The worst mistake I made was accepting linkedin invites from recruiters. I expected that it will increase my chances to get offered some kind of job but most of them never even wrote to me. And my linkedin absolutely filled with spam
A Note About Recruiters
21–30 of 35 posts
Re: A Note About Recruiters
#22I completely disagree with step 1:
> Learn the Basics...Ideally you should learn the basics of programming, but at the very least you should understand what different technology stacks are used for.
This is the entire problem with tech recruiters: that they try to act as if they understand something about programming and software engineering. They don't, and the more they try to pretend they do, the more embarrassing they are.
So what they should do is the opposite: contact us, with the explicit understanding that they don't know our technical domain, but that they are hoping to match us up with an employer. Then at least we can have conversations based on mutual respect.
Re: A Note About Recruiters
#23Recruiting is tough. Thinking about my last job transition, there was probably a golden period of two weeks where I was truly open to all recruitment possibilities. By the end of those two weeks I was starting to move into the offer stages. So realistically I can't blame the frequency and volume of recruitment communication; it's possible a followup message would have struck at exactly the right moment. That being sa…
> I don't think I've seen referral bonuses rising at a commensurate rate.
Unfortunately the referral bonuses I've seen have always been somewhere between 'insulting' and 'why bother?'. The only place I know that does decent referral rates is using it to get around their reputation for churn.
Re: A Note About Recruiters
#24Recruiting is tough. Thinking about my last job transition, there was probably a golden period of two weeks where I was truly open to all recruitment possibilities. By the end of those two weeks I was starting to move into the offer stages. So realistically I can't blame the frequency and volume of recruitment communication; it's possible a followup message would have struck at exactly the right moment. That being sa…
> I don't think I've seen referral bonuses rising at a commensurate rate. Unfortunately the referral bonuses I've seen have always been somewhere between 'insulting' and 'why bother?'. The only place I know that does decent referral rates is using it to get around their reputation for churn.
Very frequently seen $5000 or even $10000...often from hypergrowth venture backed start ups. There is nothing insulting about that.
Re: A Note About Recruiters
#25"You can’t just send random bullshit and expect meaningful results" Unfortunately, this is entirely incorrect. The reason random bullshit occurs at all is precisely because it CAN produce meaningful results. The fact that it more often does compared to any other method is the reason why it is characteristic of tech recruiter behaviour. It is matter of energy conservation. Think of it like this: Recruiters can go one…
"You can’t just send random bullshit and expect meaningful results"
Huh, isn't that the way nature works?
My thoughts precisely.
Re: A Note About Recruiters
#26Some recruiting, like some sales jobs and like many things in life, is a numbers game. And there is zero cost for the bulk messaging campaign on the way to the 1/50 affirmative response they will get. If there is a way to solve this inefficiency, it's well worth building a better solution.
In a previous role a single engineering recruiter was goaled against >= 3 placements per month and even exceptional recruiters usually weren’t sustaining >5 per month over a sustained period like a year or more. A “placement” is people who start at the company having gone through the entire hiring process. I’ve seen similar expectations across three Fortune 100’s now with little variation. I’m sure this gets branded the “body shop” approach, fine, unclear how you scale other options to hiring 1000’s of engineers a year (you exhaust the pool of recruiters skilled at other approaches!).
Anyway, in order to meet that placement goal it’s common to hear a sourcer contacted 300 people per week on LinkedIn and via select other channels.
This is usually NOT a blast to 500 people without targeting… you’re usually looking at source companies, levels of experience, geographic location, degrees of separation from individuals in the hiring organization, keyword matching, education or certifications.
About 5% of contacts will respond to these efforts. About 15% will respond when the initial contact is made by someone who has an Engineering Manager title instead. Those response rates don’t change dramatically when you alter the messaging (this is somewhat usual to A/B test when recruiting at scale). Title of the EM matters when recruiting somewhat, e.g. a junior manager may see At a certain career level you’re also out of “Professional Recruiting” / “Industry Recruiting” and you’re into “Executive Recruiting” which is a somewhat substantially different process.
There’s also “College/Campus Recruiting” which has its own quirks and differences!
Several startups have tried and are trying to change this model but I’ve yet to see a move away from ‘brute force’ hiring in huge enterprises, YEMV.
Re: A Note About Recruiters
#27"You can’t just send random bullshit and expect meaningful results" Unfortunately, this is entirely incorrect. The reason random bullshit occurs at all is precisely because it CAN produce meaningful results. The fact that it more often does compared to any other method is the reason why it is characteristic of tech recruiter behaviour. It is matter of energy conservation. Think of it like this: Recruiters can go one…
This sounds very similar to how one can do online dating
"You can’t just send a msg saying 'hey' and expect meaningful results"
Oh, but you can, if you do it enough!
Re: A Note About Recruiters
#28"You can’t just send random bullshit and expect meaningful results" Unfortunately, this is entirely incorrect. The reason random bullshit occurs at all is precisely because it CAN produce meaningful results. The fact that it more often does compared to any other method is the reason why it is characteristic of tech recruiter behaviour. It is matter of energy conservation. Think of it like this: Recruiters can go one…
This sounds very similar to how one can do online dating
yep - first contact is a low percentage activity for the outreacher. You can't over invest in it
Re: A Note About Recruiters
#29"You can’t just send random bullshit and expect meaningful results" Unfortunately, this is entirely incorrect. The reason random bullshit occurs at all is precisely because it CAN produce meaningful results. The fact that it more often does compared to any other method is the reason why it is characteristic of tech recruiter behaviour. It is matter of energy conservation. Think of it like this: Recruiters can go one…
A moment of empathizing will make it clear that option A is not an option. If I were a recruiter following that method, I would take 5-10 minutes to read someone's Github and only then send them a carefully crafted email that takes another 10 minutes, which will be ignored by all but 1 in 100? I'm fine with ignoring unsolicited emails and politely declining phone calls.
That means you would hit someone you know is relevant once every workweek (at least) and because you took some time to figure out whether or not they were a match, you can be reasonably certain you can get 1-3 relevant candidates for a position every month. Having known recruiters, these figures are almost unthinkably high. Clearly this is a viable strategy.
Re: A Note About Recruiters
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
A moment of empathizing will make it clear that option A is not an option. If I were a recruiter following that method, I would take 5-10 minutes to read someone's Github and only then send them a carefully crafted email that takes another 10 minutes, which will be ignored by all but 1 in 100? I'm fine with ignoring unsolicited emails and politely declining phone calls.
That means you would hit someone you know is relevant once every workweek (at least) and because you took some time to figure out whether or not they were a match, you can be reasonably certain you can get 1-3 relevant candidates for a position every month. Having known recruiters, these figures are almost unthinkably high. Clearly this is a viable strategy.
Ok. Let's assume it is a viable strategy. Recruiters, the people who actually make their living at this - who must make sure their children's teeth are fixed, their houses' leaks are fixed - have an incentive to use the best strategy available.
Why then are recruiters not using this strategy, do you think?