In Defense of Recruiters

In Australia, it is not uncommon that the employee has to stay with the company for 3 months, for a reward to be given to the recruiter.

It's actually true that an agency recruiter will likely share your salary info with the company - in fact, the company may require the recruiter to provide at least some context (current salary, expectations, or both) when submitting a candidate.

There is a ton of 'fear' or at least awareness about being at some disadvantage if a company knows your current salary. I personally think the only number that matters is your salary expectations.

If you are truly underpaid and you are aware of this, then your expectations might seem a bit high relative to where you are now, but not high if you consider the market. As an example, when candidates move to the US from foreign countries, they can see themselves earning double or even ten times what they made at home. If you make $10K US in India and tell the recruiter that, and the recruiter shares that info with the hiring company, do you really think the company is using that number as some baseline? Of course not. Expectation is the key number here.

If you are overpaid for a certain market (which can be dangerous from a career mobility perspective) and aware of it, usually due to some externality, your current salary makes little difference. When someone changes geographic markets, such as moving into or out of SF, their current compensation is basically thrown out the window. Should you have fear telling a recruiter that you were making 100K in Philadelphia when you are moving to SF? Your market value in SF may be closer to 150K, so current salary means little.

If you know your market value - and a good recruiter who knows a specific market should be able to price you out - discussing current salary doesn't matter much. When I'm working with underpaid candidates, I'll always mention to my client company that my candidate is underpaid and we expect that will be remedied during this job search.

I also would prefer an email as long as it's is not some form letter (which is all I get from external recruiters and is nothing like what I received from the internal recruiter). I'd also like them to take a look at my github, google me, know more about me than "joshstrange.isProgrammer == true".

The internal recruiter talked only over email with me and setup a call with the cofounder in her second email to me. (Note: we traded a few more emails to figure out a time that worked for both of us). I just looked at the first email she sent and it isn't very personalized but it is informal and not a wall of text filled with BS buzzwords.

-------------------------------------- Hi Josh,

I work for [removed]. We're kind of like a [removed] for [removed]. We’re [removed], whether they work in factories, wait tables, or drive firetrucks, with each other and the companies they work for. We recently raised our Series B round and we’re looking for great engineers to help us reach an even bigger audience.

We are passionate about including all employees at the workplace in the conversation. Potentially you could be a great fit for our engineering team here at [removed]. Would you be open to chat either today or tomorrow?

Look forward to connecting with you.

Best, [removed] --------------------------------------

As you can see they didn't mention anything specific to me but I am much more open to responding to than what I get from most recruiters.

I may be an edge case in the phone call department but I always answer my phone if I am awake and not in the middle of something with friends. If I am at home at 8pm messing around online or watching TV I will answer. I find it extremely uncomfortable to talk with a recruiter while at work. It was even worse at my last job where I sat within 5 feet from my boss with no divider between us at all. I feel like I have to speak in code and watch out from saying certain words that might tip off my current employer that I am talking to a recruiter. Now a days if I hear the words "Hi I'm XXX XXX with YYYYY" I hangup if "YYYYY" is a recruiting firm. If you google my name you can find my email address in seconds so there is no reason anyone should have to call me and I refuse to deal with external recruiting companies after multiple bad experiences and overall dislike of their business model.

I've not been to tons of meetups, but. Ime, half-way through there's five or so minutes for a few people to pitch their company. They keep it short, and stick around after to talk to anyone who is actually interested. To me, it feels more like supporting programmers rather than hunting them. I may be naive ;). But especially for me as a relatively new programmer, without a huge professional network, I appreciate it.