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

blog.tutorspree.com

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

#71

Post by dos1 »

dabent wrote: post #60
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've worked with third-party recruiters for many jobs I had while contracting. The pitch you mentioned can work, but only in the high-turnover world of contract consulting for big companies. This is NOT going to work for startups, or anything even close. Contract programmers often switch jobs once a year. That's driven my duration limits set by companies, layoffs and the wanderlust that contractors often have. Big co…

That is so accurate I wish I could upvote you more.

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

#72

Post by danilocampos »

dabent wrote: post #60
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've worked with third-party recruiters for many jobs I had while contracting. The pitch you mentioned can work, but only in the high-turnover world of contract consulting for big companies. This is NOT going to work for startups, or anything even close. Contract programmers often switch jobs once a year. That's driven my duration limits set by companies, layoffs and the wanderlust that contractors often have. Big co…

I don't have anything more to contribute but I want to make a point of saying thanks for helping me understand this so clearly.

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

#73

Post by sgdesign »

oneplusone wrote: post #38
sgdesign wrote: post #33

If it's a designer you're looking for, skip recruiters and check out my project: http://folyo.me It'll cost far less than a recruiter, and I'll refund you if you don't find someone.

Are you using the same model as dibbble, or why are you not accepting signups?

It's not the same model, every application has to be accepted by me personally.

I've got enough designers (about 250) compared to the number of job offers currently on the site, so I've decided to close sign-ups for now.

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

#74

Post by angelbob »

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…

Sure, but do you really want to point this guy at your friends? Your friends could easily find really awesome jobs.

How you can you tell what's an awesome job? Well, for starters they don't need desperate huckster/telemarketers to shill for them, by and large.

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

#75

Post by angelbob »

shawndrost wrote: post #67

Here's another side of the story: I just moved to SF, and I'm looking for jobs. Two friends sic'd a bunch of recruiters on me, and it is awesome! Here's the process: 1. They email or call me, and I send my resume and short summary of what I want. 2. They send me streams of awesome jobs. (Two have sent bad jobs, but gmail has a hotkey for that :D ) 3. I say I want to talk to XYZ at one of these times, and they hustle…

Fair enough. That's the most use I've heard of anybody getting out of recruiters. Well done!

It's probably worth putting up a blog post somewhere about it :-)

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

#76

Post by deltaqueue »

kabrummett wrote: post #47

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 becau…

I suspect you'll get downvoted for this, because the tone of your comment insinuates developers need recruiters. While this may be the case for the lowest percentile, the fact remains that companies need recruiters to locate and hire that top percentile of talent.

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

#77

Post by hkmurakami »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #29
arethuza wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had one idiot who kept phoning me about a "great position" with an investment bank that offered less money, a lot less holidays, a lot more pressure (which I interpreted as being required to be available 24x7) and less interesting work than what I currently do. I kept asking him why I should be interested in such a role, of course, he couldn't tell me. The sheer desperation in his voice was almost enjoyable.

I have one idiot who made me an offer which might have been somewhat realistic: it was at a networking company, doing C++ for APs/controllers (5 years experience wanted). I told him something like "sorry, no, I'm just leaving that field (and that city) for a little startup, I was more of an NMS guy anyway, and I wasn't using C++ - you could do a better job of convincing me that you understand my background and skill-…

"you could do a better job of convincing me that you understand my background and skill-set; I see you even are advertising for NMS positions on your company's site."

I had a similar experience, and because I had multiple people from their office call me about different positions in the same time period, I became convinced that recruiters are just allotted a concrete list of positions that _they_ are responsible for. (think of it like randomly handing out a different list of target customers to each member of your sales team)

Even if you aren't a good fit for a given position, they'll call you about that position and not the one you're a better fit for, because well, it's not _their_ job to fill the other role.

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

#78

Post by wpietri »

tomcreighton wrote: post #18
fooboy wrote: post #9

This 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 techn…

My opinion: if startups aren't serious about hiring you, they shouldn't go through the dance. Why are they wasting everybody's time?

I go through this dance a fair bit. At least for us, we're totally serious about hiring. It's just that we're very fussy.

To understand why, think about what we hope to happen. If we do things right, then anybody we hire today will be a de-facto leader two years from now, because they're one of the people who's been around since the early days. Any code they write will be in core parts of the system. And they're going to have a big effect on who we can hire next, because potential hires are going to judge our company partly by them.

We definitely try not to waste anybody's time. But we also don't want to miss a good candidate; some really solid programmers don't interview well. But as soon as we're sure, we politely stop the process and thank them for their time.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

dabent wrote: post #60
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've worked with third-party recruiters for many jobs I had while contracting. The pitch you mentioned can work, but only in the high-turnover world of contract consulting for big companies. This is NOT going to work for startups, or anything even close. Contract programmers often switch jobs once a year. That's driven my duration limits set by companies, layoffs and the wanderlust that contractors often have. Big co…

[deleted]
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