28 ms·

Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

• dates 11y ago
  This is mostly an angry rant, pretty amusing to me how upset the author actually becomes at times, I think its quite harsh. I did like this idea towards the end of it: "To employers – ask your staff to help find new hires. Offer a bounty – enough to get their attention, say a fortnight’s salary. It’s a lot less than [a recruiter] would cost. And their incentives are all positive: no-one will hire an idiot if they have to work alongside them and new staff with social ties to your team are far more likely to stay. You’ll be amazed how effective this can be."
  • hoorayimhelping 11y ago
    This is completely common in America. Is the London job market scene just messed up?
    • crusso 11y ago
      This is completely common in America Except for the use of the term "fortnight". :)
    • ckozlowski 11y ago
      I took a job abroad after coming from the U.S., and updated my LinkedIn accordingly. Soon after, the spam shot up through the roof. All of the same, non-descript, no-details contacts the author describes. It's been striking.
      • robotkilla 11y ago
        I torched my linkedin account a while back after recruiters wouldn't stop hounding me. I also despise social networks of all sorts so that contributed to my decision. Before I torched it though I tried a little experiment. I left my tech skills in place, but also added things like "Blacksmithing" and "Former POTUS" as my skill set. I also said "Do not contact me" and "I hate recruiters" and something along the lines of "if you contact me, you clearly didn't read my profile" - the spam seemed to increase for a while before I finally deleted the profile completely.
        • vonmoltke 11y ago
          Meanwhile, I consider two LinkedIn hits in the same month to be a lot. :/
          • robotkilla 11y ago
            I never made a dime or had any positive experience with Linkedin. Just recruiter spam and "friends" begging for endorsements... so I don't think you're missing out on anything.
      • hoorayimhelping 11y ago
        Interesting. A similar thing happened when I moved to New York City, it might just be a new node appearing in a network.
    • mavdi 11y ago
      In London no one has any friends to begin with.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • fredkbloggs 11y ago
      It's common in the US, sure, but it rarely works. It's not that we don't all know a few people we'd be glad to work with again, it's that they're mostly happy and well-compensated where they are. Offering me an extra few grand isn't going to change that, and it isn't nearly enough to make splitting it with the candidate a game-changer either. Occasionally someone you want will be available during a bust (which often means during a hiring freeze, too) or under some unusual personal circumstances, but it doesn't happen often enough to make up for attrition much less grow a team.
    • bostik 11y ago
      Yes. We ran some back-of-the-envelope numbers last week at the office. Wolfram provided us with a ballpark figure that there are about 70k "IT industry professionals" in London region. Of this, 10-15% (so maybe 12k) are the good ones, and absolutely everybody is fighting for them. There are more than 10k tech industry companies in London alone. [0] Competition for talent is fierce, to say the least - and every single startup I know of is hiring. Us included. 0: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/10/tech-city-uk-ceo-gerard-grech-qa-wired http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/10/tech-city-uk-... (24% of 47k)
  • gotchange 11y ago
    Actually the solution he suggested might not be helpful at all as this recruitment methodology may lead gradually over time to favoritism, cliquism, cronyism, tribalism you name it in the workplace as everyone is vouching their friends and acquaintances to key and select positions inside the organization to help them cement and consolidate their power and hinders the progress of the organization as a whole in the process.
• osullivj 11y ago
  Flash Harry was played by the recently deceased George Cole, gawd bless 'im. I've had first hand experience of the London recruitment scene, as permie and contractor, for many years now, and much of it is just as described in this funny & truthful article. However, one malpractice the author misses is Shitheads bunging brown envelopes to HR staff at large corps to manipulate the PSL. Also, there are some good recruiters out there who know and understand the skill sets they trade in. I've been lucky enough to use a couple of them as a hiring manager when I was permie at a bank. But they are very much in a minority...
• Paul_S 11y ago
  I'm looking for work right now (need an embedded engineer in the UK?) and some job boards have a tickbox "[]agency" or "[]direct employer" and most of the direct employer ones are also recruiters. That is a small thing but it's pure evil. And the sad thing is I'm sure that if I asked a recruiter "how can you sleep at night doing this" he'd just shrug and laugh because to him it's normal.
  • pc86 11y ago
    A recruitment agency that's hired on contract, or an internal recruiter at the company hiring?
    • Paul_S 11y ago
      No. Anyway, if that was the case why would they hide the name of the company?
      • pc86 11y ago
        I don't think "No" is an appropriate response to the question "A or B?"
        • Paul_S 11y ago
          Sorry, that comma changed the meaning of the sentence from "A or B" to "A? B?". You don't put a comma before "or". The answer to that question would be neither. It's just normal recruiter ads that tick the box direct employer despite not being such to get through the filter. If a company is using an external recruiter the recruiter will list the company name. I only ever saw this once in my life when a company used a recruiter exclusively.
• protonfish 11y ago
  And yet they are our only weapon against business owners who are just as clueless but lack the incentive to pay a competitive wage. When it comes to salary negotiation, it's nice to have Shithead in your corner.
  • pricechild 11y ago
    Could you expand on that? If you can't negotiate with the owner, how does shithead help?
    • reustle 11y ago
      Sounds like a place I wouldn't want to be working at anyway.
    • nordic_nomad 11y ago
      If you have a good recruiter (the last one I worked with was such) they'll negotiate for you. This one asked me what I was looking for, said I could get more than that, and then got even more than that for me. Just because they have industry data and like jobs to back up the negotiation. I've had bad ones of course, I think everyone has. But the good ones can do a lot more leg work than you have time for and find you a much better situation than you could find on your own, plus play both sides to make their comission as big as possible which benefits you. The best are agents, the worst are pimps.
    • celticninja 11y ago
      more if you as an individual are not good as negotiating (and in IT there can be a higher % of people with less than stellar social skills) then these people will negotiate on your behalf. Its their job to negotiate so if they want to place you you tell them you want $x per day and if they dont get it for you you don't do the job.
  • moron4hire 11y ago
    They are more likely to negotiate against you than for you. They will tell you the company is offering less than what they actually are, and they will tell the company that you are asking for more than you actually are. Then, if it's at all close, they don't have to actually negotiate, they can find the middle on their own and both of you are happy with the outcome because you didn't know the original set-point.
• mattzito 11y ago
  At least in the US, the whole recruiting industry hit its nadir during the dot-com bubble of 2000. I remember getting a cold-call from a recruiter, "Hey, got a great gig at a soon-to-IPO startup for a Solaris and Linux guru", "No thanks", hang up, the phone next to me rings, same dude, literally just dialing up the extension tree. My boss at the time had a strategy where whenever a recruiter called offering "top notch" development talent, he would demand that he only wanted people with >15 years of java experience (remember, this was in 2000, and we also weren't a java shop). If they said, "Absolutely, no problem", they went on the banned list. Most recruiters failed this test. The whole market was so frothy, I remember people who went from being bartenders to high-end tech recruiters making crazy money and doing coke with their clients in the bars they used to work at...and then back to bartending when the bubble burst. Today, I feel like it's settled into an annoying-but-manageable background noise. I still get random recruiter reachouts, "Hey, I have an immediate opportunity for a contract Oracle DBA in illinois at $20/hour, interested?" (no, of course), but at least it's easy enough to hang up on them.
  • CaptainZapp 11y ago
    Reminds me of an ex-boss of mine, who got a visit by a couple shysters from an SEO company. His first questions was: "What's your company's name again?" clickety-click! "Then, would you mind explaining why your company is not right on the top of a Google search?" It was a mighty short visit.
  • Nursie 11y ago
    Hah. We had something similar one day on a team I used to work with in London. The agent had obviously been given the task of poaching a developer from our team but was utterly failing at it. One by one, all 16 of us got a phone call at our desks, with no more than a few seconds between each call. By the third call we all knew what was going on so we all just laughed and told the guy to sod off. Such a bungled effort - even if someone had wanted to take up the offer it would have been impossible at that point to say anything other than "LOL, no thanks buddy"
  • dec0dedab0de 11y ago
    Now we could say 5 years Go experience.
• euphemize 11y ago
  At the end: To employers – ask your staff to help find new hires. Offer a bounty – enough to get their attention, say a fortnight’s salary. It’s a lot less than Shithead would cost. And their incentives are all positive: no-one will hire an idiot if they have to work alongside them and new staff with social ties to your team are far more likely to stay. You’ll be amazed how effective this can be. There are limits to this, and having someone from your team refer someone they know does not guarantee they will be an excellent worker, but I would tend to agreed that the overall quality of your team will be much higher this way.
  • vkjv 11y ago
    Agreed. You need to be careful with exactly how much the bounty is. Too low and people won't bother. Too high and people will recommend anyone they know. I find recommendations for peers are almost always high quality simply because people want to work with good people.
    • acveilleux 11y ago
      Bounty payout can also be phased. My current employer does half upfront and half once the hire has been with us for 6 months (i.e.: trial period). The bonus are small but not inconsequential (think a nice vacation or down payment on a Camry...) This has been pretty successful.
  • SandB0x 11y ago
    On top of this, make the work environment nice enough that your staff will recommend you. My current job was very strongly recommended to me by a friend and former colleague (who also got a small referral bonus when I was hired), and I'm pleased to say he was not exaggerating. I've been honest with friends about about the pros and cons of my workplaces. The cons have normally seemed quite easy to fix, but nobody responsible cared to fix it (unfortunately, this part is not easy to fix).
• adrianb 11y ago
  I stopped answering the phone to unknown numbers because of this.
  • Flenser 11y ago
    I turned off my voicemail because of this.
    • raverbashing 11y ago
      I just left my old number (that I don't use anymore) in linkedin
      • adrianb 11y ago
        That's still not good enough. I've had recruiters look at who my current employer is then call the public phone number of the company (the reception) and ask for my name. I'm not joking. Happened more than once.
        • kchoudhu 11y ago
          Recruiters would call the office switchboard and ask to be transferred to my extension while I sat on a trading desk next to a managing director (read: dude who brings in major $$$ for the firm). Seriously awkward conversations afterwards.
        • Xylakant 11y ago
          I have UK recruiters calling the number listed on our website and try to get patched through to my employees. And when I tell them that they just called the boss, they're not even embarrassed and just try again the next day. Only stopped when I called their boss.
        • tommyd 11y ago
          I don't usually object to recruiters and haven't had any major issues with them (one saying "I notice you have Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP experience... what about LAMP, do you have any experience with that?" did make me laugh though!) but one did go too far and when they couldn't get hold of me, Googled my name, found my name on an info page for a club night I DJed at, called the promoter's number (who was a friend of mine) and told him he urgently needed to get hold of me regarding work. Needless to say both I and my friend were pretty p*ed off (he used the line "come on, I know the best people are hard to track down" as if that made it okay) and he didn't get the time of day from me!
• meddlepal 11y ago
  This is an angry angry rant... and I'm not sure I agree. Some recruiters are pretty good. I was placed by one and I consider another an excellent giver of advice; he actually advised me to take a competing offer from another recruiter (of which I did not mention the name or deal, just the parameters). Generally my experience has been positive.
  • dommer 11y ago
    Yes this is a rant. However, the first point is a good one. 95% of the author's [limited sample] where recruiters earning a large amount of money for doing very little technically.
    • genericresponse 11y ago
      You know, I like how there is this view out there that anyone who's doing classically "business" or "sales" work is not actually working that hard. I know some recruiters. They aren't the world's smartest people, but the successful ones work really damn hard. They don't make more than minimum wage unless they place people. These guys are cold calling, searching LinkedIn, crawling phone trees, and sending requests all day. When they can they're touching up resumes and doing screening/placement interviews. Moreover, their technical is different than your technical. It's social hacking and networking. It's learning how to find better opportunities and better people faster. You might not like that they're Ronin, and work socially. However, they're pulling 12-15 hour days to make their sale.
      • dommer 11y ago
        I never said they didn't work hard.
        • logfromblammo 11y ago
          As I don't subscribe to the labor theory of value, I don't care how much effort they put in. I care about the value of the results they produce. To a lesser extent, I also care if any of the manure that they shovel will stick to my heel. In theory, you should be able to come out ahead by delegating job search to someone who is better at recruiting than anything else, when you are better at software than job-searching, even if you are still better in absolute terms at recruiting than the recruiter. In practice... well, let's just say that specialization only works if the single best thing you can do offers positive value to the market. If your top skill is wasting other people's time, no one is going to hire you for that.
• lukasm 11y ago
  Had really bad experience with recruiters in London - Lies. From "They have a free gym pass" to complete bs like salary and position. - Screwed up formatting of CV that I've sent (they wanted .doc) I've written that I have basic perl skills, recruiter changed it to good and destroyed the layout of CV making it unreadable. Good luck with perl question during the interview. - Constant phone calls with no new information.
  • ceejayoz 11y ago
    > Screwed up formatting of CV that I've sent (they wanted .doc) I've written that I have basic perl skills Isn't unreadable a plus in Perl? :-p
    • chappers 11y ago
      Haha! Nice! A bit like if you have an infinite number of chimps on an infinite number of typewriters you'll eventualy get the works of Shakespeare - the rest is Perl.
  • chris_wot 11y ago
    I'd go in and give them my CV at the interview.
  • toolslive 11y ago
    I once (early 2000s) discovered during the interview the recruiter had edited the CV I sent. I showed my own copy and the interviewer and I ended up putting them next to each other and identifying the differences. It's better if you only hand out a pdf version.
    • retbull 11y ago
      pdf is still editable.
      • deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
• RogerL 11y ago
  One fairly recently cold emailed me 4 times in one day, the last email quite put out and angry that I hadn't responded yet; this was followed by numerous cajoling to censorious emails in the following days, and then a letter mailed to my home castigating me for not responding. And then more emails. He finally went away. Then there is the current one - scheduling an interview without my say so, I demanded she cancel it immediately, yet I subsequently get a call from the company "Roger, where are you". She didn't cancel it. I told her to she was not to represent me in any way, to not contact me again. Yesterday, what shows up in my inbox? Demands to respond to her email with regards to a client with clear evidence that she is still shopping/talking about me. All this against a backdrop of me telling them my dog is diagnosed with a brain tumor, my life is occupied with dealing with it, and just leave me alone (true story, not made up to make them go away). Holy fuck. I had an absolutely great recruiter once, he spent hours talking to me, working to find a good fit (something I found myself ended up working), but don't ask me how to find someone like that. Unfortunately his specialty is in an area (HFT) that I decided that I don't want to participate in.
  • eckza 11y ago
    That's insane. I've had a few exciting ones happen to me as well... including offers to interview for the COMPANY I AM ALREADY WORKING AT. That was a fun one. My boss was pissed. Lately, I've been replying to recruiter emails with a short and sweet "$%INSANEAMOUNT% plus or I'm not interested". Haven't heard back yet.
    • cookiecaper 11y ago
      Been doing the same. "Sure, ask them if they'll be able to give [1.8x-2.3x my current salary] and relocation." I haven't gotten any replies yet either.
  • vollmond 11y ago
    How can he get that irate at being ignored? Isn't that the standard response to cold emails? I ignore a lot more than I respond to.
  • S4M 11y ago
• cafard 11y ago
  About 10 weeks ago, I got an email from such a company, the payload being "Our database consists of over 2 million resumes of qualified consultants that we rigorously screen and are ready to be deployed. Our footprint is Nationwide. * is a company that specializes in providing Project/Program Manager, Architect, QA/Code Testing, Business Analyst, DBA, ETL, Virtualization, Disaster Recovery, Storage/Backup, Cyber Security, Analytics, Cloud, Financials, HRMS, ERP/MRP, Business Intelligence, Business Objects, Data Warehousing, Front end/Web/Mobile Development/Design, Middleware, Supply Chain, Logistics, Warehouse Management, Inventory Management, E-Commerce, SDLC, Networking, etc. specified contractors/consultants for contract/contract to hire projects." I had to like the use of "specialize".
• sjclemmy 11y ago
  Ha ha - that was a funny read. You've got a talent for words, forget this new fangled DeVelOps thing you've been doing for 15 years and get into comedy writing.
• moron4hire 11y ago
  I've started using more of Gmail's features to help control this. First, there is the actual email address itself: Gmail ignores periods and anything after a + (plus sign). So every new site I sign up for gets a different email address, usually my normal email plus a postfix named after that particular site. This way, when I get emails from recruiters saying they found me through LinkedIn, but are actually using a form of my email address I've only used on Github, I know immediately what is going on. And second, I just mark them as spam. Because they are.
• awjr 11y ago
  Graduated in 1993, started contracting in 1995, and pretty much been at it ever since then. I have no issue with agents. They make my life easier. The only and ONLY rule I have is that the employer knows exactly the rate I am getting and is happy with the rate they are paying the agent. I've seen contractors walk out on jobs once they find out the margin the agent is getting. An honest relationship is key.
• znt 11y ago
  Coderstack (which is dead now) used to only accept direct job posts. I wonder if a similar service would gain traction again. Because all of the job boards for UK have 90% recruiter spam really.
• joe-mccann 11y ago
  https://twitter.com/actualrecruiter https://twitter.com/actualrecruiter
  • jodrellblank 11y ago
    https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter
• jameshart 11y ago
  US recruitment (at least around tech hubs) does seem a lot more civilized than the UK situation - most opportunities I see are directly advertised. I left the UK five years ago, and I still get most of my recruitment spam from UK agents. Someone clearly needs to educate those guys about aging their databases - someone who was in the market for opening level PHP gigs in 2001 is probably not still looking for opening level PHP gigs in 2015.
  • moron4hire 11y ago
    I think it depends on where you are. I've seen this sort of behavior a lot. Less so now that I'm in DC, but it was really bad back in Philly.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • dheera 11y ago
    In the US I've been approached by a lot of headhunters/recruiters from the finance industry, usually throwing salary numbers at me before even saying what it is I would be doing for the world. I agree that the tech industry is mostly directly advertised, as it should be.
• roblynch 11y ago
  Had a recruiter email me recently saying: "JASON knowledge is an advantage..." Yep. I still don't know jason
  • timrichard 11y ago
    I recall one phone call where the guy said "how much do you know about Ajax?" (pronounced like the Dutch football team). There was no reason for the guy to know any different, but it amused me at the time....
    • gearoidoc 11y ago
      Haha, I'm a dev and I pronounced it like this for a while (knowing it was incorrect). Someone like me probably set them down the wrong path!
      • GFischer 11y ago
        I live in Uruguay (South America), many developers don't speak English, and most that do don't speak it well (they usually do read and write decently). You'd probably be hard pressed to understand what they're talking about :) - for example JSON is definitely JASON, and you'll be looked at funny if you don't pronounce it that way :) , and Ajax is pronounced like the Dutch football team. If I don't hear it on a video or a talk, I'm probably pronouncing it wrong (and not knowing I am). I hope to get corrected if I do.
        • gearoidoc 11y ago
          I guess its important to make allowances - especially for non-native English speakers. I worked on a portlet system a few years back (oh the horror!) with a Chinese dude. Super developer. It wasn't until the last day that I figured out what he meant when he said 'poorer led'. Should have figured it out sooner looking back :D
    • mcv 11y ago
      Are there different ways to pronounce it? Or did he pronounce it in Dutch?
• soyiuz 11y ago
  Possibly the most entertaining and well-written post I've ever encountered on HN.
• markbnj 11y ago
  There have been times in my career when good recruiter was my best friend in the world... at least for a couple of weeks. These days I get spammed or called by five or six of them a day, most of whom haven't even read my resume, and have no idea whether I am a fit for the latest position they are trying desperately to fill. It resembles a boiler-room stock pumping operation.
• mbroshi 11y ago
  I will admit I did not make it through this entire article, but it really did not ring true to me at all--just sounded like an unsupported, hostile, angry rant. >> “Fucked if we care” think the recruiters, “now grovel and be exploited”. ... >> You’re meat to them, a resource to be packaged and sold and exploited. Who's being exploited here? I think he's implying the programmers, but as someone who left academia for industry, I do not at all share that sentiment. When I think "exploited" I think of diamond miners in Africa or sex workers in Southeast Asia. I got my first job at a start-up through a recruiter, gained a ton of skills, later left, and now I have a very well-paying job at a place I love. People with technical skills are highly sought-after, and do quite well in my experience, whether or not they go through recruiters. If a comment as irate, mean-spirited, and unsubstantiated as this blog post appeared in HN, it would get down-voted into oblivion.
  • PaulHoule 11y ago
    I was about to say the same until I saw that it got very funny about half of the way through.
  • ascorbic 11y ago
    Are you in the UK? If so, I'm seriously surprised this doesn't ring true. To me it exactly matches my experience both as a contractor and as an employer. As to who is being exploited here, it's the whole IT industry. They are rent-seekers, pure and simple, and they leech off our industry. They may not be sending children down mines, but that doesn't diminish the fact they are terrible companies and terrible people.
    • celticninja 11y ago
      Really? Terrible companies and terrible people? Do you know how agencies work? You do understand that employers contact them and ask them to find people, to organise their payroll, do relevant checks e.g. confirm right to work, security, skills etc. And these companies know they will be paying a % to the agency and this is because they dont want to do that work themselves they just want a competent worker in place asap. Those same employers could spend their time searching job boards for suitable candidates but they don't want to so they outsource. As for the OP saying they are taking 15% of his money. That's not the case. In most cases the Employer will agree a rate with the agency, so they will be a maximum of e.g £250 a day for the contractor and a 15% fee to the agency. So they are paying out around £290 per day to the agency. If the contractor was located directly do you think they would pay him/her £290 per day? No they would pay £250 as they know that is the going rate. they pay the agency fee so they dont have to go through the recruitment process e.g. post adverts, interview people (phone), interview (in person) skill check, right to work check etc.
• EdwardDiego 11y ago
  > Once I talked a client into advertising a position themselves. The signal-to-noise ratio was appalling and sorting through the flood of applicants took days. Some cover letters were tragic, begging in broken English “I fast learner, my family starving, England less shooty, pliz you help us move?”. Bah, you can rant without resorting to racist aping of ESOL speakers. Especially when the odds are good that the author only speaks one language.
• c-slice 11y ago
  I love this. The writing style reminded me of "A Clockwork Orange."
• squozzer 11y ago
  I had a total clockwork orange moment reading this. Unrelated note - you may call me a pig, but I only take calls from female recruiters.
  • mariogintili 11y ago
    actually I've experienced that they're nicer, or at least try to (?)
• SandB0x 11y ago
  I recently moved jobs. Since I work in a fairly niche field, made plenty of good friends at my old workplace, and the company was looking to add to my old team while I was still there, I've had the pleasure of seeing several sides of a hugely inefficient job search. First, there is the Chinese whispers from within the company. They don't seem keen on finding candidates directly, which in this field is as easy as it gets, so off they go to the recruitment agency. My (now former) boss writes a job spec, this goes to HR (who aren't familiar with any of the technical details) and HR add some company blurb and send it on to a recruiter, but not before crippling the job spec by slapping on a below-market salary that nobody competent will accept to try and save some cash. The recruiters think they have plenty of candidates who will take the salary, but the candidates simply aren't good enough or don't have the right experience. The recruiters have no way of telling this, so they keep telling the company that there are plenty of great candidates and to keep interviewing. From the applicant side, several friends of mine who are generally looking to move to a new job had this role aggressively pitched to them by a recruiter. Most of them would be brilliant for this job. What my friends really need is a ten minute phone call with my old boss to see if it's a potential fit before starting any formal interview process. I'd have been happy to put them in touch directly at an earlier stage, but there has now been contact through a recruiter and I don't want to meddle behind the scenes. None of my friends ended up going for the job since the recruiters were telling them confusing things, and all got better offers than the advertised range elsewhere. The company have unsuccessfully interviewed a few candidates that the recruiters have pushed on them, the team has been desperate for someone new for months (and they're crucial to the company's success) and people like my old boss have no idea and little way of knowing how close they are to finding the right people. And yes, the stereotype of the shiny-suited young "failed salesman" recruiter is unfortunately true in my experience.
• calgoo 11y ago
  Yea, I just got one for managing plastic fabrication machines in some factory in the UK. When looking at why I got the offer, its because I had the words "Tooling Engineer" (title at current job) in my LinkedIn profile.
• mizchief2 11y ago
  As a manager I've had a recruiter basically say "That's a nice development department you have there, shame if something were to happen to it." As he described that by signing a contract with him and keeping "active" by hiring his candidates a couple of times a year, he would not solicit the developers at my company.
  • nordic_nomad 11y ago
    Thoughtful of him.
  • celticninja 11y ago
    I have seen that done, basically a company I worked for had a contractual agreement to use a certain agency for their contractors. The agency finds out contractors are being hired and they are not being offered the opportunity to out forward candidates. The recruiter came to a meeting with my manager and was very cordial and asked why they were not being used, the manager said he didnt like them (or something similar, basically making it a personal issue with them). The recruiter simply said they had a contractual agreement and whilst they probably would not pursue it legally they would quite happily use his company as a resource to select contractors from. After 2 staff members were offered new positions the manager decided he didnt hate the agency that much. Whilst I liked the manager it was refreshing to see someone combat this situation whilst expressing clearly they would not pursue it legally.
• geff82 11y ago
  It always depends on how you react, if you are passive (like the author of the article) or active. While I too get many mails/calls that are unnecessary, I like to keep active contact with some recruiters I came to like and call them/meet them on a regular basis, even when I have absolutely no need for a new contract. If you are a contractor, you are essentially owning a business and if you have a business, you should value potential customers. Crying like a baby about too much interest in your person is a loser attitude. As long as there are not too many middle men, I also do not care about them getting their cut, as the better ones use that money to get the right contacts for me in case I want to change the position. My current recruitment agency also uses some of the money for great parties and events, which helped me to get to know many others (clients/colleagues...).
  • moron4hire 11y ago
    >> Crying like a baby about too much interest in your person is a loser attitude. I wonder why you thought this would be appropriate to post.
    • UK-AL 11y ago
      His saying when you're a contracter. The recruiters are your outsourced sales people
• scottmwinters 11y ago
  While I agree with most of this article, its a bit extreme. I've never liked spam, but is it really that hard to ignore them? I've had a recruiting firm call me 4-5 times and send emails and I started getting a bit upset...but far from that extreme
• mavdi 11y ago
  Some valid points which could be made with a clear head too. I believe in market dynamics, the reason the recruiters aren't gone by now is that market still needs them. The author's moral high ground is also funny. At the end of the day these guys are here to make a living, and making a living is indeed really hard. Somehow suggesting these guys are just born evil isn't right, given the same circumstances most of us would behave the same way. Lucky we are engineers in demand. So far.
• aerovistae 11y ago
  Alright, here's another of my tech recruiter exchanges. This one got him to stop responding immediately. ------------- Hello, My name is Seth and I am a recruiter here at [redacted]. I came across your profile in our database and wanted to touch base. Are you still in the market for potential opportunities? If so, I would enjoy speaking with you soon. Please let me know if you or anyone else you know is interested. Thanks, Seth -------------- Hi Seth. I am definitely available for "potential opportunities" to "touch base" with discreet clients. I am very interested. Please give me more information about these "opportunities."
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    • jsprogrammer 11y ago
      How do they condescend? The phrases were undefined in the original email.
    • aerovistae 11y ago
      Apparently you didn't see the original series of these; I like screwing around with tech recruiters over email. I'm sorry, I guess I thought it was self-evident that with the quotes I am responding in a completely absurd way by implying that I'm looking for prostitution work.
• paulus_magnus2 11y ago
  time to finally implement my non profit side-project bad-recruiters.com
• ryandrake 11y ago
  I don't get all the annoyance at recruiters. I don't mind recruiters reaching out to me at all. If you don't want their help, ignore their E-mails. If the opportunity looks interesting you reply, if not, don't. Here's an entire profession that exists to help get you a job (and to help employers find talent). Like every profession in the world, there are going to be a few jerks--just ignore them. When times are good and everyone has their dream job, we all seem so annoyed with recruiters. When times are not so good, and you're 2 months away from being broke, they are a potential lifeline.
  • cookiecaper 11y ago
    The problem is that in recruiting, it's not "a few jerks". It's 99.99% utterly incompetent recent business grads. The 00.01% of recruiters that are labeled "competent" are actually still pretty bad, but they at least know that you won't find 15 years of Go experience and can at least half-tell when someone is BSing (perhaps because they actually spent a small amount of time coding themselves). Out of the dozens of recruiters I've dealt with over my career, there was only one who was semi-competent. The article makes it sound like it's even worse across the pond; instead of incompetent doofuses, the tech recruitment industry populated by out-and-out fraudsters. I've met a few of those here in the US, but they're by no means the majority. Though I have noticed a trend among tech recruiters in the US that has really exploded in the last few years: hire traditionally attractive young women and call them "tech recruiters". The more recently they've departed their cheerleading squad, the better. This seems to be the primary qualification at a lot of US tech recruiting firms recently. Probably the reason the competence of recruiters is so low is because almost anyone with the skills necessary to discern a good coder from a bad one can probably at least kinda code himself, and would rather do that than sales.
    • charrisku 11y ago
      I agree on the pretty female observation. Just about every tech recruiter that's contacted me recently looks like someone I'd want to date. My father is a doctor in the US and the drug reps he deals with are also from this mold, so I guess that says something about what really works in male-centered professions.
• supercanuck 11y ago
  You do realize that there is an entire IT Industry outside of Facebook and Google?
  • ryguytilidie 11y ago
    Snark for no reason? Check. Somehow extrapolates me saying that I know lots of recruiters because I worked with recruiters at a large company means that I believe IT only exists within two companies on earth? Check. Thanks, great response.
    • supercanuck 11y ago
      You are using your experience at two of of the best technology companies in the world to trash the author's criticism of the recruiting in the "IT" industry. Your comment was very tone deaf.
      • ryguytilidie 11y ago
        "You do realize that there is an entire IT Industry outside of Facebook and Google?" Was there a single fiber in your being that believed I did not...? I cannot imagine a human brain believing this is a useful post for even a single second. Yet, here you are defending it... "You are using your experience at two of of the best technology companies in the world to trash the author's criticism of the recruiting in the "IT" industry." No. I'm really not. I am a recruiter. While at Google and Facebook I met hundreds of recruiters. Since there is a world outside of these two companies (Wow! I did know that! Who knew??) almost all of us now work at other companies. At these companies, none of them behave the way the author describes. So you managed to read my post, respond with completely embarassing, useless snark because, like the author, you didn't bother to understand what you were talking about and instead just said "I have projected some extra idiotic/mean spirited behavior on this complete stranger and now I will get mad/snarky about it". If you're going to communicate with others you need to have it either be useful or pleasant. Unfortunately you seem to have fell short of both...
        • 11y ago
• paulojreis 11y ago
  IT people talking about being exploited, particularly by unskilled laborers, well... I understand how "boring" it might be to be harassed in this way, just as telemarketing is, but - come on - a little perspective, please. Surely you'll understand that your boring doesn't trump someone's need to make money. P.S. The author talks about "us social inepts in tech". I hope he understands his article is a great banner to said ineptness.
  • kps 11y ago
    Your ‘need to make money’ does not entitle you to any of my time or forbearance, both of which are finite.
    • paulojreis 11y ago
      Sure. That's roughly what I tell telemarketing operators. But a) talking about exploitation is still ridiculous; and b) what do you suggest? Do you propose passing a law forbidding unsolicited contacts? Via which channels?
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• intrasight 11y ago
  Best way to not 'feed the beast' is to write a quality resume/CV and post it to your local tech careers site.
• jpmthrow 11y ago
  It's the nature of the beast, other option... Company hates recruiters. Company builds an internal recruitment team. Find out they can't perform. They then start using external recruiters. There has to be a solution to this, whoever solves it will become very, very, very rich. At present, only internal hires or referrals seem to work best.
• Nursie 11y ago
  >> Contract tech workers sometimes believe agencies insulate them from a defaulting client. This is true. In one of my last contracts I was working alongside a guy who was contracting for them directly. He eventually walked out when they failed to pay (again!) Agents are scum, but as someone that doesn't have a vast network (most of the people I've worked with are still in the same perm position years or even decades later), and who doesn't live in London, I'm afraid I don't see that I'm going to be able to live without them any time soon. Instead I'm actually trying to build relationships with the agents I have worked with that have found me appropriate work and who haven't f*cked up in any way. They are few and far between, but they do exist.
• bakhy 11y ago
  disgusting text. could not finish reading it. the author should try appreciating the fact that IT is an industry where one can choose between jobs. many people do not have that luxury and must swallow a lot of shit to earn a living. the author comes across as an entitled brat that has absolutely no empathy or understanding for fellow human beings, all the while dishing out horrible insults at their humanity. disgusting.
• manishsharan 11y ago
  Spammy tech recruiters are bad but corrupt recruiters and hiring practices are much worse" I live in Canada and I am amazed at the amount of corruption/nepotism I see in IT hiring for government IT jobs. They will put out job requirements for senior java dev or web developer and you are supposed to fill out a matrix of required skill. In those supposedly mandatory skills/experiences, they will put in some weird shit --stuff no one outside the hiring manager's inner circle would know; this supposedly mandatory skill is used to weed out outsiders, allowing the hiring manager to hire their chosen people. In the 15 years I have been consulting as a Java developer, I have not received one interview call for any open position with any level government despite having all the other requirements. Considering the fact that so many IT initiatives of the government are plagued with controversies and their implementation is rife with incompetence, I feel the the recruiters and the hiring managers have kickback system in place.
  • Bahamut 11y ago
    It should be noted, this is often how the US federal government works as well, to satisfy the requirement that they consider veterans for jobs.
  • randlet 11y ago
    Yeah, I get the feeling that many many government (and healthcare?) job advertisements are only posted to meet regulations and there's already someone lined up internally.
  • flogic 11y ago
    I work for a large mega corp and we do this all the time. It's because we have a contractor who we want to convert into a real employee. You can't just say "This person has been working with us for a couple of years. Can we make them a real employee so we can keep them and they get benefits?". There is a whole process advertising the position internally and externally even though you already have someone.
• atorralb 11y ago
  true what the article says...
• celticninja 11y ago
  Just as an aside as the original article seems to think that the recruiter is taking money from him, i.e.t he 15% is 15% he could be receving. It does not work like that. Most employers know what the going day rate is for their required skill set. If they got a contractor directly they would pay the day rate, they would not bump it up 15% because they didn't go through an agency. they pay the agency fee to undertake the work of locating the contractor. If they do the work to locate the contractor themselves why would they pay the contractor extra? They would not. Its almost as if the article writer has so little knowledge of how recruitment works that he is a target for shitty people in the industry, kind of like how once you respond to a Nigerian prince loads of scammers come out of the woodwork.
• butler14 11y ago
  This was quite excellent. You could just as well find & replace "IT" with "marketing", too.
• bitwize 11y ago
  phone rings "Hello?" "Hello, is this Cloud Strife?" (pausing a moment to consider whether even to continue) "...Yeah." "Hey, Cloud, how's your afternoon going? My name is Michael Gravitz and I'm a recruiter for Warmbody Technical Services. I came across your résumé on Dice, and I noticed you have a lot of Buster Sword experience. We've got a great opportunity for a Bodyguard role with an established, profitable company in the electric power industry that I think you'd be a great fit for--" "It's Shinra, isn't it." "Bingo! It is Shinra! Out of curiosity, how did you know--" "Not interested." "Oh. Okay. Well, do you know anyone who's looking and might be interested in this role?" "No." "Oh! Well! I'm so glad to hear that all your friends have jobs, Cloud! You have a great day!" "Bye." click
  • LoSboccacc 11y ago
    > "Oh. Okay. Well, do you know anyone who's looking and might be interested in this role?" this is the part I actually hate most. I'm not gonna do the recruiter job, especially not for free. they have to get over themselves and stop thinking they are giving out 'opportunities' like they are modern messiah
    • bitwize 11y ago
      What's worse is how snotty some of them get when you tell them no.
      • mgkimsal 11y ago
        Guess I've been lucky. I can't recall anyone ever being snotty or rude with me when I say 'no'. I usually just ask them to email me details. Usually they don't, but sometimes they do.
        • bitwize 11y ago
          I've had recruiters cop a very passive-aggressive tone when I told them I didn't know anyone interested in their position. It was weird.
    • 11y ago
• codeisawesome 11y ago
  I never liked overly broad brushes, I understand the author is angry but calling all recruiters names is, I think, not cool. But, I really enjoyed the funny writing!
• engineer442 11y ago
  You lost me at suggesting "IT" = "engineer" when speaking to your grandpa.
• snowwrestler 11y ago
  Complaining about recruiters has to be one of the all-time great humblebrags. "Oh woe is me--all these people keep calling me to offer well-paying professional jobs!"
• gambiting 11y ago
  I work in IT and I have literally never received an email from a recruiter. My secret? I don't have a linkedin profile. Yeah, despite what everyone says my life and career have not collapsed without linkedin.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• mtw 11y ago
  I don't give my email or contact info to recruiters or random job sites!
  • jrockway 11y ago
    Does that stop the ones that spam you on Github?
    • mtw 11y ago
      Github has an option "Don't show my email address"
• karlkatzke 11y ago
  I think of recruiters more as a "realtor for my skills." It's totally OK to not use a realtor to sell your house to your coworker's son and his new wife in rural BFE for 20k $USD. When you go to sell your mcmansion in a small town suburb for $80k USD, you might have a lawyer look over the sales contract, but you might not use an agent. There just isn't that much at risk and you probably know the person you're selling to. When you sell your house for $120k USD in a bigger city, you almost definitely use a seller's agent and might use a lawyer. There's more risk because it's a bigger city and you're playing for more money. There's probably some negotiation involved and you don't sell a house every day so you need to know what's normal, what's legal, and where hidden traps are. When you sell a house for $500k USD, you sure as hell use a a seller's agent and a title company and a lawyer and everyone reviews the contract. That's a lot of money to not have many eyeballs on the deal and rounds of negotiation. Selling your skills is like selling a house. When it's not that much money and you trust the people you're dealing with, you don't need a recruiter. When you're negotiating salary and benefits at higher tiers, you need to know what's normal and what's acceptable, and that's another service a recruiter provides. They also represent you to many buyers and help you with the negotiation and feedback process. Like a real estate agent, they are a critical impersonal cutout that helps everyone maintain face during a negotiation.
• harrygold 11y ago
  Over the course of my career in Cali and Silicon Valley, I've been fortunate to work for some top tech companies on exciting projects (all through recruiters). I'm very thankful to recruiters.
• onion2k 11y ago
  I'm not suggesting the author is necessarily wrong, but I've been in the IT industry long enough to notice that there are more "Recruiters are terrible people!" articles whenever there's a boom in tech jobs and people can find their own role. As soon as the market contracts and jobs become hard to find, all the articles stop. I think people's view of tech recruiters is a function of the market rather than a de facto truth - recruiters are perceived as bad as the market gets better because people don't need them in order to find a new job. That doesn't automatically mean recruiters are bad. Come the next downturn they'll be useful again. We just need to recognise that.
  • xixixao 11y ago
    Or as someone described above, the recruiters go back to bartending when the market sinks. The issue is not getting too many nice, well-though-out proposals from credible recruiters who can spell and use grammar properly.
• kelkes 11y ago
  I was thinking off writing almost the same blog post today. Its the same shitty situation here in Austria... Recruiters should burn in hell.
• vasilipupkin 11y ago
  I don't understand. If recruiters are leeches, why do employers work with them ? perhaps, it's because they provide a service, no?
  • cookiecaper 11y ago
    Because everyone is really bad at recruitment. Companies hire recruiters because they think it'll help dampen the badness of their own recruiting abilities, but really it just makes it harder, as recruiters scare away decent candidates.
    • vasilipupkin 11y ago
      I don't get it. If a recruiter calls you, you are either interested or not. So, what's the harm ?
      • gearoidoc 11y ago
        If your API receives 1 spam request a day its no biggie. If it receives a few million (eg. via LOIC or whatever), its disabling.
      • jarek 11y ago
        The problem is Google doesn't yet have a spam filter for my phone like they do for my email (I mean, in practice I just don't answer any calls I am not expecting - but not everyone can do that)
        • dllthomas 11y ago
          What I would really like is, when someone calls me, a voice menu saying "You've reached David's phone. If this is an emergency or he's expecting your call, press 1 to ring through. Otherwise, press 3 to set up a time to call, or 7 to leave a message."
• emergentcypher 11y ago
  I guess I'll chime in here as someone who's had a different experience. Actually quite a pleasant experience. They weren't spamming me, they wrote to me once but something about the way they wrote to me caused me to remember this one particularly six months later. Probably because they weren't spamming job postings, just saying "hi there, I'm a recruiter, if you ever find yourself looking for a job I can help you find one." They had me four different interviews the next week and weren't embellishing my qualifications. One of the interviews quickly lead to a job offer in a position I actually wanted to have. They're taking a cut but it's because they made my transition process fast and easy, instead of spending what could have been a month or two unemployed and starting to worry, and to me that's worth something.
• edem 11y ago
  The same stands for the real estate industry. Or worse. Most real estate agents add nothing just take money away from both tenants and landlords.
  • GFischer 11y ago
    I'm still amazed they continue to thrive in the Internet age. They do add some value to sellers (showing the house), but their commisions are WAY beyond the value they add. And they're a huge annoyance to buyers, intentionally hiding information whenever possible.
    • edem 11y ago
      I'm still thinking on a good strategy how to get rid of them completely.
• epage 11y ago
  Some here are listing good and bad experiences. I'm considering finding one to help find jobs for my particular interests in another area. Any tips for picking one?
• rbadaro 11y ago
  In London, recruiters and real estate agents appear to be interchangeable. The bullshitter ratio is off the scales.
• dannymick 11y ago
  It sounds just as bad as New York City. I'm getting my UK settlement visa within the next month and will be back on job market, definitely not looking forward to this!
• arenaninja 11y ago
  Hm recruiters are fine mostly for entry-level jobs. As time goes on, dealing with middlemen is increasingly irksome. Not only that, but then you need to deal with an up-to-30% paycut because of the middleman. It's a shame really. At my last job we would invite recruiters to send us candidates for entry-level PHP/MySQL web devs, and largely they sent people who had been working with Wordpress too long, or only knew how to function in <insert framework>. The mismatch was worse than putting the ad out and filtering through the resumes, but it was less effort. I also saw some of the ads the recruiters posted, and I never would've applied because of a) wording (rockstar/ninja crap), b) ridiculous skillset (10 years PHP experience... really?). So the author here is a little harsh, but largely on point. Way too much slime, but sometimes necessary if you're entry level
• pweissbrod 11y ago
  Oh I'm not finished yet, but this is a hilarious read! Lots of moments I was belly laughing out loud at the author's wonderful use of metaphors. Yeah in the USA, 2015 recruiting industry is far better than the author's depictions. I have no idea what its like in the UK. The indian recruiting market is not unlike this. Its still a funny read either way
• binarymax 11y ago
  I think the plugin to block email doesn't go far enough. I think it should be enhanced to autoreply with a markov bot.
• chad_strategic 11y ago
  I got my LAMP stack certification and this all went way! https://github.com/thoughtbot/liftoff/pull/178#issuecomment-57690259 https://github.com/thoughtbot/liftoff/pull/178#issuecomment-...
• devin 11y ago
  After reading through this thread, it would seem that many commenters from the UK are able to relate, and that a number of people in the US market are judging based on no experience.
• lawlessone 11y ago
  In Dublin this is starting to ring true for me. though i don't agree with classing them as reptilians. They're trying to survive in a industry that forces them to things to survive. I'm also skeptical this will last or will Tech bubble 2.0 burst soon?
• Menge 11y ago
  I don't know much about the English market, though I occasionally get their spam overflow. Still, I have to question how you regularly get into those kinds of relationships with anyone without being needlessly mean and disrespectful in initial interactions. With recruiters here, I generally decline the job they were thinking of and tell them what I am interested given that it has to significantly beat my current work. After a few times back and forth, that eventually brings the conversation to an end. The nicer ones tell give me some local companies that wont pay third party recruiters but might be a closer match. Really, I think recruiters naturally tend to over represent employers who are incredibly bad deals since the better the job the less often it is empty and the easier it is to fill for free through networking (I.e. you have employees who wouldn't see guilt/risk in recommending it to friends.) Given that recruiters are sitting in that skewed perspective of the market, they should naturally get bitter and irritated with people who turn down their "best" positions while being rude throughout the process. Probably they also feel all the more helpless in their role since I can only imagine the bizarre feedback they get from their most rewarding/difficult/longstanding customers on what were "good" matches. If recruiters were replaced by neural networks, it may kick off the first AI rights campaign to protect AI from poor input abuse.
• sqldba 11y ago
  I totally agree on asking the actual company what they're paying the recruiter before you sign on; they will always be expecting an amount of work equal to full amount paid to the recruiter rather than the meagre sum that will end up in your pocket (which is exactly how hard you're planning to work). I have been told of people learning they were on long-term $50/hour assignments where the recruiter is making $200/hour over the top; no lie. But the sickness doesn't just come from normal people accepting jobs; these agencies are also held up by fucking Enterprise businesses. We recently needed to hire some additional staff and only received 3 resumes; 2 of which we'd seen before and were unsuitable. I told management that the recruiter wasn't doing their job and that maybe we could just put something on Seek, get a reply, then refer them to the recruiter. "We can't do that! The entire corporation has a contract; everything has to go through the recruitment agency and there's no way around it!" How the fuck they knowingly got themselves into such a farcical situation (and for what benefit?) I'll never understand... except that they're fucking idiots.
• laxatives 11y ago
  The tech recruiter role/economy seems like a tremendous conflict of interest, especially when they are outsourced. They are compensated primarily as a percentage of the salary for each hire they make. Like real estate agents, they get very little benefit from hiring well and primarily from hiring a lot. If those folks don't pan out, more roles to fill and more bonuses to be had. It seems like an extremely short-sighted solution, which leads to short relationships that don't sufficiently penalize nefarious behavior.
• agentultra 11y ago
  I really dislike the lack of expertise typical recruiters have with the technical jargon and requirements of our industry. I've had many poor recruitment experiences where the recruiter couldn't accurately explain the role, requirements, or why they thought I was a good enough fit to contact me in the first place. My github simply hits the right keywords and that's good enough for them. This has been made worse by not being able to explain the interview process. I specifically asked, many times to various recruiters, what I would be quizzed on or what I should prepare myself for. Few could tell me anything beyond, "some technical questions about algorithms and data structures." Inadequate. The interviewer proper would ask random questions about memory architecture, optimizing the brute-force KNN algorithm, or simply how to reverse a string. Meanwhile I was studying binomial coefficients, heaps, tries, and the standard sorting algorithms. I have github projects that implement lattices for a logically monotonic distributed programming language. For someone such as myself this is unacceptable and leads to some dead-end interviews that are a complete waste of time. I blame the way we "funnel" the "dregs" of candidates and have little to offer in terms of solutions. I agree with the author that companies seem reluctant to do actual head-hunting. I always assumed that if you contacted me for a job there would be a reason: you like some of the projects I host on my github or have seen my contributions to various open source projects -- that you already have an idea of my skillset and abilities and want to get to know me. Recruiters are more inclined to match keywords and send me through the process... they're not incentivized to get to know me at all. All I can suggest is to not use a recruiter or at least choose one carefully: choose one that knows your industry well and can tell a min-heap from a max-heap. edit: fixed wording implying a specific github project was some sort of library or system when it implements a single programming language, not languages.
  • michael2l 11y ago
    I dislike this expertise as well, but lets get at what you are saying, that a recruiter should have some sort of programming background to know how concepts actually are used versus the sorts of mixed metaphors one comes up with in the absence of that understanding, which are often quite comical. This just isn't realistic. Most recruiters are doing this job in some sort of entry-level commission-only type role, and if they had any sort of basic IT skills/understanding are likely to have better offers to do something in that arena. Some recruiters do learn a good bit and are more successful over time and make a good living, but most people try it for a bit and don't do well enough to keep at it. Combining the sales ability with technical ability is a bit rare, but for people who have both you can do pretty well both in recruiting and in other lines of work as well.
• kevinr 11y ago
  Given how common the experiences OP describes are among tech people of my acquaintance in the US, I have a hard time believing that anyone here saying "I know hundreds of recruiters and none of them think like this" isn't a recruiter themself. The thing I hate most is having a recruiter get in the middle of my salary negotiations and try to talk me down.
• raygull 11y ago
  I've been on the job market the last few weeks, going mostly through New York recruiters. The quality of the experience has varied wildly, with some obviously doing the minimum work necessary, and just as obviously not knowing or caring about the "acronyms" on my resume. Others seem pretty professional, have apparently done research, and the clients they recruit for would indicate they have a reputation to maintain. In the end, the gross factor doesn't really matter to me -- the recruiters find me on LinkedIn, and I just say "sure, I'll talk to XYZ Co." unless it's obviously sleazy or a bad fit. It's a bit grueling to cast such a wide net, and it's obviously a hustle, but for me it's mostly just a way to get an initial phone introduction/screen with companies, and from there it's apparent whether it's worth the trouble to move to the next step. I might not go this route again, though, having seen how little most recruiters add to the process.
  • gearoidoc 11y ago
    Unsolicited I know but a good friend of mine runs a recruitment firm in NYC. He's a tech guy (I've worked with him for nearly 10 years) and the founder is an ex-Google dev too (I've only Skyped with him but he seems to know his stuff). They mostly place for contract roles - but I could be wrong on that. Happy to introduce you if you wish.
• gearoidoc 11y ago
  A recruiter once lost it with me when I was job hunting about 5 years ago. They has put me forward for a job which I'd already applied for (one of the biggest consulting co's in the world) and was convinced that I'd cut them out of the process completely (despite the fact I'd told them I'd applied). Got offered the job in the end. Shitty salary (and not the most exciting of jobs as I gathered too).
• ommunist 11y ago
  For the UK the picture is so very true. I admire the proper English of this article. Well worth reading.
• vorg 11y ago
  These types of people don't just get themselves into recruiter roles lying about vacancies and candidates to swindle clients and skim the takings, but also into roles managing open source projects lying about download numbers and faking popularity rankings, to flip companies and sell consulting services and conference seats.
• anotherhostname 11y ago
  this post is truth. i removed myself from linkedin because of the amount of recruiters spam / calls, the most annoying part was the constant incorrect matching of my skills with proposed jobs. (i work with node.js but was getting tons of requests for php and java jobs). the same recruiters didn't stop contacting me even after i found a job (without their help) and stated clearly on my accounts that i was not available anymore. this was super annoying. at first i put a warning on my linkedin profile, but it didn't decrease the amount of spam. then i started to threat via email every one using my personal email without any consent (seems like they sell cv database to each other). i end up closing my linkedin account because i could not stop anymore all this annoying crap from recruiters. i still receive some emails once in a while and i threat them to remove my identity from their db, it seems to work for now.