Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time • Hacker News Board

Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time

#41

Post by snorkel » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 5:13 PM UTC

ericdykstra wrote: post #21

w33ble wrote: post #12

I had expected this to be related to using recruiters to find jobs. I've found that to be primarily a complete waste of time as well, but I suspect the reasons are the same. To most recruiters, it's just a numbers game, as the article points out; they simply "throw engineers at companies in the hopes that one or two will stick and they’ll get their commission". In my experience, it's quite rare to find a recruiter th…

One recruiter reached out to me when I was fresh out of college, and brought me in for a meeting. He then suddenly stopped responding in an email thread and I never heard from him again. Then again, that's a one-time experience. But my time with the recruiter was as wasteful as time spent posting my resume on Monster and other job sites.

Recruiters use face to face meetings to gauge how well you would do in an interview. Your best use of that time is to ask the recruiter for valuable interview advice, what questions to expect, and how to answer those questions.

Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time

#42

Post by davedx » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 5:14 PM UTC

davidhansen wrote: post #28

gchucky wrote: post #3

I 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.

Except large, established organizations usually have HR departments that perform the functions of recruiters anyway. Or at least they do in my idealized fantasy world, where the role of HR is to acquire, foster, encourage, and compensate talent.

Large, established organizations typically use both their own HR department and external recruiters.

It's particularly useful to use recruiters to find freelancers (mileage varies a lot of course).

Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time

#43

Post by gujk » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 5:15 PM UTC

davidhansen wrote: post #28

gchucky wrote: post #3

I 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.

Except large, established organizations usually have HR departments that perform the functions of recruiters anyway. Or at least they do in my idealized fantasy world, where the role of HR is to acquire, foster, encourage, and compensate talent.

That's crazy talk. A hiring manager's job is to acquire talent. HR's job is to smooth the details of the process and keep it legal.

Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time

#44

Post by car » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 5:15 PM UTC

It seems that the author is confusing placement agencies with recruiters working directly for a company (also see pg's comment).

I've had great experiences with experienced recruiters at a startup, to help us find candidates, while at the same time getting pounded by unethical, moronic agencies.

The recruiter helped us wade through hundreds of CV's, and eventually found an awesome Stanford CS MS that we ended up hiring. And this was while the recruiter worked for us as a contractor, so no 30% salary fee.

So a great recruiter is worth their weight in gold, because they can potentially find that perfectly fitting candidate, giving a boost to a fledgling startup. Unfortunately, such recruiters a far and few between.

Opposed to that, I got daily calls from agencies, that weaseled their way past our operators to talk to me directly, being super aggressive and downright rude when I politely told them to stop calling. This all, of course, because of the 30% fee salary fee when they place someone.

Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time

#45

Post by car » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

It seems that the author is confusing placement agencies with recruiters working directly for a company (also see pg's comment).

I've had great experiences with experienced recruiters, to help us find candidates, while at the same time getting pounded by unethical, moronic agencies.

The recruiter helped us wade through hundreds of CV's, and eventually found an awesome Stanford CS MS that we ended up hiring. And this was while the recruiter worked for us as a contractor, so no 30% salary fee.

Opposed to that, I got daily calls from agencies, that weaseled their way past our operators to talk to me directly, being super aggressive and downright rude when I politely told them to stop calling. This all, of course, because of the 30% fee salary fee when they place someone.

Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time

#46

Post by adestefan » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #11

I need to write a post to discuss this at greater depth, but... I am fucking astonished at how inept most recruiters are. I mean, just awful and useless at their "jobs." If we concede the point that, especially in the Valley, technical talent is in high demand, it stands to reason that any overture to such talent needs to be persuasive, informative and intriguing. It should explain the role in reasonable detail, whil…

I think you underestimate the number of people that are inept at their job in every field.

Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time

#47

Post by kabrummett » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 5:18 PM UTC

As a technical recruiter I am not shocked by this post but I am a little frustrated with the large brush that is painted on the industry as a whole. I mean, I have worked with some BAD Developers, everything they write breaks the minute it is in production, you can never pry them away from the foosball table or lunch room, they smell and can’t speak in complete sentences BUT I still recruit for technical talent because not everyone is alike. Just like every industry there are rock stars and other guys just trying to put food on the table.

I have been honored to survive this tough economical climate in the confines of a corporate recruiting gig for a technically forward high frequency trading firm in my hometown of Houston. Over the last few years I know more recruiters who have lost their jobs than I can count, some have lost their homes and their families. Does this sound familiar to anyone, maybe say the days of 2001 for the tech set?

If the stories I have heard our true (I got into the biz in '04) developers making 150/hr one day are banging on recruiters doors begging for interviews the next.

So ya, I get it, some recruiters have zero technical skills, know little to nothing about the job/client but at their core they are human beings. And just maybe, the client doesn't have a lot to sell at the moment, maybe they are still working out the kinks to their "value proposition" but they know they are onto something.

So ignore the calls, politely say you aren't interested but remember, the tides can turn…quickly. The recruiter who doesn't know squat about server level architectural may be next door neighbors to someone who has enough funding to throw you a bone.

Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time

#48

Post by nosequel » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 5:19 PM UTC

BiWinning wrote: post #7

So where do you search for engineers if you're a startup?

What do you do at your startup... is it similar to any open source tools, or does it rely on a lot of open source tools / libraries? Who commits to that open source project the most? Is their code written well? Send them a message on github/bitbucket/whatever. Github/Meetups/Conferences/Twitter are +1million more useful than recruiters or most job sites.

Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time

#49

Post by gujk » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

snorkel wrote: post #41

ericdykstra wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One recruiter reached out to me when I was fresh out of college, and brought me in for a meeting. He then suddenly stopped responding in an email thread and I never heard from him again. Then again, that's a one-time experience. But my time with the recruiter was as wasteful as time spent posting my resume on Monster and other job sites.

Recruiters use face to face meetings to gauge how well you would do in an interview. Your best use of that time is to ask the recruiter for valuable interview advice, what questions to expect, and how to answer those questions.

Yes. The one valuable ability that is exclusive to a recruiter (and any other deal broker, like real estate) is to abuse their position as a trusted mediator to slyly violate confidentiality agreements to help the deal close: tell the company what salary what employee will accept and any competing offers, tell the employee about what the interviewer wants to hear, etc.

That is a double-edged sword, though, so be careful with it.

The recruiter (or any mediator) is a valuable tool to help the weaker side of a negotiation close a deal. Know which side you are.

Re: Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time

#50

Post by danilocampos » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 5:21 PM UTC

dpritchett wrote: post #14

danilocampos wrote: post #11

I need to write a post to discuss this at greater depth, but... I am fucking astonished at how inept most recruiters are. I mean, just awful and useless at their "jobs." If we concede the point that, especially in the Valley, technical talent is in high demand, it stands to reason that any overture to such talent needs to be persuasive, informative and intriguing. It should explain the role in reasonable detail, whil…

Maybe you're not looking, but don't you have some iOS dev friends who are less comfortable in their current positions? I take unsolicited recruitment approaches with a grain of salt, but I make an honest effort to go through my mental Rolodex to see if there's anyone I know who might benefit from making the connection. When I respond to a cold call it's either politely or not at all. Just tracking the volume and cont…

> don't you have some iOS dev friends who are less comfortable in their current positions?

Gave this some thought for awhile.

But no. Everyone I know worth their salt in iOS has solid gigs – way better than a lot of the turds recruiters are offering, anyway.