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All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

hackerjobs.co.uk

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Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#11

Post by rhinds »

I agree - having recently been through tech recruitment processes its pretty painful - at the end of the day recruiters are just sales people, their single goal is to sell you and the roles, regardless of what your goals or skills are.

As a result, with a few friends I have been working as part of a team working on a product to try and disrupt the recruitment industry (was actually going to do a Show HN, as we have just launched two days ago!) - Its a online resume building site, that lets developers plug in to GitHub, stackoverflow, etc, to demonstrate their projects and experiences.

As well as this though, we are working on the companies section, where companies can register and effectively create their resumes pitching to developers why they should work for them (developer hardware setup, training agenda, oss contribs etc) - so making more incentives for companies to register themselves (and less so for agencies), and hopefully reduce that burden of recruiting on companies as they can easily see github contributions, stack answers etc and get a better indication of potential candidates skills.

Feel free to check out the site (in beta) http://nerdability.com

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#12

Post by Peroni »

rhinds wrote: post #11

I agree - having recently been through tech recruitment processes its pretty painful - at the end of the day recruiters are just sales people, their single goal is to sell you and the roles, regardless of what your goals or skills are. As a result, with a few friends I have been working as part of a team working on a product to try and disrupt the recruitment industry (was actually going to do a Show HN, as we have j…

This is what I'm talking about.

Bit of advice, stick up some form of an 'about us' as it's not immediately evident what you are trying to achieve with the site. Had I not read your comment first I would have been a bit confused.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#13

Post by zalew »

rhinds wrote: post #11

I agree - having recently been through tech recruitment processes its pretty painful - at the end of the day recruiters are just sales people, their single goal is to sell you and the roles, regardless of what your goals or skills are. As a result, with a few friends I have been working as part of a team working on a product to try and disrupt the recruitment industry (was actually going to do a Show HN, as we have j…

> Its a online resume building site, that lets developers plug in to GitHub, stackoverflow, etc, to demonstrate their projects and experiences

sth like https://masterbranch.com/ ? except the latter lets you connect other repos than github.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#14

Post by zalew »

nw1188 wrote: post #4

"The reality is that passive racism and ageism is still extremely active within the recruitment industry." I agree this is an issue in the industry, but I believe this point is a serious issue at the companies end rather than the responsibility of the recruiters. Surely the reason it is easier to "sell" white European candidates is that is what the companies want, and the people they end up hiring, this is completely…

"had an unofficial yet extremely active rule where if the applicant had more vowels in their surname than consonants, their CV was instantly dismissed"

could somebody tell me who is it discriminating against? it sounds ridiculous, or I'm not getting the reference.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#15

Post by Peroni »

zalew wrote: post #14
nw1188 wrote: post #4

"The reality is that passive racism and ageism is still extremely active within the recruitment industry." I agree this is an issue in the industry, but I believe this point is a serious issue at the companies end rather than the responsibility of the recruiters. Surely the reason it is easier to "sell" white European candidates is that is what the companies want, and the people they end up hiring, this is completely…

"had an unofficial yet extremely active rule where if the applicant had more vowels in their surname than consonants, their CV was instantly dismissed" could somebody tell me who is it discriminating against? it sounds ridiculous, or I'm not getting the reference.

It was a general attempt to eliminate a lot of African candidates. Probably should have clarified that. Remember, this company does not employ clever people.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#16

Post by ianpri »

Peroni wrote: post #3
citricsquid wrote: post #2

> Job boards are not doing anything even remotely innovative enough to disrupt the recruitment industry and the primary reason for that is purely because no-one wants to upset their cash cow. Except us that is. We don't pander to the recruitment industry. Quite the opposite in fact. We've sent a number of warning shots into the air to make them aware that we intend on impacting the need for reliance on their industry…

Good question. We are still pretty much at MVP stage but you can hopefully get a hint in our intro blog: http://hackerjobs.co.uk/blog/2012/3/25/when-jonny-met-stevie Long story short, all job boards with a tiny number exceptions are catering primarily to the recruitment industry. Our priority is currently, and will always remain with the direct employer and the job seeker. As the site grows we will be adding features…

But why launch even an MVP that is essentially no different to the vast majority of other portals (HN, stackoverflow careers, gumtree) etc? Would it not be more useful to launch with at least some of the innovative features you've hinted at? What value are you adding to direct employers or job seekers?

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#17

Post by [deleted] »

zalew wrote: post #14
nw1188 wrote: post #4

"The reality is that passive racism and ageism is still extremely active within the recruitment industry." I agree this is an issue in the industry, but I believe this point is a serious issue at the companies end rather than the responsibility of the recruiters. Surely the reason it is easier to "sell" white European candidates is that is what the companies want, and the people they end up hiring, this is completely…

"had an unofficial yet extremely active rule where if the applicant had more vowels in their surname than consonants, their CV was instantly dismissed" could somebody tell me who is it discriminating against? it sounds ridiculous, or I'm not getting the reference.

[deleted]

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#18

Post by drsim »

Recruitment agents work particularly well for contract developers, the ethics notwithstanding. Permanent is a whole different ball game that I'm not going to touch on.

TLDR: The model isn't broken, it could use some optimization.

Everyone likes to bash a recruiter. And, some guy who takes 80 quid a day out of your pocket for months should be an object of derision, no?

Look at the flip side: agents act as stimulus for the market, pushing through deals quickly and raising the ceiling on rates.

Sales is dirty and hard work (I've done it). Agents need to be like bulldogs as roles go fast, within days or hours. Without an agent in the mix contracts take longer to get signed.

They are far from the best judges of quality candidates. The closest they get is keyword matching and telephone screening if you're able to string a sentence together. But often this is a good 'low bar'.

Agent fees are expensive. As a contractor it's never good to find out what the client is actually paying for you vs. what you get. That said, the rates here in London are good compared to what I found in Vancouver and elsewhere in the UK. The difference I observed was the aggressive and competitive agencies here, where if they can squeeze more money out of a client they'll pocket a good chunk of it.

London's well-established and healthy contracting market is due in part to the agencies that have grown up around the candidates and companies here.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#19

Post by qznc »

The most elegant way to "fix" a market is to change the incentives. There is a contract between employer and recruiter. The employer does not want to be pestered all day about useless candidates. Just subtract some percentage from the recruiters fee for each wasted call.

Let's say the employer gets on average 20 calls until a candidate qualifies and the third of those gets the job. This means 60 wasted calls for 3 candidates. If you subtract 1% per wasted call from the recruiters fee, he should make sure to reduce the number of wasted calls. Of course, the original fee must be a little bit larger than the mentioned £5k-£15k, since some waste is expected. Start with £18k, reduce wasted calls to 20, which results in a £14k fee and more time for the employer.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#20

Post by rmc »

drsim wrote: post #18

Recruitment agents work particularly well for contract developers, the ethics notwithstanding. Permanent is a whole different ball game that I'm not going to touch on. TLDR: The model isn't broken, it could use some optimization. Everyone likes to bash a recruiter. And, some guy who takes 80 quid a day out of your pocket for months should be an object of derision, no? Look at the flip side: agents act as stimulus for…

Everyone likes to bash a recruiter. And, some guy who takes 80 quid a day out of your pocket for months should be an object of derision, no?

People don't hate recruiters because they take money, but because they are rubbish at their job.

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