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Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

alexchesser.medium.com

431–440 of 633 posts

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

#431
120% Disagree. All I can see is responding to a recruiter is helping to improve the recruiter's message, so they can span ppl more efficiently next time?

Personally, I rearly had good experience with recruiters, one they had difference goal compare you or the company you want join. Most efficient way to get into a company is by referral, e.g next time when you do some shitty work think twice, as it got long term impact.

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

#432
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deciding to disregard any recruiter opportunity is just shutting out quite a few things that you probably won't hear about otherwise and that policy is doing nothing to advance your position (career, earnings, etc.) Are readers supposed to read this as a suggestion that missing out is synonymous with losing out ? I kind of take exception to these phrases because it strips a lot of agency out of otherwise exceptional…

I read it as a fairly mathematical statement of fact. There is a tree of opportunities, and one can choose to prune some of them at the root. By definition, any direct/anticipated; and any unanticipated, indirect opportunities; are gone. Which is a 100% valid personal choice, I interpreted the minor quibble being whether this is a net positive creditor to their overall success. On one hand, pruning opportunities is i…

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

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly recommend using a Google Voice number for recruiters for just such a reason. I keep all my interviewing data isolated from my private data.

These days I just never answer the actual phone for anyone. I don’t even bother to look who is calling.

When I set up a contact, I change the ringtone for them. Then, I ignore calls from non-contacts, which are currently dominated by offers of help with my non-existent student loans (it used to be the warranty on my 20 year old car).

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

#434

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,…

Also I've had third-party recruiters ask for an version of my resume in Word format so they can standardize the format.

A. Fuck no. You aren't modifying my resume. I created it to be presented exactly as I have laid it out. I made it to stand out, not be standardized with a hundred other resumes

B. I don't use Microsoft stuff, like many other engineers

Usually if a third-party recruiter says Company XYZ is looking for people and I'm actually interested in that company, I'll just go shoot an e-mail to that company directly with my resume and not respond to the recruiter. I highly encourage everyone to do the same.

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

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Do you get too many scam calls or robo calls?

99% of the phone calls I get from unknown numbers are some combination of scam/robo/or just immediate hang up. The only exceptions tend to be businesses responding to my initial contact (eg, trying to get a plumber out to my house), in which case I will answer unknown numbers for a day or two until we connect. Otherwise nope. This is a US mobile number that I've ported from carrier to carrier since the mid-00s. Haven…

I think they're just enumerating the entire address space, rather than buying your phone number from somewhere. But I guess I have no evidence to prove this; I have given my phone number to companies, and I get a ton of spam calls.

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

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days I just never answer the actual phone for anyone. I don’t even bother to look who is calling.

A scenario I hadn't thought about, that you might want to be aware of: I had to call 911 recently. I talked to the dispatcher, and hung up. A few minutes later they called me back to give me instructions. The call showed up as a regular Los Angeles 323 area code number. In fact, it was flagged by my phone as spam. It made me wonder whether reverse 911[1] calls, which are used to warn about hazmat situations, fire eva…

Additionally, if a neighbor is having an emergency they (emergency services) might call you to see if you are home and able to help.

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

#437

I’d certainly say don’t be rude to recruiters. Some people seem to get unnecessarily wound up by recruiters and forget that we are all adults just trying to do our job. It doesn’t hurt to be polite and might just work in your favour in the long run.

Being rude is obviously a no-no, but its ok to ignore recruiters if it is an unsolicited call or email. No need to feel guilty about that.

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

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most common reasons is simply that they don't want you to go direct to the company in question and bypass their commission. If they give you too much, it is very easy to do and many companies will recruit directly and the recruiter would have no legal basis to do anything about that. On the other hand, because of commission, it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible so you migh…

> it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible so you might get a better offer via them Up to a point. They get a fraction of the marginal increase in salary, and they’d much sooner “close the sale” than risking having someone else fill the job to try and get an extra 500$ commission. It’s the same story with real estate agents: selling your house for an extra 20k might be a lot to you but t…

Assuming it is an active real estate with lots of transactions, yes, the agent is absolutely more motivated to close the deal and move on to another deal than to get the highest commission possible on a particular deal. The situation is similar with recruiters. It is important to understand these motivations to correctly interpret what you are hearing from the agents/realtors.

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

#439
Even if I’m not interested in the role I’ll let them know and often I’ll send them some people in my network that could work out. I think it’s good practice and I’ve had recruiters come back to me with really good opportunities down the road. Yeah the carpet bombing ones I ignore but personal ones I keep on with.

Do a good turn daily.

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

#440
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up until I added that line it was "rust" which was doing it. Perhaps the line makes it worse, but at least I'm happy to ignore those requests now. :)

I added rust to my list of skills and then got swamped with blockchain nonsense. It’s very odd, I took it back off again.

Haskell is probably the worst (best) blockchain company magnet. Scala too, to a lesser extent. It's not that odd when you think about what they're trying to build.
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