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Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview

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Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview

#181

Post by Double_a_92 »

waitButWhy wrote: post #127
keyle wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes once I've even been told that this employer requires a Word document as Resume. 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.

Dude. It's one page of plain text. Maybe two pages. It will be transcribed by brute force in less than an hour, if need be. Probably by an unpaid intern. You either want recruiters to help do all the leg work for you, or you don't. And you either want the job, or you don't. If they have a policy of lubricating introductions under a branded letterhead, it's gonna go down that way. The file format protects nothing. And…

My resume is not plain text..?

Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview

#182

Post by waitButWhy »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #181
waitButWhy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude. It's one page of plain text. Maybe two pages. It will be transcribed by brute force in less than an hour, if need be. Probably by an unpaid intern. You either want recruiters to help do all the leg work for you, or you don't. And you either want the job, or you don't. If they have a policy of lubricating introductions under a branded letterhead, it's gonna go down that way. The file format protects nothing. And…

My resume is not plain text..?

If it's encrypted, no one can read it, and thus it cannot be transcribed without a key file.

If a person can read the words, it can be transcribed and reduced to an unformatted string, including an amount of white-space padding.

If the information on your resume cannot survive a reduction to plain text, and still remain relevant, something is wrong, because that's the premise of a resume: to standardize job applicants.

Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview

#183

Post by BigJono »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #153
nashashmi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: I once listed three references. All three had favorable opinions of me. But I didn't tell any of them and they were unprepared to answer the questions that followed in a reference call. One of them was able to wing it well. Second one answered questions flatly and without enthusiasm. A third was more nervous not to hurt me than he was confident he could help me with his answers. I thought the surprise effec…

> I thought the surprise effect would be telling to my interviewers that the answers were not artificial. I tried this once for a job interview. I didn't prepare at all besides quickly scanning the company website. It was a disaster. The position was for a PHP developer, and I accidentally mentioned that there is a lot of crappy PHP code in the world, in a way that made it sound like I didn't like PHP (I don't, but t…

That's the companies fault for interviewing you with a HR person. When I do the hiring for my teams I explicitly don't let non-technical people do more than the absolute most basic filtering (i.e this person can't spell for shit, this person doesn't have any experience etc).

In fact, I'd love to have some candidates come in and shit all over X language or Y library. It's a good sign as long as they stick to factual gripes and aren't just mindlessly ranting. People who don't care about doing the best possible job don't give a shit, they'll happily use whatever is popular on autopilot for years of their career.

All my interviewing has been for front-end so most of my interviewees are deeply entrenched in whatever the fad of the month cult is (Vue seems to be the June 2018 pick). I spend the second half of each interview begging them to give me some kind of discussion point, pros/cons of something, an opinion of their own, or literally anything other than the pseudo-marketing tripe on page 1 of their favourite library's documentation ("I love working with Typescript because it scales so well!" puke)

Sounds like your HR person didn't know what they were looking for ;)

Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview

#184

Post by oddsockmachine »

chrisabrams wrote: post #8

What do you do when the recruiter contacts your current employer before you even provide references?

This happened to me when it was time to move on from my first real job. A recruiter, who I spoke to briefly and had no interest in moving forward with, contacted my current manager and said he'd help fill my role after I left. My manager had no idea I was looking to leave at that point. After confirming with me that I was indeed planning to leave, the manager wished me well, then ensured neither the recruiter nor their company would ever work with one of the largest engineering companies in Europe. That felt righteous and worked out for the best, but could really have left me in the lurch.

Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview

#185

Post by kioleanu »

vosper wrote: post #30
TamDenholm wrote: post #11

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.

Oh yes, with a special mention to the UK recruiters working on the German market. Had one trying to convince me for one full hour to accept a salary of 48-50k to relocate to Munich, where rent for me and my family would have been more than half my monthly salary.

I still remember his best two lines: 1. I placed a guy from your country at the same company and he had a salary of 35k and three kids and a dog and he did very well for himself!

2. look, the company is offering fruits every week as a benefit to employees. If you eat fruit, you can save up to 50 EUR per week!

I did end up in the job, after the HR from the company tried a second round of negotiations and were were much more flexible (more salary, bigger relocation bonus). Unfortunately, there were bigger problems there, so I had to quit after about 2 months, which meant, probably, no bonus for them. Also, we would got like 30EUR worth of fruit for 20 people every week

Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview

#188

Post by asfdsfggtfd »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #168
ztjio wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever seen Yelp reviews for car salespeople? Recruiters are the used car salespeople of the hiring world. There’s no point in a review system where everyone averages out to 0 stars.

Strongly disagree. I hope you are being hyperbolic. While there is certainly a wide range in competency and the level of value provided by recruiters, many of them are MUCH better than zero stars.

Yes but the unscrupulous ones will be happy to give and receive fake reviews. The more honest ones won't. So it will be hard to tell the difference between a bad recruiter (fake positive and real negative reviews) and a good recruiter (real positive and fake negative reviews).

Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview

#189

Post by JavaAndChill »

Zelphyr wrote: post #122
JavaAndChill wrote: post #32

I used to work as a recruiter (not anymore, terrible industry), and one of my colleagues actually sent a candidates CV to their current employer without their knowledge or consent. Things like these happen, because many external recruiters don’t take enough time for you when you’ve only just started working with you and they don’t know whether you’re “loyal” to them or just want to know your market value. And yes, re…

What are the trustworthy ones?

To be honest, I don’t know. I just assume there must be some doing a good job within all this chaos.

Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview

#190

Post by CaptainZapp »

ztjio wrote: post #148
Pxtl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... is there Yelp for recruiters? Because I'd want to know a recruiter pulls stunts like that before I work with them.

Have you ever seen Yelp reviews for car salespeople? Recruiters are the used car salespeople of the hiring world. There’s no point in a review system where everyone averages out to 0 stars.

I liked the following analogy:

Recruiters are like pimps, but without the morals And pimps usually dress better.

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