101–110 of 231 posts
Why would you ever give references to a recruiter? They are not employers who have offered you a position you have decided to take.
I got an email from a local recruiter a few weeks ago and stepped outside during my lunch break to give her a call. On the initial phone call she asked me where I worked currently. After the call I stepped back into my work where I sit back to back with my manager. No more than 5 minutes later his phone rings, its the recruiter calling to see if they have any need of her services. I emailed her while he was on the ph…
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Yeah, for better or for worse that may be all a given candidate has.
In that case they should definitely avoid giving references until the last possible step. For those that do have other options though, I still think going with a manager/non colleague at a company you're not associated with anymore is the safer bet for these sorts of things, since recruiters won't have anyone to poach and your current boss won't know you're looking. (Solution 2 would be to have as many different refe…
I got a call from an external recruiter: "I have a candidate who would be a great fit for your company." I'm just a lowly data scientist with no hiring power, and at that job the entire data science team was quitting. So, I mentioned that I didn't think the team was growing since it seemed to be actively shrinking with no new reqs that I was aware of. Recruiter immediately turned it around and said they could represe…
So I converted my full generated resume to PDF into a word document, line by line.
Turns out, it was only so they could slap their info on it, reword my words and produce a PDF.
I asked the employer later, they said they prefer PDF as it's easier to print.......... Snakes. They're leeches in snake skin.
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This is so important! Story time: I once hired someone as a Mid/Senior Dev at a large company in SV who had strong dev skills. Everything seemed great at first and we were very excited to have this person join the team. I respected this dev and had no personal issues with them. Our interactions were positive. However this person quit suddenly after maybe two weeks because they didn't like having to justify their tech…
Eh. He probably just didn't like the team/felt that they didn't know what they were doing/they wasted more time on meetings and discussion in general rather than him just not wanting to justify his approach.
(btw, the comment you replied to never mentioned the gender of the person)
Never, ever, give out a contact unless you want to burn that contact. That means no references until offer, no answering the mid-conversation "oh, I forgot, who's (CTO|your manager) there", no giving them the name of someone more suitable that might be interested. (Forward the role and recruiter to your maybe interested friend)
Send PDF CV only. Word docs will be branded, changed, and in some cases leave you sat in an interview where you don't recognise the CV and skills that got you there. Yes, this happened. We compared my CVs in interview (I always take along a paper copy).
Confirm rates or salary and conditions in interview. See above.
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Are you legally allowed to mention that? I thought references could only verify if you worked for the company, or otherwise risk being sued. Maybe that's a myth? Regardless, it's pretty odd he would put your company down as a reference after only staying two weeks.
That is a CYOA policy that many companies have, not a law. In the US, you are legally in the clear as long as you aren't telling outright falsehoods unless you have some form of explicit NDA.
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It’s still worth doing even if there’s a just a small chance of turning something up. The only time I haven’t seen it be useful is employee referrals.
Honest question: what do you hope to find? As a source of information, references were hand selected by the person with an interest in getting selected, they will like be prepped on what to say, they have zero investment in your company's success, etc.
10% you can get confirmation that you correctly spotted the candidate’s development areas. (Everyone has them, so it’s not a gotcha. But if you think the candidate needs to work on their architecture skills, their last boss confirms it but says they’re a great hire, then you can a good conversation later. “I’d love you to do X, how do we make you a great architect along the way?)
10% if the time you catch the candidate in a lie or find yourself asking “Is the best they could find someone to talk about their work?”
When I reference checked nannies, the last bucket grew to 50%. And I had one nanny give another as a reference.
Being a contractor in the UK for the last 13 years i quickly learned when i first started that any recruiter that asks for references before they've even sent the CV to the client is a lying cheating scumbag and will get told outright where to go. All they are doing it looking for leads.
Recruiters in the UK are much sleazier than in the US, in my experience.