Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

blog.sourcing.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 33 posts

Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

#11

Post by solarmist »

lucb1e wrote: post #10

I hear a lot about this, but never had any recruiter emails at all. I'm 20 years old so I suppose my name is just not known in the programmer world (?), but then how does that work? How do you get your name known? Day after day you hear about unemployment in the news, yet here everyone is complaining about receiving too many "please come work for us" emails? It's not that I don't believe that many developers receive…

I didn't start getting a ton of recruiter spam until I had a linkedin profile and started "connecting" with recruiters on linkedin (to "get my name out"; not sure I'd use this method to get my name out again though). Before that I would only occasionally get anything. Now every time I update my profile I get a flood of recruiter spam.

Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

#12

Post by vonmoltke »

Volscio wrote: post #9
Jemaclus wrote: post #3

What's really frustrating is when I get a seemingly personalized email, and then six of my coworkers say that they got the same email. Do recruiters really think we don't talk to each other?

I try not to take it out on recruiters because from people I know who've done it, their bosses are constantly on their asses to make quota/reach a certain # of "connections" a day. The personal touch and relationship kind of goes out the window.

Very true, and unfortunate. However, its kind of bullshit when a company who would look down on me for "resume blasting" and not tailoring my resume for them thinks is OK to "lead blast" me with a fill-in-the-blank form letter.

Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

#13

Post by yummyfajitas »

Here is an idea for getting useful responses back - give the candidate enough info to evaluate whether they are interested. This means info on the company, detailed description of the role, ballpark on the comp. You are even more likely to get a response if your email suggests you went as far as googling the candidate.

I truly don't understand why recruiters think "unspecified opportunity at top startup in technology industry, send me your resume since I'm too lazy to google it, I want a phone conversation" is actually useful.

Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

#14

Post by lostcolony »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #13

Here is an idea for getting useful responses back - give the candidate enough info to evaluate whether they are interested. This means info on the company, detailed description of the role, ballpark on the comp. You are even more likely to get a response if your email suggests you went as far as googling the candidate. I truly don't understand why recruiters think "unspecified opportunity at top startup in technology…

I like the recruiters that tell you nothing other than a bit of the technology, and even that does nothing to distinguish it. "I have a great Java opportunity in (your area); call me if you're available and interested". Yeah, I don't think so.

It's like they're trying to prevent you from going straight to the company, to where they won't get their finder's fee, but all it does is ensure they only get responses from people who are desperate.

Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

#15

Post by lostcolony »

solarmist wrote: post #11
lucb1e wrote: post #10

I hear a lot about this, but never had any recruiter emails at all. I'm 20 years old so I suppose my name is just not known in the programmer world (?), but then how does that work? How do you get your name known? Day after day you hear about unemployment in the news, yet here everyone is complaining about receiving too many "please come work for us" emails? It's not that I don't believe that many developers receive…

I didn't start getting a ton of recruiter spam until I had a linkedin profile and started "connecting" with recruiters on linkedin (to "get my name out"; not sure I'd use this method to get my name out again though). Before that I would only occasionally get anything. Now every time I update my profile I get a flood of recruiter spam.

You don't need to connect to recruiters, per se. But yes, having a LinkedIn profile will ensure you get a constant trickle of recruiters. Any time you touch your profile, expect the number to increase; LinkedIn's algorithm seems to promote newly updated profiles, likely due from the assumption that touching your LinkedIn profile is like updating your resume; you're more probable to be looking for a job than someone who has left it sitting there untouched for two years.

Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

#16

Post by chaosphere2112 »

What gets me about recruiter spam is how similar to regular spam it is. I've received only a smattering of messages, but largely, they're entirely lowercase, they have almost no punctuation, and they frequently have patently obvious grammatical errors. I responded to one recruiter (she managed to contact me at a time I was looking at alternate employment), and on the phone she was well-spoken; something about sticking a keyboard between them and me apparently causes communication to devolve into a base form.

Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

#17

Post by TheCoelacanth »

lucb1e wrote: post #10

I hear a lot about this, but never had any recruiter emails at all. I'm 20 years old so I suppose my name is just not known in the programmer world (?), but then how does that work? How do you get your name known? Day after day you hear about unemployment in the news, yet here everyone is complaining about receiving too many "please come work for us" emails? It's not that I don't believe that many developers receive…

Put a profile mentioning a handful of popular technologies on Dice.com with the actively looking status. You should get tons of recruitment spam. The problem is that the vast majority of it will not be good leads. Most of the jobs you will not have a realistic chance of getting because the recruiters will ignore key details such as level of experience and where you are actually willing to work.

Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

#18

Post by argonaut »

lostcolony wrote: post #14
yummyfajitas wrote: post #13

Here is an idea for getting useful responses back - give the candidate enough info to evaluate whether they are interested. This means info on the company, detailed description of the role, ballpark on the comp. You are even more likely to get a response if your email suggests you went as far as googling the candidate. I truly don't understand why recruiters think "unspecified opportunity at top startup in technology…

I like the recruiters that tell you nothing other than a bit of the technology, and even that does nothing to distinguish it. "I have a great Java opportunity in (your area); call me if you're available and interested". Yeah, I don't think so. It's like they're trying to prevent you from going straight to the company, to where they won't get their finder's fee, but all it does is ensure they only get responses from p…

A lot of those recruiters are agency recruiters working on contingency. Meaning they don't actually work for the company they're recruiting for, they just get paid for successfully referring engineers to that company. The reason they're so vague is because they don't want you skipping over them and contacting the company directly, which would save you/the company a lot of money (and cause them to lose their recruiting fee).

Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

#19

Post by vonmoltke »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #17
lucb1e wrote: post #10

I hear a lot about this, but never had any recruiter emails at all. I'm 20 years old so I suppose my name is just not known in the programmer world (?), but then how does that work? How do you get your name known? Day after day you hear about unemployment in the news, yet here everyone is complaining about receiving too many "please come work for us" emails? It's not that I don't believe that many developers receive…

Put a profile mentioning a handful of popular technologies on Dice.com with the actively looking status. You should get tons of recruitment spam. The problem is that the vast majority of it will not be good leads. Most of the jobs you will not have a realistic chance of getting because the recruiters will ignore key details such as level of experience and where you are actually willing to work.

Or even if your buzzword-based experience is relevant. Last time I tried Dice, I got a deluge of recruiter emails for contract Django positions because I mentioned that I used Python for analyzing radar data.

Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting

#20

Post by DHowett »

Engineer-to-engineer recruiting works to some extent, but only as long as your engineers are willing to tolerate it.

Airbnb, for example, has (had?) an "Always Be Recruiting" dogma: Get your engineers so psyched about the company that they go forth and witness to every engineer they know. It seems to work–at least, until you dig deeper. The nigh-unto weekly "most recruiting recommendations" statistics single out the few who are willing to share the Kool-Aid, and–more importantly–the many hundred who are not. If your engineers are made to look bad because they're not proliferating their trade at every tech talk, it's a bad sign.

As an aside to my aside, this article seems to ignore the glaringly-obvious "Have the CEO do the recruiting" conclusion.

Post reply on HN