In Defense of Recruiters

I don't get all the recruiter hate. You're the pretty girl/handsome guy at the dance, for now. The unsolicited attention will fade with age. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Recruiters who suck mostly suck because that's what their customers want.

When you get a call from some shady recruiter asking you about a 6 month contract in Omaha, you're getting that call because a company or government agency decided to start doing strategic sourcing and procure people the same way they buy any other commodity.

So two things explain the poor quality -- they are literally squeezing every penny out of the process and are hiring idiots

The other thing is that they don't want to find candidates. They want to have low rates of success -- they're just engaging in a recruitment process to justify hiring workers on guest visas who can be more effectively exploited. If you look in an industry "trade rag", you'll usually find a page with some hard to read, small print job postings -- those are "compliance" advertisements purchased for the same purpose.

I'm a recruiter, and I often see the opposite effect. There are quite a few candidates that are underpaid and don't realize it until they start talking to a recruiter. If they'd gone directly to the company they may have received that 30% bump to bring them to market rate, but perhaps not. One benefit a recruiter provides to job seekers is the info on the market - of course this only applies to recruiters that know the market.

I'd think fee only figures into the salary conversation when fees are exorbitant (which they can be), otherwise it's a cost of doing business for some companies. Once a startup taps out their friends and family plan, they often reach out to me for some hires, and those usually lead to some referrals from those new hires and the company can subsist off friends/family of the new hires for a little longer.

This is part of the reason I charge lower and fixed (fees paid in advance, well below market rate, and fixed meaning not tied to salary) fees than my competitors, as it takes this argument off the table from both sides. It doesn't prohibit a company from making a hire because the 'tax' on the hire isn't high enough to be prohibitive, and candidates know that the 'tax' on their hire is also relatively low and prepaid. Under this model, any hire is judged based on compensation to value, and not based on a high 'tax'/fee.

Your experience with internal recruiters vs external is not unique, and it's the recruiting model that is at fault. Internal recruiters aren't going to be too salesy - they have a monopoly (not always) on the job requirements at their company, and they aren't being paid commission - whether you take the job or not may impact a bonus or performance review, but it isn't going to get them a car.

The contingency recruiter, particularly one who is independent and not working for a big firm, wants you to take the job because it means a new car.

This is an important thing to understand. Cashiers at grocery stores don't pressure you into buying more items, because what you buy has no discernible impact on them. Car salesmen, or realtors, care quite a bit.

Until companies start changing the way they engage recruiters things won't change. Paying them less, but with some guaranteed up front money, is my answer.

The problem is when the unsolicited attention becomes a distraction. When you have engineers that can have their work process interrupted by something as trivial as workplace banter, an overzealous recruiter that calls incessantly, spams your email with job listings (for "anyone you might know looking for a new opportunity"), and in general doesn't know when to stop is something most developers would rather do without.

I've worked with a few good recruiters, but even over a 5-month job search and talking to every major recruiting firm in town, I got zero actual job offers (and only one real promising lead that fizzled out on the company's side). There's a LOT of inefficiency in the system.