Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been told this is illegal as the recruiter is harming your prospects at your current job...
What law is that?
Tortious interference
Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview
201–210 of 231 posts
Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview
#202Don't provide your references to a recruiter, period. After the last interview give your reference to a client/employer directly if they require it.
Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview
#203All these conversions bashing recruiters seem a bit... unfair? I work at a company that almost exclusively does their own recruiting. There's no commission structure or misplaced incentives to get someone in, no matter how bad they could be. As someone who's been interviewing regularly, I frequently interact with some of them and they are very genuine people.
I've at one point had a recruiter whom I've had a delightful time working with. None of my interactions with her felt like a sales pitch and when it came time to interview, she provided a wealth of resources on how to perform well on phone screens and how to answer the usual algorithmic questions. On the other hand, I've had a recruiter who emailed me with their entire message in the subject line. Never a message body. He always made it seem like there was some amazing opportunity I was missing out on but the 1 or 2 times I responded out of curiosity, it was another run of the mill individual contributor jobs. I told him I felt like I was being hustled, hoping to get the hint across that I didn't want to work with him. Didn't work. So I told him I'm not interested in any job that doesn't provide a minimum of some outrageous salary and a very senior title. Haven't heard from him since.
I guess I can agree with the sentiment that there are enough bad apples in the industry to spoil it as a whole. Also, avoid Talener in Boston. Biggest bunch of hustlers I've ever seen.
Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the downside to just always giving a positive review, though? To rephrase the original question - this is recruiter/company A calling a person who works at company B to see if someone is suitable for company A. If you just always give a nice review, what is the downside for you? Unless you had genuine personal issues with the candidate, why wouldn't you just always give a good review? If the person doesn't wo…
Recruiter and former CTO here. References are a box-ticking exercise that you pay someone like Experian to do, so that you can say it was done as part of a security review.
That sounds like "employment verification": did $CANDIDATE actually work at $YOUR_COMPANY, with $JOB_TITLE, between $START_DATE and $END_DATE?
I think the "references" under discussion here are actually phoning up former colleagues/managers for more detailed questions.
Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview
#205I 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…
How did they get your email without knowing where you work?
Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, you're talking about someone applying for a job and using a reference from their current company. I always thought people used references from companies they don't work at anymore.
Or your references might be a manager from your previous position plus a co-worker from a previous position plus a manager from the position before that. The co-worker from the previous position might end up being recruited. That said, if my reference applied for the same position as me and got it, whatever, more power to them, and I probably wasn't going to get it anyway. There are enough jobs out there for both of…
Plus, this colleague now is well-placed to recommend/recruit you for the next open position!
Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview
#207I've never had anyone call my references. The most anyone has ever wanted is a W-2 form to prove I worked there. I think it would be kind of unusual. What's the incentive to give an unbiased reference for free? If I didn't like someone, I'd say "oh yeah, they're great", because it's not my problem and I don't want to be held accountable for the person not getting a job. If they are great, I'd say the same thing, of c…
The higher you rise in your career, and the better companies you work for, the more you'll find your references are checked. When I applied for a part-time Christmas season job at a Photos with Santa booth last year, no one checked my references. For my current salaried job, they checked every single one (I gave four).
I've had the opposite experience.
When working menial jobs, that required little skill, and no prior experience, references were almost always asked for, and sometimes checked.
As a software dev, moving across multiple large companies (large defense contractor, international broadcast network, international multi-industrial, well known video streaming site), from dev, dev II, senior dev, lead, manager, I've never had anyone even ask for references (I've seen one or two application systems that requested them when I was job hunting; I just didn't apply to those jobs).
Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview
#208[deleted]
Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
It's actually really easy. My standard test for potential recruiters: Tell me something about myself. This takes a tiny amount of work -- anybody who has my email address can google me and find a huge amount of stuff. A recruiter who is not bothered to do that will not be bothered to find a job that's good for me.
When I find a good recruiter, I stick with them (as long as I'm shopping in the area that they deal with). I make sure they know that. If a recruiter is good enough that they can value a long term relationship as opposed to frantically trying to meet their sales targets every month, then they are a good recruiter.
The downside is that there are practically no good recruiters ;-). If I'm seriously looking for a job, I look as hard for recruiters as I do for a job. Often I find the job before the recruiter.
Re: Don't Provide Your References to a Recruiter Until After Your Last Interview
#210I 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…
... is there Yelp for recruiters? Because I'd want to know a recruiter pulls stunts like that before I work with them.
I've checked out https://app.recruitsy.co/ (no affiliation) if you're in one of the more common roles/locations where you receive a lot of inquiries. A directory like this needs to exist.