Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
danrodriguez.me
Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
1–10 of 41 posts
Re: Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
#2If I hear anything about you looking for “ninjas”, “pirates”, “hackers”, “samurais”, or anything of the like, I’m just going to assume you’re looking for a new saturday morning cartoon character and not an engineer. Grow up.
This needs to be on a billboard.
Re: Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
#3You will never get technical recruiters to abandon calling candidates whenever they feel like it. They are competing against many other recruiters at their own firm, not to mention recruiting agencies, to place candidates in front of managers. Sure, you can demand that they not call you, but most would rather drop you from their database than miss closing a deal.
Re: Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
#4You will never get technical recruiters to abandon calling candidates whenever they feel like it. They are competing against many other recruiters at their own firm, not to mention recruiting agencies, to place candidates in front of managers. Sure, you can demand that they not call you, but most would rather drop you from their database than miss closing a deal.
I've dramatically reduced the number of annoying calls I get simply by writing "please send me an email, I ignore unsolicited calls" on my linkedin/website.
Re: Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
#5The worst is when they attempt to recruit you for a job you're clearly overqualified for.
Re: Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
#6I don't think we need to be as adversary towards recruiters as we sometimes are as a profession.
Good recruiters are basically your sales force. They'll be out there building connections and holding a very wide book of open opportunities for you the moment you need them.
The good ones will also be respected on the other side, by the employer. If they think you are a particularly good fit for a good role, they can have both you and the employer walking into a very warm lead before you even start your search.
I have two or three recruiters who have kept me busy for a decade. I tend to think of them as partners as much as anything. They know I won't make them look stupid in front of their clients, and I know they will do the right thing by me by being frank & honest.
As with all professions, some are better than others. However, if you treat all recruiters with disdain you are also damaging your own prospects in terms of building some potentially mutually rewarding relationships.
Re: Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
#7At the top of my resume/CV, I have a prominent "Note to recruiters" link which includes details on which kinds of companies I'd be a good fit for (and vice versa), as well as other details (eg I'm not maintaining an entry in your database).
This has proven very useful since you can immediately tell which recruiters have actually made an effort to qualify me, versus the ones indistinguishable from spam. I even go so far as to block the more egregious ones at my mail server which keeps the nuisance emails down.
Re: Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
#8I don't think we need to be as adversary towards recruiters as we sometimes are as a profession. Good recruiters are basically your sales force. They'll be out there building connections and holding a very wide book of open opportunities for you the moment you need them. The good ones will also be respected on the other side, by the employer. If they think you are a particularly good fit for a good role, they can hav…
Hey, I completely agree. The tone of my post was pretty aggressive but sincerely my goal was to be helpful, if a bit gruff.
The recruiters I have worked with have been like any other demographic, mostly very nice people and great to work with, but then there are some bad apples that make the rest look bad. I wrote this to try to give feedback on what it's like from our end, to let them know what's more likely to work, and what's not.
Re: Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
#9You will never get technical recruiters to abandon calling candidates whenever they feel like it. They are competing against many other recruiters at their own firm, not to mention recruiting agencies, to place candidates in front of managers. Sure, you can demand that they not call you, but most would rather drop you from their database than miss closing a deal.
I just don't answer, EVER.
Re: Tips For Tech Recruiters, From an Engineer
#10> If it says Javascript on my resume and you send me a job regarding Java, I’m not going to reply, and I might even mark it as spam.
I see that often from recruiters, but usually the other way around. They say Java, but really mean JavaScript.