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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

#31

Post by yashchandra »

drsim wrote: post #25
rmc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their job is to place a candidate with a client. They're good at it otherwise they would have died out long ago. The gripe I hear from colleagues is X, Y, Z always ending in 'and they take £££ from me a day!' My post notes the problems with the model, but it isn't broken.

"They're good at it otherwise they would have died out long ago."

Not necessarily. They have not died out only because of lazy employers. Employers do not mind paying extra cash since they are too busy to even take an extra 10 mins out to quickly screen candidates. Having said that, I have come across some good recruiters who actually know the employers well, understand the industry and are not complete jerks. But that is like a needle in a haystack.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#32

Post by netcan »

The rewards are all wrong in this market.

(1) Most companies are bad at recruitment. It's just very far from whatever their core business is.

(2) Since the value of a better employee is huge companies are willing to pay for it. In most markets, when people are willing to pay for quality, firms are able to take that money and turn it into a higher quality product. If a market appears for $100k cars, car makers will spend that money making Ferraris. The value of that may be questionable given that 10k can do most of the stuff you'd be doing with the Ferrari but that's besides the point. The point is that the manufacturer found some way of spending your money on the product.

The problem with recruiting is that they have no way of spending your money in any decent way. They can spend to get volume up, to a degree, but there isn't really of reliably spending your way into getting better candidates. Instead of doing something useful (to the employer or candidate), everything goes into a zero sum game of fighting each-other for openings and candidates.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#34

Post by gouranga »

The easiest way to kill this is to use stackoverflow jobs or emptylemon or something like that.

The moment you involve humans in the process, you're going to get asshat middlemen. Other equally bad forms of asshat middlemen: car sales, estate agents and letting agents and buyers - they are all the same.

The whole point of computing is to automate, solve problems and get rid of middlemen but we seem to have failed to solve our own problems.

The only positive with recruitment agents (at least in the UK), is that you can treat them like shit and they always come crawling back.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#35

Post by yashchandra »

drsim wrote: post #25
rmc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their job is to place a candidate with a client. They're good at it otherwise they would have died out long ago. The gripe I hear from colleagues is X, Y, Z always ending in 'and they take £££ from me a day!' My post notes the problems with the model, but it isn't broken.

"'and they take £££ from me a day" People do not gripe about recruiters taking money. People gripe about recruiter taking an unfair share for which they will lowball the candidates. If you are a good developer and have a decent idea of your market value, then it hurts to find out that you had to take a cut just because the recruiter wanted to keep extra even though the employer paid market value.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#36

Post by drsim »

yashchandra wrote: post #31
drsim wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their job is to place a candidate with a client. They're good at it otherwise they would have died out long ago. The gripe I hear from colleagues is X, Y, Z always ending in 'and they take £££ from me a day!' My post notes the problems with the model, but it isn't broken.

"They're good at it otherwise they would have died out long ago." Not necessarily. They have not died out only because of lazy employers. Employers do not mind paying extra cash since they are too busy to even take an extra 10 mins out to quickly screen candidates. Having said that, I have come across some good recruiters who actually know the employers well, understand the industry and are not complete jerks. But th…

Exactly. There will always be lazy employers, and agents are good at giving them a kick up the ass to make sure the process gets completed in as little time as possible. (Self interest of course, as this corresponds to when they'll get their commission)

Good at recruiting is not equal to "know their employers well, understand the industry and are not complete jerks". Good is getting a candidate placed as smoothly and swiftly as possible.

"taking an unfair share for which they will lowball the candidates". Better become a better negotiator then. If you know your market value, this is what the client is willing to pay for you. They don't even factor in the agent fee as they are paying £xxx for a developer.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#37

Post by rmc »

drsim wrote: post #25
rmc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their job is to place a candidate with a client. They're good at it otherwise they would have died out long ago. The gripe I hear from colleagues is X, Y, Z always ending in 'and they take £££ from me a day!' My post notes the problems with the model, but it isn't broken.

They're good at it otherwise they would have died out long ago.

That is only a true conclusion if the hiring market is a Perfect Market.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#39

Post by Peroni »

rjau wrote: post #38

Great post, but I'm not sure how a jobs board solves this problem.. where is the innovation? We're going to shaking up the creative recruiting industry here in Australia with Dragonfly. Our beta goes live next week, keen for feedback. http://dragonflylist.com

Nice hijack attempt. Have a read of our blog to understand the vision. Good luck with your company.

Protip: Disparaging companies attempting to solve the same problem as you is a dick move.

Re: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry

#40

Post by hr »

Peroni wrote: post #9
_b8r0 wrote: post #8

There's a great three part series[1][2] (well, parts one and two are great) at the Kernel magazine on recruiters as well as an expose on the top recruiting scams[3]. [1] - http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2401/tech-recruiter... [2] - http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2403/tech-recruiter... [3] - http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2404/the-10-sleazie...

Spotted that. Todays post was an updated version of a very old blog post I wrote a year ago. The Kernel inspired me to get back to what I love doing which is exposing the industry for the giant cesspitt it is.

"get back to what I love doing which is exposing the industry for the giant cesspitt it is."

Your words reveal that you are not the altruist you pretend to be. I want to believe you, take you seriously, and help you, but from the beginning all I have seen is self promotion.

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