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Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

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Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#61
post #42
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bump in CS uptake was due to the dotcom boom rather than any long term trend. CS still has a higher average salary than most other subjects.

"CS still has a higher average salary than most other subjects." Right, but don't qualified UK developers now have the option of working anywhere in the european community without complicated work visa hassles. Perhaps for a job that requires specialized skills the competent ones are going to where the jobs with reasonable salaries are. Which is not the UK.

It is generally speaking nowhere else in the EU either.

There are tiny spots where you could earn an American-level salary as a software developer, but generally speaking it is a European rather than a UK phenomenon.

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#62
post #49
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to post some link to employers hiring in the $165k+ range?

adobe.com apple.com google.com microsoft.com facebook.com

I meant link to job ads, etc. which provide backup for the statement you're making ?

For example Facebook on Glassdoor (which tends to overestimate salaries), doesn't have a single developer on $165k+.

As it happens I've got Apples H1B filings for last year handy, of all of their H1B employees the highest paid software engineer is at $155000 and he's a specialist in wifi technology. The average H1B developer at Apple makes $88,000/year.

Do you have any evidence at all to back up you ?

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#64
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irrespective of the appropriateness or not of the rate actually offered, the edited version is quite simply a lie perpetrated by lying liers and unfortunately this sort of behaviour seems to be the norm for the recruitment industry in my limited experience. The amount of blatant untruths I've had to be polite about as I've taken calls from recruiters trying to hawk their wares. Actually, I've stopped being polite: re…

Recruiter repostings are completely irrelevant to the problems they are having. The article makes it as if that is the problem they are having, but their woes have nothing at all to do with recruiters. That recruiter that reposted "up to £40k" was a good guy who was doing them a big favor by making clear that the biggest problem with their ad, that which most needed to be changed was the salary offering. And he didn'…

I hope I detect an air of sarcasm there, otherwise I'd have my water supply checked if I were you!

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#65
post #62
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

adobe.com apple.com google.com microsoft.com facebook.com

I meant link to job ads, etc. which provide backup for the statement you're making ? For example Facebook on Glassdoor (which tends to overestimate salaries), doesn't have a single developer on $165k+. As it happens I've got Apples H1B filings for last year handy, of all of their H1B employees the highest paid software engineer is at $155000 and he's a specialist in wifi technology. The average H1B developer at Apple…

Facebook: http://www.businessinsider.com/googler-turns-down-500000-cas...

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#66
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recruiter repostings are completely irrelevant to the problems they are having. The article makes it as if that is the problem they are having, but their woes have nothing at all to do with recruiters. That recruiter that reposted "up to £40k" was a good guy who was doing them a big favor by making clear that the biggest problem with their ad, that which most needed to be changed was the salary offering. And he didn'…

I hope I detect an air of sarcasm there, otherwise I'd have my water supply checked if I were you!

No sarcasm at all. What is the problem the author has? The problem is he is unable to hire a senior iPhone developer with a deep and broad skill set.

What is his analysis of the problem? His analysis is that recruiters are to blame.

Recruiters are not the problem. The salary is. The recruiter that changed his ad gave him free information about what the problem is.

The flaw in this article complaining about recruiters being responsible for his problems is that recruiters are not responsible for his problem. His problem is that his offered salary is not even close to be in line with what he would need to offer to attract the candidate the ad indicates they require.

Not sarcasm. Common sense.

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#67
post #45

This has been going on for a quite some time. There's another side-effect of this strategy that the author doesn't explicitly mention. Even if you're willing to pay the recruiter's fee, you'll sometimes get to the point of making an offer to a candidate and they'll essentially be offended by the offer, since it's lower than the amount listed in the recruiter-overhauled job description that they saw. I had one candida…

Seems pretty clear that the recruiter provided you with a very valuable service, that the qualified candidates you really wanted to make offers to weren't willing to respond to ads citing the insulting salary range you thought you could get away with. The simple fact is that if you can not afford to hire qualified developers, you should not be in business. Please leave software development to the professionals who ar…

Are you a recruiter or something...? This seems like a pretty hostile comment which is based on a number of assumptions by you.

Why do you assume that we can't afford to hire developers or that we offered an insulting salary? The developer accepted the offer -- he was initially disappointed because of the unrealistic range that the recruiter advertised.

Also, the fact that the candidate responded to the recruiter's ad is indicative of nothing. If I post an interesting job description and 3 recruiters repost it with the details tweaked, many candidates (I know some avoid recruiters) are apt to respond to the first one of the four that they come across.

Your comment about making money seems completely out of left-field. We do make money (been in the black for a decade or so) and if we didn't, your comment seems unnecessarily harsh. So with that comment you ran the risk of being wrong, a jerk, or both.

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#68
post #65
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant link to job ads, etc. which provide backup for the statement you're making ? For example Facebook on Glassdoor (which tends to overestimate salaries), doesn't have a single developer on $165k+. As it happens I've got Apples H1B filings for last year handy, of all of their H1B employees the highest paid software engineer is at $155000 and he's a specialist in wifi technology. The average H1B developer at Apple…

Facebook: http://www.businessinsider.com/googler-turns-down-500000-cas...

Have you even read that article?

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#70
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope I detect an air of sarcasm there, otherwise I'd have my water supply checked if I were you!

No sarcasm at all. What is the problem the author has? The problem is he is unable to hire a senior iPhone developer with a deep and broad skill set. What is his analysis of the problem? His analysis is that recruiters are to blame. Recruiters are not the problem. The salary is. The recruiter that changed his ad gave him free information about what the problem is. The flaw in this article complaining about recruiters…

While he may have been wrong to start with, that doesn't excuse the recruiter's behaviour in any way. If I applied on the basis of an offer that did not actually exist I would be most annoyed. I would direct my annoyance to the recruiter (who now has my details through nefarious means and will probably lie about me to hundreds of employers even if I ask them not to, potentially making me look bad in a similar way), where it should go, but many would blame the employer.

The recruiter is not helping the situation in any way what so ever, aside from very slightly increasing their own chances of getting a finder's fee.

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