The best recruiters I've ever talked to have been from VC firms. I've actually ended up friends with recruiters working at VC firms that I've gotten calls from. With the better firms, they realize it's not all about placing people in one of their companies today, but rather fostering a positive relationship.
Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting
21–30 of 33 posts
Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting
#22Interesting article and its small sampling echoes what I’ve long preached – keep HR and recruiters out of the hiring process.
The claim that HR/recruiters are the only ones that have “pipeline management” (translation: multitasking), “offer negotiation” (translation: requirements validation; this is farce as HR/recruiters work for the company and not the candidate, thus they all have a take-it-or-leave-it approach), and “brand recognition” skills are completely false. If HR/recruiters were such experts on brand recognition then there would have been responses to the limited sampling.
Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting
#23Engineer-to-engineer recruiting works to some extent, but only as long as your engineers are willing to tolerate it. Airbnb, for example, has (had?) an "Always Be Recruiting" dogma: Get your engineers so psyched about the company that they go forth and witness to every engineer they know. It seems to work–at least, until you dig deeper. The nigh-unto weekly "most recruiting recommendations" statistics single out the…
> As an aside to my aside, this article seems to ignore the glaringly-obvious "Have the CEO do the recruiting" conclusion.
Comparative advantage. It's likely that the CEO's time is better spent elsewhere even if he's also the best at getting responses to recruiting.
Maybe the right answer is to have a recruiter recruit using the CEOs account, pretending to be the CEO and then handing people off to the recruiter version of themselves when they reply.
Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting
#24I hear a lot about this, but never had any recruiter emails at all. I'm 20 years old so I suppose my name is just not known in the programmer world (?), but then how does that work? How do you get your name known? Day after day you hear about unemployment in the news, yet here everyone is complaining about receiving too many "please come work for us" emails? It's not that I don't believe that many developers receive…
I get a ton of recruiter spam. For me I think it's a combination of having a LinkedIn profile, an active Github and Stack Overflow profile, having a blog, and having them all linked together. Unfortunately, I'm now at a place where it's mostly just a nuisance because the positions they have to offer are generally at worse companies with worse management, environments, pay, and benefits. It's generally not worth my time to respond. If I do respond it's not going to be with my resume, but instead with a list of questions they need to answer to decide if it's worthwhile.
Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting
#25I hear a lot about this, but never had any recruiter emails at all. I'm 20 years old so I suppose my name is just not known in the programmer world (?), but then how does that work? How do you get your name known? Day after day you hear about unemployment in the news, yet here everyone is complaining about receiving too many "please come work for us" emails? It's not that I don't believe that many developers receive…
I get a ton of recruiter spam. For me I think it's a combination of having a LinkedIn profile, an active Github and Stack Overflow profile, having a blog, and having them all linked together. Unfortunately, I'm now at a place where it's mostly just a nuisance because the positions they have to offer are generally at worse companies with worse management, environments, pay, and benefits. It's generally not worth my ti…
Pretty much identical to me. I make a point of telling them to email me details because I learned a long time ago that 99% of their phone calls are a waste of time.
It's been a very long time since a recruiter got me a good job. Mostly it's direct contact with companies or people in my network.
Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting
#26Here is an idea for getting useful responses back - give the candidate enough info to evaluate whether they are interested. This means info on the company, detailed description of the role, ballpark on the comp. You are even more likely to get a response if your email suggests you went as far as googling the candidate. I truly don't understand why recruiters think "unspecified opportunity at top startup in technology…
I like the recruiters that tell you nothing other than a bit of the technology, and even that does nothing to distinguish it. "I have a great Java opportunity in (your area); call me if you're available and interested". Yeah, I don't think so. It's like they're trying to prevent you from going straight to the company, to where they won't get their finder's fee, but all it does is ensure they only get responses from p…
I used to get a lot of 'this role requires a Java expert, it also helps if you know jquery, html5, css'.
Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting
#27Good marketing spam about their product. Nothing for the end user here; just to sell to companies.
I wish recruiters would be:
a) honesty. Nothing good is built on a lie. b) personal. Get Feedback if you are not interested and actively engage in talking to your potential employee's as well as your potential clients. c) communication. Falls into b) but it also falls into a).
I immediately delete most recruiting spam that is not actually written to me. I realize this costs me jobs potentially but it also saves me face. Nothing worse than getting hyped up over a potential job that will never be.
Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting
#28I hear a lot about this, but never had any recruiter emails at all. I'm 20 years old so I suppose my name is just not known in the programmer world (?), but then how does that work? How do you get your name known? Day after day you hear about unemployment in the news, yet here everyone is complaining about receiving too many "please come work for us" emails? It's not that I don't believe that many developers receive…
I'm about the same age (just turned 21), and I do get a lot of recruiter spam. I'd gladly trade to be in your shoes instead. The lack of effort many of these people put into their emails is appalling. I understand recruiters are frequently ignored so I do make an effort to respond in any way if they show some effort. "r u interested? call me" types just get deleted.
To answer your question, LinkedIn is a big part as many have mentioned, website, I also have an occasionally updated blog which has been on the top 3 of the front page on HN.
Most people to reach out to me through the blog have written the best emails and still maintain a good relationship with me after the fact. Emails from CEOs or CTOs also usually reach me there.
Other than that, my LinkedIn doesn't have too many connections (I only add people I've met or spoken with), but I do have a few good recommendations. I co-founded a business a couple years ago and I still get some contacts through people who know me from there.
For the most part, recruiter spam is not a problem you want to have. Be grateful （:
Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting
#29This requires recruiters to actually do work, instead of keyword searching resumes and spamming candidates.
Re: Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like the recruiters that tell you nothing other than a bit of the technology, and even that does nothing to distinguish it. "I have a great Java opportunity in (your area); call me if you're available and interested". Yeah, I don't think so. It's like they're trying to prevent you from going straight to the company, to where they won't get their finder's fee, but all it does is ensure they only get responses from p…
A lot of those recruiters are agency recruiters working on contingency. Meaning they don't actually work for the company they're recruiting for, they just get paid for successfully referring engineers to that company. The reason they're so vague is because they don't want you skipping over them and contacting the company directly, which would save you/the company a lot of money (and cause them to lose their recruitin…
Like I said, "to where they won't get their finder's fee"
I understand them wanting to protect their sources, but they have to give some details. "I have a Java backend position in the telecommunication sector, it would be on the client's (whatever team) that (does whatever). I'm looking for a developer with 3-5 years experience in Java or other static OO languages; the client uses (frameworks), and some knowledge of (tech, tech, and tech) would be helpful as well. Compensation is competitive, the pay is a bit better than average, standard benefits" would be the elevator pitch that might actually be worth paying attention to (well, no, because I don't want to go back to writing Java, but you get the idea).
In short, I want to know -something- about the job beyond "it's a bog standard development job". I can find a bajillion of those posted online, without having to call and actually -talk- to someone. Show me that you actually know what the position is about, and might be able to answer questions about it before I actually talk to the client, and I might respond.