121–130 of 161 posts
I had an idea of making recruiters put their money where their mouths are. Want to represent me? That'll cost you $2000/year. If you find me a great job in the next few years you you get many times your money back.
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.
What amazes me about a great deal of the recruiters I've dealt with is their inability to do basic word-matching. Recruiter "I have a great role for you as a Ruby developer!" Me: "Do you have a copy of my CV?" Recruiter: "Yes indeed, I have it on my screen right now!" The word "Ruby" does not appear on my CV, at all . This has happened to me more times than I can remember; with Ruby, C++, C# and a whole bunch of othe…
Then again, since wherever resumes of mine that are still floating around are so old, a shot in the dark like this has a higher chance of working than your situation, where I assume your resume is reasonably up to date.
A few days ago I moderated a panel discussion at the Computer History Museum with the founders of Dropbox, Evernote, and Wildfire. I asked whether it was worth dealing with outside recruiters, and they all said no. They all had recruiters working for them in house. In fact between 3% and 5% of their employees were recruiters. They said the best source of people initially were the friends of the founders and the first…
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The sheer desperation in his voice was almost enjoyable The first time I sent my resume out to recruiters, my phone rang nearly continuously for two days. I complained about it once to my wife. She said I should never be ungrateful for a recruiter calling. He father went through a few periods of unemployment and in her eyes a call from a recruiter was a cause for celebration. From that point on, I've always been pati…
You hit the nail on the head. In a bad economy/tech market like 2001, the recruiters were rude, unreachable and acted like Gods. After 9/11 2001, a recruiter sent me resume of few other candidates vying for the same job and asked me to write a page describing how I am better than those candidates. Now, the tables have turned, we developers consider recruiters as dirt bags. I have no doubt that the tide will turn agai…
And with out sourcing product, unlike annoying recruiters - we send very little but high quality candidates that are pre-screened.
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Early employees accept offers at startups because: * The working culture is almost always superior to that of better compensated big company jobs * The career experience at a startup is often more valuable at a startup than a bigco job; at a BigCo, you're unlikely to be able to even use a good language, whereas at a startup you might own a whole product * Early employees might not want to lock themselves down to a si…
All good points, the other I'd add is that I really think joining as an early employee is optimizing for happiness. Starting a startup is really hard and more often than not results in broken relationships, tons of debt and several months of severe depression. As an employee at an early startup, you can still get significant upside exposure (eg make millions or tens of millions in a success scenario) while being able…
So basically, its a gamble and hopefully people do their research before taking a leap into the startup world.
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As pg notes above, the best hires early on often come from your personal network. Our first hire I had worked with before.
I was the first developer hired at an early stage startup and I knew no one in the metro area where I eventually ended up working. It's unfair not to give someone a shot to interview based on a perceived notion that the best hires only come from your personal network.
I managed to convince them to hire me, but for a mediocre salary (for me, I was still earning in some cases twice what my fellow graduate friends were) and spent 14 months trying to get that raised (pointless at the time, but I was naive, needed a job and ultimately I loved the work and the people were cool)
My boss there landed a job with another company running the department and asked me to come on as CTO-of-sorts of the department and I got the money I had wanted, no interview (I met with the CEO) and all the autonomy I had wanted/needed.
I've hired a couple dozen top engineers since then and been part of two acquisitions (as the acquirer) and I can tell you that you don't _really_ know what someone's like until they work. What I'm looking for is character + intelligence. Smart and get things done. Whatever you want to call it. The Get Things Done part is the bit that's so bloody difficult to tell.
I've seen people who I did not expect to be rock stars come in and just kill it. They were never put in a position to succeed before and suddenly they've gotten the ball and they're just running with it. There's one guy in particular I'm thinking of who worked for a BigCo and his technical acumen was good (not brilliant or exceptional, just good). I didn't hire him, but he just got it. He does what it takes to get the job done (and then some) and figures out what he needs along the way. I've had guys with excellent references (some from people I know) come in and do mediocre. I've seen candidates that were brilliant end up being a menace around the office.
Saying that it's unfair that you're not being given a shot is not recognising what is happening at the other side of the table - a complete imprecise science of judging people's ability to be brilliant (or even good) based on interview scenarios. You need to do things to increase your value and remove as much of the unknown quantity as possible (network, volunteering, meetups, hacker weekends, open source code, portfolios - whatever is relevant to you).
As a startup - I would take a KNOWN quantity each and every time. You are unknown in this situation. If you are good, in the future the tables will be turned and you will be known. The difference is you cannot manufacture these situations easily, no more than you can manufacture who you will marry. Espouse your best qualities, do great work (which isn't just limited to the code you write, servers you maintain, designs you produce etc.) and you will be a known quantity to people in the future.
You sound like you're young (at least job experience wise), not that I'm particularly old - business is people. People are business. Reputation is everything in your circles and if you're good, you'll start to build a rep and that will become extremely valuable and open doors for you.
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The sheer desperation in his voice was almost enjoyable The first time I sent my resume out to recruiters, my phone rang nearly continuously for two days. I complained about it once to my wife. She said I should never be ungrateful for a recruiter calling. He father went through a few periods of unemployment and in her eyes a call from a recruiter was a cause for celebration. From that point on, I've always been pati…
You hit the nail on the head. In a bad economy/tech market like 2001, the recruiters were rude, unreachable and acted like Gods. After 9/11 2001, a recruiter sent me resume of few other candidates vying for the same job and asked me to write a page describing how I am better than those candidates. Now, the tables have turned, we developers consider recruiters as dirt bags. I have no doubt that the tide will turn agai…
I talked with one recruiter about a job that paid about 1/3rd what I made just 2 years before. I said "has it really gotten that bad?" He opened up about the situation as he really didn't expect me to go after the job as it paid far less than what I was making, even back then. IIRC, it was the only job he had open at the time and rates had hit bottom, so he couldn't even find anyone willing to take it. Fortunately, things turned around for both of us.
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…
Big companies have a specific reason for going with contract employees. It gives them (the company) a legal separation from the person who would otherwise have been an employee. That person can be unceremoniously dumped out onto the street if things aren't working out, and the company is willing to pay extra for that option.
Startups can't afford to pay a 30% premium on technical help just so it's less risky to fire the bad apples. And anyway they aren't big fat targets for lawyers like big companies are - good luck finding a lawyer to take your case on contingency when you're suing a company that's having trouble making payroll.