Why Recruiters Exist (and what to do about it)

Now, I know that a lot of developers have had bad experiences with recruiters. I've had bad experiences with recruiters, when I was looking for a job out of university. You see, in the UK at least, a lot of recruitment consultants are graduates like me who couldn't find a relevant job in their field of interest, or one that bore any relationship to their degree. So instead we got caught up in the recruitment industry, which offers a salary, office experience, and the potential to (allegedly)earn some money. The majority of us are as confused as you are as to why we're here, but those of us who are still doing it after 3 months are probably doing it because there's something in it they enjoy, or they've been lucky enough to keep it.

I get that there's bastards in the industry. There's bastards in every industry. And the tech industry isn't the only one beset by recruiters. I used to work in social housing recruitment, where we were actually liked by those people we were trying to find jobs for. To go from that, to an industry where we are seen as 'the scum of the earth' (which I saw on this site), 'evil bottom feeders' and 'fucking idiots' came as a shock to me.

I'm not asking you to all suddenly start getting lovey dovey with us. This won't change many peoples mind. But be aware that on the other end of the phone is probably a young graduate, terrified out of his mind, who has been thrust into an industry he doesn't know anything about, and expected to hit some ridiculous targets in order to keep his job. A lot of the time, his only mistake has been accepting a job when he didn't have one. Recruitment preys on the desperate, lost demographic of graduates.

So yes, every industry has its shits. But for the most part a lot of recruiters have nothing but respect for developers and designers in the tech industry. Hell, we're scared of you most of the time. You guys possess talent that we can only dream of having, and pretty much make the world go round. All we're doing is helping you find a job.

tl;dr Recruiters are people too. Not all of us are the 'scum of the earth'. Some of us are just trying to get by until we either get better at this job or find another one. We're not all out to screw you over.

More often than not this is usually the case. It's all contextual but if you take one of the more common reasons for leaving (being offered a better salary/opportunity elsewhere) the employers reaction tends to be an instant promotion and a reasonable salary increase to match.

Money is rarely the sole factor in peoples decision to move on and over time the underlying issues become more and more prominent.

As mentioned below, I'm going to put together a blog on the issue tomorrow as it's a bit too lengthy to get into it here so keep an eye out.

One thing I didn't mention in the post is that, in a lot of cases, the incentive system for recruiters isn't necessarily aligned with the best interests of the companies and developers they work with. Recruiters are a bit like sell side realtors. The incentive for them is to push a lot of product. So, as a sell side realtor, my financial incentive pushes me to accept the first offer that comes through, whether it's a low ball or not, and move along. Only rarely do I dismiss that financial incentive for the benefit of my client, because 6% of $300k isn't much different than 6% of $320k.

So, it's actually irrational for recruiters to spend a lot of time finding the perfect employee for their client, or the perfect job for their recruit, if it takes more time than normal.

Unless, of course, you take a longer term view. Longer term, highly successful placements mean that you get more clients and more high quality recruits. But, again, it's hard to think long term when we change careers so often.

Glad to know you're one of the good ones.

Is this really true, though? I've heard it for so long and it's always had the air of received wisdom without facts (or even anecdata) to back it up.