You guys are getting solicited for money?
Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
521–530 of 633 posts
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#522Yeah sorry I don't think so. I'll respond to recruiters who have something to offer, but it's pretty obvious who that is and who is just wasting your time.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#523Strong 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 have had some positive third-party recruiter experiences, but only after being referred by friends. On the other hand, there are other guys putting up fake listings to trick you into contacting them.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#524Strong 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…
I talked with a mortaging company that's pretty big after hearing a friend's experience. Got through with the first interview. A recruiter at a third party firm heard about this and called me up: "I thought I told you about this, do you want me to say some nice things about you?" I didn't understand what she was conning me into so I said yes. (This was mid morning. By late afternoon I get a call from the gmorgage people saying "hey you did great in the first interview but we're going to pass.")
Recruiters comment on that: "They keep passing on everyone I refer"
Ended up getting a job elsewhere, and the recruiter still hit me up on "do you have any referrals?"
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#525Earlier 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…
>On the other hand, because of commission, it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible so you might get a better offer via them than you would if you went direct. It's in the recruiters best interest to maximize their throughput in placing candidates, and they're commission is skimming money off the top of the salary you could have collected if you'd gone direct.
> they're commission is skimming money off the top of the salary you could have collected if you'd gone direct.
No, the company would pay you your salary and keep the commission itself, it would not have given you that commission simply because you went directly with them.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#526I like the template but I bristle at the notion that being a software engineer is a "privilege." I have spent countless hours training and re-training myself on technologies that change every few years: don't confuse my work ethic and interest in software engineering with some sort of passive privilege that fell into my lap. There are people far smarter than me who either cannot or don't have the perseverance to stay…
You are not aware of how extremely lucky you are. I’d advise to get to know people working in other fields to get a grasp.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no situation where you will say a high number and they will move up to meet you if that number was greater than their max budget to begin with. Yes, and since it's quite common to have companies where their max budget is not acceptable (probably because they are the ones who can't fill their vacancies and thus have recruiters spam everyone all the time), it's important to filter them out by saying the high…
The point is the tactic of giving the first number, though successful in ending many unappealing recruitment attempts, also has the unintended side effect of making it impossible that you'll ever get an offer SIGNIFICANTLY ABOVE your target range. Because comp boosts in the 50-100% range are possible, and you actually want to see those, you should let the recruiting org offer the first number.
You can simply quote a much higher amount instead. Boost your own salary by 100% and ask for that. When I was still working, that's what I used to do, and lo and behold, I 8x'ed my salary within 5 years.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Amazon is getting ridiculous. I get an email from them almost every day
Just wait till you get a cold text from them.
For me: Linkedin inmail->email->cold text within 3 minutes.
When I told the guy that was pretty unprofessional. His response "it's just text mate".
Escalated to jeff at amazon. That got his attention pretty quickly.
I still get recruiters trying to recruit me to amazon.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, however real estate agents will close later (and for more) when selling their own home. > Real estate agent-owned homes are on the market longer and sell for more (2005) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26840289
They’ll also tell you pricing lower will incite a bidding war. Yet the first offer that comes in they’ll say wow it’s a good offer!
This works if you have an open house/2-5 days dedicated to showings and a set time where offers are allowed (which is at the end of that showing period). However, even now, houses need to be appraised by the bank for the buyer to get the loan for the house, and many people aren’t ready to get in a bidding war only to then need to come out-of-pocket an extra $10k because they bid too much and the bank appraised it that much below the offer amount.
Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible so you might get a better offer via them Up to a point. They get a fraction of the marginal increase in salary, and they’d much sooner “close the sale” than risking having someone else fill the job to try and get an extra 500$ 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…
You can split the extra margin 50/50 so your motivations are exactly equal.
I’ve never encountered a recruiter who would even entertain that idea. They loved “cookie cutter” deals and hated this kind of unusual arrangements for the same reason that they can’t understand anything else than keywords.