The Recruiter Honeypot • Hacker News Board

Re: The Recruiter Honeypot

#41

Post by bjt » Wed, Jun 27, 2012, 12:56 AM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #7

What is the contractual result for breaking a no-poach clause? Should companies inform their employees of no-poach agreements and request to be told when anyone is contacted by a recruiter from Company X? There is an on-going anti-trust lawsuit about no poach policies involving Google, Apple, Intel, Pixar, and more. How does that play into things?

The standard remedy for any breach of contract is a lawsuit for damages. You claim that the recruiter's breaking of the contract cost you X dollars, and you sue for X. If you think can convince the court the recruiter was especially naughty, ask for punitive damages too. http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/Damages

The Google/Apple/etc case is a bit different because it's between competitors, not between two parties to a given contract. Antitrust is about preventing/punishing anticompetitive agreements and behaviors.

Re: The Recruiter Honeypot

#42

Post by hollerith » Wed, Jun 27, 2012, 12:57 AM UTC

phillmv wrote: post #35

>In addition to pings from too-familiar recruiters, there were two cases that left me especially uneasy. In the first case, a former recruiting agency tried to poach Pete London and then 15 minutes later, wrote to me offering recruiting services! I was being pulled on both ends! What did you expect them to do? It's not even that scummy. It's their business model. I also feel that no poaching agreements are also bulls…

I do not have any ideas on how to disrupt the head-hunting industry, but I have a historical anecdote that might be relevant.

In the late 1970s I worked for a contractor who would sometimes hire comp-sci majors to help him. The contractor or small-business person or whatever you call him specialized in developing software for the IBM 5110, which before the IBM PC was the low end of IBM's computer offerings.

He told me of another contractor like himself who had an unreasonable client. The client was so unreasonable, IBM got involved in mediating the dispute, he told me. I got the impression that IBM also helped match contractors to clients.

Re: The Recruiter Honeypot

#43

Post by rogerbinns » Wed, Jun 27, 2012, 12:58 AM UTC

koide wrote: post #28

This only emphazises how different the world for programmers is in the USA (especially in the SF area) compared to the rest of the world. I only get three or four emails a year on linkedin, of them one's from Facebook, the other from Google, and the others are from local companies. This kind of make me envious and wanting to be there for a while., to experience how's it like to be valued and sought after.

You don't feel valued and sought after - more like spammed. It will quickly become very apparent that they haven't bothered reading or understanding your CV/resume and will say all sorts of stuff that obviously isn't true. The top of my CV/resume has a prominent "Note to recruiters" so it is trivial to tell if they did any work at all.

The recruiters operate in the same way as spammers. They send email far and wide to see if they can get any bites. If you want to be valued and sought after I suggest you start reading all the emails about helping out folks in Nigeria.

Re: The Recruiter Honeypot

#44

Post by glimcat » Wed, Jun 27, 2012, 12:59 AM UTC

This raises the question of A/B testing fake LinkedIn profiles to optimize for the sort of leads you want.

Re: The Recruiter Honeypot

#45

Post by nuclear_eclipse » Wed, Jun 27, 2012, 1:01 AM UTC

Kronopath wrote: post #4

_b8r0 wrote: post #3

This is really really good. For my sins a few years back I made a similar profile on linkedin[1] but made it as obviously fake as possible while still pretending to be real, it's an open secret in the UK infosec industry and still gets emails from recruiters. Incidentally the profile is entirely populated with content generated via Markov chains using logs from an irc channel I'm on as the corpus. [1] - uk.linkedin.c…

I want to read his dissertation. "Dissertation on dissassociative media reconstruction in information security: How hedgehogs and baby seals lead to infinite cybercrime opportunity (Russian)."

I don't know what any of that means, but I know it sounds like the best dissertation ever.

Re: The Recruiter Honeypot

#46

Post by dennisgorelik » Wed, Jun 27, 2012, 1:04 AM UTC

"No poaching" requirement is a mistake.

Small subset of recruiters that she was working with represents only minor danger to her company anyway (considering how many recruiters are out there).

By dropping "no poaching" restriction Elaine would be able to hire better recruiters.

Other than that - the article was an insightful read.

Re: The Recruiter Honeypot

#47

Post by zavulon » Wed, Jun 27, 2012, 1:09 AM UTC

greghinch wrote: post #14

TamDenholm wrote: post #2

This is really interesting. I'm a contractor so i deal with recruiters a hell of a lot. I've never come across a good recruiter to work with, 90% of them are an annoyance but harmless and 10% are outright scumbags. Its really interesting to see this honeypot information. I think recruiting is an industry thats ripe for disruption, especially for tech contractors and i've got a theory on how to do it, one day i'll wri…

I've often thought the same thing since becoming a full time freelancer, the talent agency model. The problem to overcome is that, much like most recruiters I've dealt with, it's hard to find someone who isn't a technical developer to understand how to fill a technical developer role. There's a lot more complexity to understanding the work from the outside than there is understanding the work of say an actor. I no mo…

Non-developer recruiters who really want to understand technology can learn it. My girlfriend is one, I've got her this book - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004V9HC48/, which her boss since made mandatory for all recruiters in their company.

Of course, that's not enough by itself, and it's a long process, but there are recruiters who do go through all the trouble of learning technology.

Re: The Recruiter Honeypot

#48

Post by bobbles » Wed, Jun 27, 2012, 1:19 AM UTC

I wish there was a job search website where to actually advertise a position there were mandatory requirements like the company name and salary being displayed as part of the ad.

Whats the reasoning behind posting completely vague job descriptions (sometimes the location isn't even provided!).

I Would say 90% of the job postings I see online don't even give me enough information to want to contact them.

Re: The Recruiter Honeypot

#49

Post by dennisgorelik » Wed, Jun 27, 2012, 1:24 AM UTC

civilian wrote: post #36

I friended Pete London on linkedin, because having connections with fictional recruiter honeypots is awesome. http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=60565153

Here's what I got here:

You and this LinkedIn user don’t know anyone in common You can only view the profiles of users within your network.

Re: The Recruiter Honeypot

#50

Post by devsatish » Wed, Jun 27, 2012, 1:25 AM UTC

the most idiotic move a recruiter does is sending emails to work email address. That's a big no no. It's easy to guess a work email address, but sending a job offer to it? that's stupid. Also same with calling the company switchboard and asking for my name and leaving job offer info in voice mail. crap!