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Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

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Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#101

Post by zero-sharp »

TheChaplain wrote: post #97
zero-sharp wrote: post #66

Here's a relevant experience. I applied for a job a few days ago. The recruiter reached out to me through email to schedule a phone call and I scheduled a time through her online calendar. To give you some more context in terms of timing: she emailed me in the morning and I responded in the afternoon. Less than 24 hours after she reached out to me, the job ad on the company page is taken down and now says the positio…

My guess, you were not fast enough? Imagining myself as a recruiter, I would probably be working with a fair number of leads at the same time. Any of those who are a good fit and quick to respond would get sent to HR. My recent job I landed because I was pushy, I called the recruiter by phone and sold them on me, got the contact for the company manager, called them too and got hired. I got decent technical skills, bu…

I'm not sure what part of the story I just described was "bullshitting."

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#102

Post by ineptech »

plugin-baby wrote: post #86
fnordpiglet wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every place I’ve worked (early at startups later at megacorps) there were never enough recruiting resources. So eventually I just got my own recruiter account on LinkedIn and started using my knowledge of the industry and state of hiring to make my own search queries and reached out directly. I had an incredible conversion rate - the senior person actually hiring saying “hey you look like you could fit in here…

100% with you, but it’s not always easy to get control of your own recruiting. I’ve also seen HR get upset when their involvement is not what they expected.

Agreed, which is insane! We'll spend untold zillions fine-tuning and A/B testing the process by which we get users, but when it comes to getting coworkers it's "Well HR says the applicants have to make an account to apply so I guess that's just the way it is".

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#103

Post by davedx »

Jeez. On one hand, sure, it’s frustrating when this happens. But for everyone trying to get hired out there: don’t just sit passively waiting for results - call your damn recruiter on the phone! Recruiters are human and yes they make mistakes. Sometimes a phone call may actually result in jiggling you along in the process and actually make the difference between getting hired or not.

Don’t sit at home and feel sad and stroke your beard and neglect your side projects. Communicate, sell yourself, don’t be afraid to be a bit pushy!

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#104

Post by fnordpiglet »

plugin-baby wrote: post #86
fnordpiglet wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every place I’ve worked (early at startups later at megacorps) there were never enough recruiting resources. So eventually I just got my own recruiter account on LinkedIn and started using my knowledge of the industry and state of hiring to make my own search queries and reached out directly. I had an incredible conversion rate - the senior person actually hiring saying “hey you look like you could fit in here…

100% with you, but it’s not always easy to get control of your own recruiting. I’ve also seen HR get upset when their involvement is not what they expected.

Note I used HR for everything other than sourcing. The bottleneck is usually identifying people and initial phone screens. The rest of the process is legitimately HRs job.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#105

Post by optymizer »

momocowcow wrote: post #99

I’ve been ghosted a few times over the years. It stung at first but now that I have grey hair, I no longer take it personally. I actually started ghosting job offers and invitation to continue to the next phase of the interview process. If they’re really interested, they’ll find an alternate way to contact me.

I sincerey hope nobody reads this and thinks "I should start ghosting too". We want less ghosting in this process, not more.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#106

Post by 1920musicman »

realusername wrote: post #72
frognumber wrote: post #20

One of my top lessons I've learned doing successful startups: 1. Recruiting is the #1 job of any startup CEO, and the #1 determiner of corporate success. 2. Up market, down market, side market, it doesn't matter: You will get better employees if you treat candidates with respect and you will be more competitive. 3. It's a lot of work for the 95% of clowns out there you interview, and there's a push towards automated…

> There is absolutely no upside to doing a good job, and it takes a lot of time to do so. I've also learned this the hard way. I've conducted about a 100 interviews in 2 years and didn't get compensated any for it despite being one of the most critical part of the company. Conducting interviews is also very tiring and time consuming, I'm estimating that two interviews in a day and your day is gone. I also evaluate it…

I have the same experience. Interviews are very time consuming (prep 30 min, interview 1h, fill out the feedback form 30m-1h), and having several interviews each week means I spend ~1 day weekly on something that's not going to benefit me directly in any way (excluding the benefit of potentially working with good engineers I helped hiring).

So unless the incentives change, I don't see this process improving in big tech.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#107

Post by ivan_gammel »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #74
frognumber wrote: post #20

One of my top lessons I've learned doing successful startups: 1. Recruiting is the #1 job of any startup CEO, and the #1 determiner of corporate success. 2. Up market, down market, side market, it doesn't matter: You will get better employees if you treat candidates with respect and you will be more competitive. 3. It's a lot of work for the 95% of clowns out there you interview, and there's a push towards automated…

Almost every place I’ve worked (early at startups later at megacorps) there were never enough recruiting resources. So eventually I just got my own recruiter account on LinkedIn and started using my knowledge of the industry and state of hiring to make my own search queries and reached out directly. I had an incredible conversion rate - the senior person actually hiring saying “hey you look like you could fit in here…

This. I gave up working with external recruiting agencies even if budget allows it for exactly the same reason. They just can’t beat me and my team in productivity and opportunity costs are high. Investing 40 hours of personal time to close a vacancy 1 month earlier means being able to delegate 1 month worth of work earlier.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#109

Post by 1920musicman »

michaelt wrote: post #52
drewcoo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> treat candidates with respect > 95% of clowns out there you interview What's your company affiliation?

He works for Clownr, the Uber of children's party entertainment.

I had a good laugh reading your comment and then found this: https://www.clownr.com/

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#110

Post by gustavus »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #74
frognumber wrote: post #20

One of my top lessons I've learned doing successful startups: 1. Recruiting is the #1 job of any startup CEO, and the #1 determiner of corporate success. 2. Up market, down market, side market, it doesn't matter: You will get better employees if you treat candidates with respect and you will be more competitive. 3. It's a lot of work for the 95% of clowns out there you interview, and there's a push towards automated…

Almost every place I’ve worked (early at startups later at megacorps) there were never enough recruiting resources. So eventually I just got my own recruiter account on LinkedIn and started using my knowledge of the industry and state of hiring to make my own search queries and reached out directly. I had an incredible conversion rate - the senior person actually hiring saying “hey you look like you could fit in here…

I have a story from a client I worked with. They had 3 or 4 positions they needed filled for their team ranging from Jr to Sr level. But because they worked at a big company they couldn't do the recruiting directly, everything had to be through HR. While the problem was their assigned HR person was unresponsive and slow on the uptake and then took a huge vacation. So they just started looking at the applications that had been submitted through the portal and asking the division's secretary to reach out and start setting up appointments. Time to interview and make a decision on people went from literal months to 2-3 weeks.

Unfortunately this isn't a happy ending to the story. HR threw a hissy fit that they were being sidestepped (because they were completely incompetent ninnies.) And management had to come down on the manager who was doing it and tell him to follow the process.

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