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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

#131

Post by briancurtin »

TomNomNom wrote: post #58

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…

A good percentage of the contact I get from recruiters is for Django jobs, for which I have zero experience to offer. "Hey I noticed you have a lot of Django experience, I have a great role for you!"...yeah, actually not, I have never even installed Django, but I do have a lot of Python experience.

I guess this is slightly better than what you're seeing since they're at least in the ballpark, but still horribly annoying. It just gets marked as spam for me.

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

#132

Post by josegonzalez »

kabrummett wrote: post #109
Shengster wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good developers are hardly ever on the market. The majority of them are happy at their current jobs, and they know they could go anywhere else they wanted because their skills are highly valued. I'm sure it gets annoying when they frequently receive emails about "Technically Forward High Frequency Trading Firms" from recruiters who happened to find them through playing buzzword bingo. These recruiters tout that this…

So great point, the best developers are never out of work. How would you recommend a recruiter network with said developers? How do we build mutually beneficial relationships? I tend not to cold call people, just because I think there are better ways to meet people but not all recruiters have that type of network. I suppose I am interested in a solution oriented debate. I hear how you don't like be contacted, how can…

Even if I'm not actively looking for a job, I'm always looking for a good beer. And I'm sure that's true of many good developers. I've always thought it was weird that recruiters never tried organizing drinkups or sponsoring barcamps.

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

#133

Post by drusenko »

codenerdz wrote: post #127
drusenko wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Umm, I will have to disagree that an early employee status is a guarantee to making millions. First of all i havent heard of that many early employees getting anywhere close to 3%, most of the time its between 0.5% and 1.5% for a salary thats several tens of thousands below market. Secondly, if we are talking about companies that will get more funding, that means that your ownership of the company will be diluted fur…

I never said it was a guarantee to make millions, just that I think over a programmer's career it is comparatively likely to make $5-50M working at a startup than starting your own, and you will be net happier on average by working at a startup than starting your own.

Also, many startups these days do pay market rates. Weebly certainly does. The startups that don't pay market are generally sub-10 people and you get an even higher equity grant for that.

Regardless, joining a startup is obviously a gamble and very far from a sure thing, but at the end of the day, so is starting your own startup.

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

#134

Post by mgkimsal »

rmason wrote: post #82

I had a conversation with a recruiter and she said how can you expect to get a job if you have ColdFusion on your resume instead of Cold Fusion? I directed her to adobe.com so she could see the correct spelling. She went oh crap, I've been throwing away all the resumes with ColdFusion because the employer spelled it Cold Fusion. No wonder the client is complaining to me about the low quality of candidates that I am s…

Wow. I wanted to LOL at that and claim you made it up, but it really does sound plausible.

I've considered putting together a training course for tech recruiters - something like a one day bootcamp to familiarize them with specific tech, so they know the diff between java and javascript, for example. but... need to find the time to do that on top of everything else!

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

#135

Post by knotty66 »

mgkimsal wrote: post #134
rmason wrote: post #82

I had a conversation with a recruiter and she said how can you expect to get a job if you have ColdFusion on your resume instead of Cold Fusion? I directed her to adobe.com so she could see the correct spelling. She went oh crap, I've been throwing away all the resumes with ColdFusion because the employer spelled it Cold Fusion. No wonder the client is complaining to me about the low quality of candidates that I am s…

Wow. I wanted to LOL at that and claim you made it up, but it really does sound plausible. I've considered putting together a training course for tech recruiters - something like a one day bootcamp to familiarize them with specific tech, so they know the diff between java and javascript, for example. but... need to find the time to do that on top of everything else!

Just last week I was sent a job requiring C++ and extensive Ball and Builder experience. It took me a couple of minutes to figure that one out ...

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

#136

Post by namidark »

Everyone seems to be hating on recruiters -- I actually just found a near dream job by me actually getting in touch with one. I'm using the language and tools I love, and I'm rolling over into a full time position with awesome benefits. Yes they take a cut of your hourly wage -- but I quoted it so up there that its not that big of a deal anyways (don't undersell yourself).

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

#137

Post by bitemyapp »

phillmv wrote: post #62
umjames wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Are there people who really want to work at all hours? Maybe eager students right out of college. Personally, I'm at the point where if I'm going to be working at all hours, I'd better be one of the primary beneficiaries of that work.

Basically, you want that rarest of birds - shy sparks who aren't nestled in a large company yet. Too introverted to be really aware of their market value and have a life and smart enough that they're going to be obsessed with the work and work at it all the time. Considering I'm having a hard time finding "reasonably competent" Rails devs, I can't imagine how you might hire for that kind of position.

By hiring a smart python dev.

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

#138

Post by DilipJ »

phillmv wrote: post #62
umjames wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Are there people who really want to work at all hours? Maybe eager students right out of college. Personally, I'm at the point where if I'm going to be working at all hours, I'd better be one of the primary beneficiaries of that work.

Basically, you want that rarest of birds - shy sparks who aren't nestled in a large company yet. Too introverted to be really aware of their market value and have a life and smart enough that they're going to be obsessed with the work and work at it all the time. Considering I'm having a hard time finding "reasonably competent" Rails devs, I can't imagine how you might hire for that kind of position.

maybe some combination of an IQ or programming test plus a Myers-Briggs analysis. That would probably be a great way to screen. Or just recruit at MIT/CMU/Caltech...

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

#139

Post by ramchip »

hkmurakami wrote: post #77
fennecfoxen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

That's exactly what happens at some places, from what I've heard. In some companies (the more commission-oriented ones) employees even own their "contact list" of candidates.

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

#140

Post by ramchip »

knotty66 wrote: post #135
mgkimsal wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I wanted to LOL at that and claim you made it up, but it really does sound plausible. I've considered putting together a training course for tech recruiters - something like a one day bootcamp to familiarize them with specific tech, so they know the diff between java and javascript, for example. but... need to find the time to do that on top of everything else!

Just last week I was sent a job requiring C++ and extensive Ball and Builder experience. It took me a couple of minutes to figure that one out ...

Borland Builder? I didn't know that still existed...
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