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Form letter response for engineering recruiting emails

bryanduxbury.com

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Re: Form letter response for engineering recruiting emails

#41

Post by awkward »

brendoncrawford wrote: post #39

First world problems: "I get too many job opportunities from recruiters." There are a lot of people right now who would be thrilled to receive these emails from recruiters, and would reply to every one. Why burn the bridge with a snarky response? Maybe one day you could be one of those people.

You burn the bridge because you want a moat between yourself and these people.

Having humility when your job is in demand is good, but most of the practices indicated in the article indicate recruiters that are either unhelpful or actively harmful.

For example - there are recruiting firms who will submit your resume without telling you where, and play it off like it's common practice (which it is, but only among assholes.) This puts you in a bind where if a company recieves your resume through another source, they may have conflicting legal obligations attached to both sources, causing your resume to go in the garbage. Many recruiters do this, but plenty do not. Only work with the second kind.

The other checkboxes indicate carelessness, trawling, spamming, and other less than great features. Take it or leave it, but ask yourself if that's the kind of person you want to work with.

Re: Form letter response for engineering recruiting emails

#42

Post by sadkingbilly »

Always insist on them providing the company name. Most won't provide this without a fight, because they're either paranoid of other recruiters scalping their leads or they feel it's the only leverage they have over you. The ones that do give the company name are either naive or trustful, in the latter case, they deserve some attention.

Re: Form letter response for engineering recruiting emails

#43

Post by dalore »

brendoncrawford wrote: post #39

First world problems: "I get too many job opportunities from recruiters." There are a lot of people right now who would be thrilled to receive these emails from recruiters, and would reply to every one. Why burn the bridge with a snarky response? Maybe one day you could be one of those people.

In I.T. and offer from a recruiter is not necessarily are real job opportunity and more than likely not. Recruiters like to fish around and ad you to their inventory.

Re: Form letter response for engineering recruiting emails

#44

Post by antjanus »

awkward wrote: post #41
brendoncrawford wrote: post #39

First world problems: "I get too many job opportunities from recruiters." There are a lot of people right now who would be thrilled to receive these emails from recruiters, and would reply to every one. Why burn the bridge with a snarky response? Maybe one day you could be one of those people.

You burn the bridge because you want a moat between yourself and these people. Having humility when your job is in demand is good, but most of the practices indicated in the article indicate recruiters that are either unhelpful or actively harmful. For example - there are recruiting firms who will submit your resume without telling you where, and play it off like it's common practice (which it is, but only among assh…

Definitely true. More than once has my resume ended up several times over at the same company, causing me to "drop out of the race". Why? Because recruiters either did not mention the company or could not disclose the name of the company.

I've learned not to rely solely on recruiters either so in the end, the only recruiters I feel like are justified to work with are recruiters hired specifically by a company, meaning that they represent the company and the company won't deal with anyone outside of that.

Re: Form letter response for engineering recruiting emails

#45

Post by steven777400 »

I don't know whether I should care (+ or -) that I've only once had a recruiter contact me. I don't mind the contact, but it seems like it would be tiresome to deal with frequent contact from multiple sources. I suppose it could also be an ego boost as well.

Re: Form letter response for engineering recruiting emails

#46

Post by benawabe896 »

pc86 wrote: post #33
benawabe896 wrote: post #2

Why is there not some way to disrupt this industry??? It is maddening that these people even exist. How is normal to take 35% of someone's salary for 6 months because you got to them first at the right time? How is it ethical to whittle a starry eyed junior down to 30 bucks an hour so you can take 60 or 70 plus? There has to be a way simpler way to connect folks to jobs in this day and age. ...Sorry, it just gets to…

$30 an hour is about $60,000 a year which is a pretty good starting salary. An amazing one in my part of the country where $45k is the average just-out-school salary. And all the recruiters I've dealt with are paid a flat fee by the hiring company, they don't take a percentage of pay. Then again I've never worked directly for a recruiting agency, either.

I definitely understand the sentiment in this comment, but if 60k annual is a good salary, think about 120k annually for just being a parasitic worm recruiter. Most folks at that "30 buck" rate have no idea that the employers would pay then much higher directly, and merely assume that the recruiter just took a flat fee. When it's understood that the recruiter took a percentage of the income, and that said percentage equates to double what the employee is actually getting paid... that's when the hatred starts.

Re: Form letter response for engineering recruiting emails

#47

Post by philip1209 »

Ecio78 wrote: post #29
philip1209 wrote: post #7

I love this. I modified it for my own use: https://draftin.com/documents/95708?token=uf_BIHiv8xAonKejRl...

quick note for you: in your hn profile you say "graduating May 2013". According to the about on your site http://www.philipithomas.com/about/ you graduated in May, but on your cv site http://cv.philipithomas.com/ you say "I graduate this month" and in education you say "expected 5/13" If you finally graduated, it's time to update all the info :-)

Whoops, thanks. I'll update the profile now. Because I'm not seeking work, I've been a little lazy with my CV.

Re: Form letter response for engineering recruiting emails

#49

Post by pc86 »

benawabe896 wrote: post #46
pc86 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$30 an hour is about $60,000 a year which is a pretty good starting salary. An amazing one in my part of the country where $45k is the average just-out-school salary. And all the recruiters I've dealt with are paid a flat fee by the hiring company, they don't take a percentage of pay. Then again I've never worked directly for a recruiting agency, either.

I definitely understand the sentiment in this comment, but if 60k annual is a good salary, think about 120k annually for just being a parasitic worm recruiter. Most folks at that "30 buck" rate have no idea that the employers would pay then much higher directly, and merely assume that the recruiter just took a flat fee. When it's understood that the recruiter took a percentage of the income, and that said percentage…

I don't see how comparing the salary of developers and recruiters is any more meaningful than comparing the salary of college professors and plumbers or the Weis stock boy and a junior VC associate.

If someone has been getting offers and interviews for $60k positions and a recruiter can get them an $80k position, what does it matter to the developer if the recruiter gets $20, $40 or even $80k on top of that? I think with the right incentives recruiting can help everyone involved. The problem is when the incentives aren't aligned. If a company is giving Recruiter A $100k to find a developer no matter what, A's incentive is to push the developer's salary as low as possible. If Recruiter B gets a lump sum of 50% of the first year salary, B is going to fight for an extra few thousand dollars on my bottom line.

I'm on the opposite side of the country so it's very possible the recruiters in the Valley are leeches like they appear to be based on the general consensus on HN. My experience with them has been varied, from the former classmate with a degree in Fine Art suddenly trying to learn the difference between Java and JavaScript to someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

Re: Form letter response for engineering recruiting emails

#50

Post by muratmutlu »

trimbo wrote: post #8

So true. My take, in my role as VP engineering at Radius, I have hand-written every recruiting email I've ever sent . No template. I personalize it to you. A lot of people discard it as spam, or don't accept the in-mail, or whatever. I understand, but at least on the off chance they read it, I know I tried my best and showed legit interest. Sad that recruiters don't take the time to do such a thing, but it's often a…

Keep on doing it! I always appreciate the effort some people put into the Inmail, although it's usually direct from companies rather than recruiters
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