why they suddenly were not representing you. I don't know, but that is a reasonable explanation.

I personally have had a mixed bag with recruiters: many I have dealt with are worthless in that they don't understand the jobs they are recruiting for (so give very bad matches to both sides), but I have been lucky twice and had recruiters give me great jobs and handle the pay negotiations so well that I probably got $20-40K/year more than I would have by myself (if I had somehow found those positions).

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

#369

Post by tudorconstantin »

I loved the article. I worked in sales for ~2 years before starting my career as a software engineer +15 years ago, so knowing how downputting rejections are, I try to treat all the salespeople as human beings, so I try to respond to all of them. My strategy is to make them refusing me, by requiring "only" a +30% i increase.

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

#370

Post by c7DJTLrn »

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…

Exactly. I don't get the hate. We are so privileged in the software industry to have people on our backs all the time offering us work that it makes me kind of sick when people take it for granted.

Sure, some recruiters will waste your time, but a lot of them are quite good at their job. It's literally their job to matchmake workers and employers. You don't have to be an asshole to them for reaching out.

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