Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
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Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
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Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
#2I think if you use a recruiter to help find new people to put through your interview process then they can be highly effective. It doesn't make sense to trust in a recruiter to bring you the perfect fit. They bring you people and then you must determine if they are the proper fit. I see no harm in recruiters. You don't have to hire anyone they bring you.
Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
#3I think the title needs to be changed to reflect the gist of the post: that for _startups_, recruiters are probably a waste of time. For a more established organizations, recruiters tend to work, I think.
Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
#4Quote: You need incredible good engineers who are not already in golden handcuffs, are crazy enough to join a risky early stage company, do not want to found their own company right now, want to work at all hours, and are aligned with the culture you are trying to build.
That really is asking for everything. I hope you have figured out a way to explain your value proposition to these dream candidates.
Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
#5There is a big difference between agency recruiters and recruiters within a company. I have not had any bad experiences with recruiters who work for a company (that is not an agency). In fact, even agency recruiters, there are definitely some bad apples but a lot of them generally are fairly good to deal with.
If I were you, I might change the title of your post to be more specific on the type of recruiters you are referring to.
Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
#6As far as I can tell, it's like choosing between paying for display advertising or affiliate marketing. Two different mindsets and neither are a bad thing.
You either do the recruitment in-house and absorb all the risk to your business, which means lots of extra interviews, staff looking through high volumes of paperwork, etc. Or you hand it over to a third party, pay them nothing for the process (i.e. they take on the risk) but then pay highly for results.
Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
#7So where do you search for engineers if you're a startup?
Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
#8There is a bigger problem with recruiters and that is there is a whole group of candidates who don't need them and won't use them. The best candidates are falling over opportunities, they find positions through their own network, not agencies. If you only use recruiters you will never find these people.
Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
#9This cuts both ways: looking for work takes a substantial, non-zero amount of time, and it's extremely frustrating when startups decide to speak with you even though they know hiring you is "a long shot."
Searching for work at a startup has been a protracted, fruitless process. They have no problem conversing with you and checking out your background over coffee, lunch, whatever. After a few conversations and a technical interview, you find out there isn't a good fit.
Rinse and repeat for any number of tech startups, and you'll be waving goodbye to a month or two of your life.
Has anyone else had this experience? To me, the whole recruiting process is f'kd on both sides.
Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time
#10Quote: You need incredible good engineers who are not already in golden handcuffs, are crazy enough to join a risky early stage company, do not want to found their own company right now, want to work at all hours, and are aligned with the culture you are trying to build. That really is asking for everything. I hope you have figured out a way to explain your value proposition to these dream candidates.
The line you quoted stood out for me most. It does seem like a tall order.
Does networking work better (than hiring a recruiter) when recruiting for startups? Do you come to places like HN to build relationships?
It seems you'd have to win people over 1-to-1 -- get them to believe in your vision and culture enough that they'd join you, in spite of all the risk -- which takes time and energy (both worth it) as well as a keen understanding of where to go to find dream talent (tough).