Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Defense of Recruiters

blog.42floors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 68 posts

Re: In Defense of Recruiters

#51

Post by aeturnum »

Spooky23 wrote: post #13

Recruiters who suck mostly suck because that's what their customers want. When you get a call from some shady recruiter asking you about a 6 month contract in Omaha, you're getting that call because a company or government agency decided to start doing strategic sourcing and procure people the same way they buy any other commodity. So two things explain the poor quality -- they are literally squeezing every penny out…

I was recently talking to two startups through their internal recruiters. The two companies had similar positions available and were of a similar size, but their recruiters were night and day. One of them frequently forgot to get back to me, was unresponsive, gave unclear instructions, and generally slowed down the process. The other was extremely attentive, always moving the process as quickly as possible and accommodating my requests. It was dramatic enough that, even though the company with the slow recruiter had a ~3 week head start, I had to stall with the better recruiter to get an interview with both companies.

Even in situations where the employee profile is similar, recruiter quality can vary widely.

Re: In Defense of Recruiters

#52

Post by vosper »

A lot of the comments here are from the employee "I hate being bothered by recruiters" side, which I totally get. But as a (newly promoted) Director of Engineering in SF I'm struggling to make any headway building my team without using contingency recruiters. I'm new to being on the hiring side and my manager is frustrated that my only resource for candidates is to use recruiters (primarily because of the cost). What other things can / should I be doing?

Here are some things I've considered:

- Meetups: Hosting usually gives you a quick pitch to the audience, but there is a real time investment to make a successful meetup that leaves a good impression. I could attend other meetups and try to recruit but I don't want to be "that guy" when everyone else is there to learn

- Craigslist, StackOverflow, LinkedIn, etc... These are all things our recruiters should be covering, but I thought I might get some traction as an engineer trying to hire people. Not much luck so far

- Hiring remotely. This is a little scary but I think that there's a big talent pool outside of the Bay Area that we're not seeing because they don't want to live here. I've read a lot about how to create successful remote teams but I'm wary of building a team that's 95% in-office with one guy in Alabama who's out of the loop.

I'd really love your thoughts or advice on this.

EDIT: Formatting

Re: In Defense of Recruiters

#53

Post by chrisbennet »

fecak wrote: post #30
hcho wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most recruiters don't care about the number; they only care that you signed the dotted line. Their downside is much, much bigger than their downside.

This is partially true, although you have to keep in mind that agency recruiters never have the incentive to minimize your compensation. They do have an incentive to get you more money, and their biggest incentive is for any offer (high or low) to be accepted - but their incentive is never to get you a lower salary.

It isn't that simple. Like real estate agents, they only get paid for a placement. Numbers wise, they are motivated to place you any way they can. They don't have much more to gain from getting you another $10K. They risk not placing you if you are too expensive.

I don't have anything against recruiters but one should be realistic as to how things actually work.

Re: In Defense of Recruiters

#54

Post by robtdennis »

If you haven't read Elaine Wherry's post "The Recruiter Honeypot," you haven't read the best one about recruiters. Check it out here: http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/

A lot has been written about recruiter incentives in these comments, but the market is still clearing even with extremely high fees. The reason bad recruiters can still get paid really well is because there's zero transparency and therefore almost no accountability. I think most of the problems with recruiters could be solved just by addressing this issue.

When you're looking for a good restaurant you can go on Yelp to find one, and you can tell from the reviews what to expect. The same goes if you have a bad restaurant experience -- you can write a review on Yelp and warn others about the crappy food / service / etc. Nothing really exists like this in the recruiting space, despite people really loving to write about how much recruiters suck. And a lot of them do, but what real accountability is there? If a recruiter gets in touch about a job, how do I know he's not super shady? If I'm an employer and need to hire rapidly, how can I find good recruiters other than word of mouth? There should be a Yelp for recruiters. If you're slimy, the world should know about it, and you should have a hard time finding new business and new candidates. If you're a great recruiter who's adding real value, that should be obvious, too, so that others will want to work with you.

Some friends and I have been working on making this a reality. Check it out. Leave a review of your worst recruiting experience (worst one we'll feature on the main page). Or your best one. Or both. And if you're interested in helping us with this project, get in touch. www.hiredex.com

Re: In Defense of Recruiters

#55

Post by itsdrewmiller »

vosper wrote: post #52

A lot of the comments here are from the employee "I hate being bothered by recruiters" side, which I totally get. But as a (newly promoted) Director of Engineering in SF I'm struggling to make any headway building my team without using contingency recruiters. I'm new to being on the hiring side and my manager is frustrated that my only resource for candidates is to use recruiters (primarily because of the cost). What…

The number one source of candidates should be your own social network, and the number two source is the social network of other engineers at your company. Having an employee referral program is nice, but nothing beats just asking your best engineers directly who they've worked with that you should be working together on recruiting.

Re: In Defense of Recruiters

#56

Post by vosper »

itsdrewmiller wrote: post #55
vosper wrote: post #52

A lot of the comments here are from the employee "I hate being bothered by recruiters" side, which I totally get. But as a (newly promoted) Director of Engineering in SF I'm struggling to make any headway building my team without using contingency recruiters. I'm new to being on the hiring side and my manager is frustrated that my only resource for candidates is to use recruiters (primarily because of the cost). What…

The number one source of candidates should be your own social network, and the number two source is the social network of other engineers at your company. Having an employee referral program is nice, but nothing beats just asking your best engineers directly who they've worked with that you should be working together on recruiting.

One of my problems there is that we have a large number of foreign people (myself included) who've only been in the city for a few years. For a number of them this is their first job. Accordingly, the social networks are small. I'll try to work on that, though.

Thanks for your feedback

Re: In Defense of Recruiters

#57

Post by megablast »

My big problem with IT recruiters at the moments is the constant calls. Come on guys, send me a damn email. I am at a work, not I don't have time to talk to you now. Put your stupid questions, which are the same questions every time, in an email, and I will copy and paste from the last time someone did it.

Re: In Defense of Recruiters

#58

Post by schlinb »

vladgur wrote: post #18

What would be great is finding out how much exactly recruiters and referral services charge. For instance, how much can Hired.com charge per referral to afford to give several thousand back to the employee.

Engineer at Hired here -- so the answer is 15% of the first year salary with a 100% money back gaurentee or 1% per month for 24 months.

Re: In Defense of Recruiters

#59

Post by tsunamifury »

vosper wrote: post #52

A lot of the comments here are from the employee "I hate being bothered by recruiters" side, which I totally get. But as a (newly promoted) Director of Engineering in SF I'm struggling to make any headway building my team without using contingency recruiters. I'm new to being on the hiring side and my manager is frustrated that my only resource for candidates is to use recruiters (primarily because of the cost). What…

I've built iOS and android dev teams at way below market costs by doing one thing. Going to meetups and community events, showing intense passion for building great products and being a strong pitchman for working on my team.

Most people want to work on exciting projects with energetic and curious people. It's infectious.

Re: In Defense of Recruiters

#60

Post by itsdrewmiller »

jrjarrett wrote: post #31

So how does someone who is a recruitee get connected with a DECENT recruiter? All I seem to get are the body shop type places contacting me (aka Robert Half, TEKSystems). I've told them that I would be interested if and only if it would mean a step up, go on to explain my current levels of pay,vacation, sick, bonus, etc, and say if the opportunity isn't better than that, then we have nothing to talk about. Of course…

If you know any hiring managers, they will probably be happy to connect you with the recruiters they work with that they think are the most effective. It's possible that very effective from an employer standpoint isn't the same as very effective for an employee, but I bet it is - things like "actually responding to emails with emails instead of calling your cell phone" are probably appreciated on either side of the bargaining table.
Post reply on HN