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Hi, I'm a recruiter. Look for job aggregators like Adzuna, Indeed, etc, which scrape all jobs on the web. When you see results, it should be easy to work out w

Hi, I'm a recruiter. Look for job aggregators like Adzuna, Indeed, etc, which scrape all jobs on the web. When you see results, it should be easy to work out which jobs are posted by recruiters, and which have been posted directly by the company. In my (massively biased) experience, you are better off applying for a position when you've been put forward by a recruiter: * The recruiter knows what the client's salary range is, and wants you to get paid as much as possible (as the role is commission based) - they'll be able to make sure you're getting a good deal out of the client * The recruiter is a professional sales person, and will chase the hiring manager for feedback, technical interviews, etc etc, in a way that as a direct candidate you'll come across as too pushy if you do yourself * The recruiter will genuinely have a good view of other similar jobs you may not have found that you'd be a good match for. * The recruiter will get much much more candid feedback about you than you'll ever get directly from the client ... and a whole bunch of other factors.

ohitsdom 11y ago
> wants you to get paid as much as possible (as the role is commission based) I think recruiters can be great, but don't put too much stock into this point. Recruiters are similar to realtors- yes, they get more if you get more, but they would rather close the deal then to risk no deal at all over a few more thousand dollars.
- brianwawok 11y ago
  See also real estate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jO_w6f8Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jO_w6f8Ck
- peteretep 11y ago
  Sure but they're also aware that the whole deal can disappear if you get a good counter-offer or a better offer elsewhere.
- Chris2048 11y ago
  Also, their relationship with the client (employer) is also important. If they can whittle down how much a client (employee/contractor) is willing to get, they will be who the employer calls first next time. Also, if they know the budget, they may know how small it is too. If they are no other jobs, they may try to convince you to take whatever's in their book.
throwthisawayt 11y ago
I have to respectfully disagree. While this may be true for top recruiters, the SNR is very low in this field - a large majority of recruited are not helpful. Specifically I'm speaking on the hiring side of two companies. In one, we had decided to work with one recruiter who we had a good relationship with and they knew our salary requirements, needs etc. However, on a weekly basis we would get 10-12 unsolicited emails from recruiters who we didn't want to work with introducing candidates. So from a candidates pov, it's very hard to see if the recruiter even has a relationship with the companies they are passing to. If you have a way to ascertain a good recruiter from a bad (maybe through personal recommendations) then sure go ahead. But I don't think it's useful to use cold call emails. As another datapoint, I've had several friends go through the job hunt where we each applied to 20+ companies. All of us independently stopped using recruiters when we saw that it was more efficient to work directly with companies. This is my experience as a junior dev. Ymmv with other roles but I find that the SNR is too low to get any benefit from recruiters.
- gorbachev 11y ago
  It's pretty easy to filter out the bad recruiters (I call them keyword monkeys), though. I have about half a dozen recruiters I trust. All of them contacted me with a cold call email after finding me in LinkedIn or elsewhere. Yes, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad, but you can essentially pattern match the good from the bad really easily based on the emails they're sending out. The bad ones look like templated emails. The good ones send personal emails clearly not sent to anyone else.
collyw 11y ago
In my experience, disclosing my salary to recruiter has only ever had a negative effect.
- peteretep 11y ago
  What's the negative effect it's had?
  - evilduck 11y ago
    Anchoring effect. You're showing your hand in poker before placing bets. You'll never get a substantive increase in pay since the recruiter knows what you're currently willing to work for and that some small percent increase is still a win for you. Big jumps also usually means moving out of the range of jobs you're a "safe" fill for and that makes them view it as a higher risk of not getting paid for the effort trying to place you. If you're not well networked and you're not enough of a rockstar to have companies approaching you out of the blue, your best bet is to control where that salary anchor is placed. There's hardly any way to verify your claim and you're almost always better off placing it at a believably higher position. I mean, companies aren't going to tell your their actual upper bounds for what they'll pay in salary, why should you tell them your actual lower bounds?
  - collyw 11y ago
    Whenever I have done that they have offered very little (or even the same) salary as I am on. One time I was contacted about a role in London offering between 65k and 90k (can't remember exactly, but a range along those lines). I said I would only consider moving for the 90K end. He asked what I was on. I refused to tell him then eventually got wore down and told him my relatively small Spanish salary. He refused to put me through for that saying that it was not usual to get more than 10% more than what I am on. The company was willing to pay more for "the right candidate", but my salary at the time meant I wasn't that candidate. Don't disclose your salary to recruiters.
    - SinomaSo 11y ago
      This is especially true for London recruiters. I had this happening to me too. Recruiter said "oh you should only ask for 15% top, I don't think we can consider you for the job". Stay away from those recruiters and never negotiate your salary with recruiters.
minionslave 11y ago
Thanks for your reply. Since you're a recruiter, do you have any tips that would help me differentiate between a competent recruiter versus a shady/ incompetent recruiter? I have worked with a great recruiter in the past, but lately I've been turned off by the whole process, I talked to one the other day and he said "Do you have any MVC experience? MVC is a big technology these days, you didn't list that on your resume ".
- beachstartup 11y ago
  trust your gut. they're sales people, not technical people, so judge them by the appropriate metrics. i.e.: are they putting you in front of the right companies? are they asking you questions about your needs? are they pitching you on the job (it should be worthy of a pitch), as well as vice versa? are they working with the right hiring budget? these are the basic questions you use to judge the quality of a sales person. they have to "get it" on a relationship level, not a technical level.
- peteretep 11y ago
  You know, the best ones aren't always the most technical ones (and I say that as someone with many many years development experience) - I would ask your friends and community for recommendations, rather than trying to figure it out yourself. I would also look for ones who are investing heavily in one community. Someone who does exclusively Python in London, sponsors all the conferences, and has done for a while is likely to know which places are nice to work at, where pays well comparatively, and so on.
bitwize 11y ago
When you see results, it should be easy to work out which jobs are posted by recruiters, and which have been posted directly by the company. Why should I do this myself? I hate sausage on pizza. If I order a pepperoni and mushroom slice, I'm gonna get mad if the guy gives me back a pepperoni, mushroom, and sausage slice and tells me "it should be easy to pick out the sausages if you don't like 'em".
- peteretep 11y ago
  So, uh, what's your solution to be able to find lots of company-advertised jobs again?
  - bitwize 11y ago
    Job boards that enforce rules against recruit spam. Near as I can tell, AngelList does this, for example.
giaour 11y ago
> * The recruiter will get much much more candid feedback about you than you'll ever get directly from the client This is why I really appreciated going through recruiters early in my career. Companies will never give feedback directly to candidates, but for some reason they feel perfectly comfortable passing it along when there's a recruiter acting as a middleman.

ohitsdom 11y ago

> wants you to get paid as much as possible (as the role is commission based) I think recruiters can be great, but don't put too much stock into this point. Recruiters are similar to realtors- yes, they get more if you get more, but they would rather close the deal then to risk no deal at all over a few more thousand dollars.

brianwawok 11y ago
See also real estate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jO_w6f8Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jO_w6f8Ck
peteretep 11y ago
Sure but they're also aware that the whole deal can disappear if you get a good counter-offer or a better offer elsewhere.
Chris2048 11y ago
Also, their relationship with the client (employer) is also important. If they can whittle down how much a client (employee/contractor) is willing to get, they will be who the employer calls first next time. Also, if they know the budget, they may know how small it is too. If they are no other jobs, they may try to convince you to take whatever's in their book.

throwthisawayt 11y ago

I have to respectfully disagree. While this may be true for top recruiters, the SNR is very low in this field - a large majority of recruited are not helpful. Specifically I'm speaking on the hiring side of two companies. In one, we had decided to work with one recruiter who we had a good relationship with and they knew our salary requirements, needs etc. However, on a weekly basis we would get 10-12 unsolicited emails from recruiters who we didn't want to work with introducing candidates. So from a candidates pov, it's very hard to see if the recruiter even has a relationship with the companies they are passing to. If you have a way to ascertain a good recruiter from a bad (maybe through personal recommendations) then sure go ahead. But I don't think it's useful to use cold call emails. As another datapoint, I've had several friends go through the job hunt where we each applied to 20+ companies. All of us independently stopped using recruiters when we saw that it was more efficient to work directly with companies. This is my experience as a junior dev. Ymmv with other roles but I find that the SNR is too low to get any benefit from recruiters.

gorbachev 11y ago
It's pretty easy to filter out the bad recruiters (I call them keyword monkeys), though. I have about half a dozen recruiters I trust. All of them contacted me with a cold call email after finding me in LinkedIn or elsewhere. Yes, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad, but you can essentially pattern match the good from the bad really easily based on the emails they're sending out. The bad ones look like templated emails. The good ones send personal emails clearly not sent to anyone else.

collyw 11y ago

In my experience, disclosing my salary to recruiter has only ever had a negative effect.

peteretep 11y ago
What's the negative effect it's had?
- evilduck 11y ago
  Anchoring effect. You're showing your hand in poker before placing bets. You'll never get a substantive increase in pay since the recruiter knows what you're currently willing to work for and that some small percent increase is still a win for you. Big jumps also usually means moving out of the range of jobs you're a "safe" fill for and that makes them view it as a higher risk of not getting paid for the effort trying to place you. If you're not well networked and you're not enough of a rockstar to have companies approaching you out of the blue, your best bet is to control where that salary anchor is placed. There's hardly any way to verify your claim and you're almost always better off placing it at a believably higher position. I mean, companies aren't going to tell your their actual upper bounds for what they'll pay in salary, why should you tell them your actual lower bounds?
- collyw 11y ago
  Whenever I have done that they have offered very little (or even the same) salary as I am on. One time I was contacted about a role in London offering between 65k and 90k (can't remember exactly, but a range along those lines). I said I would only consider moving for the 90K end. He asked what I was on. I refused to tell him then eventually got wore down and told him my relatively small Spanish salary. He refused to put me through for that saying that it was not usual to get more than 10% more than what I am on. The company was willing to pay more for "the right candidate", but my salary at the time meant I wasn't that candidate. Don't disclose your salary to recruiters.
  - SinomaSo 11y ago
    This is especially true for London recruiters. I had this happening to me too. Recruiter said "oh you should only ask for 15% top, I don't think we can consider you for the job". Stay away from those recruiters and never negotiate your salary with recruiters.

minionslave 11y ago

Thanks for your reply. Since you're a recruiter, do you have any tips that would help me differentiate between a competent recruiter versus a shady/ incompetent recruiter? I have worked with a great recruiter in the past, but lately I've been turned off by the whole process, I talked to one the other day and he said "Do you have any MVC experience? MVC is a big technology these days, you didn't list that on your resume ".

beachstartup 11y ago
trust your gut. they're sales people, not technical people, so judge them by the appropriate metrics. i.e.: are they putting you in front of the right companies? are they asking you questions about your needs? are they pitching you on the job (it should be worthy of a pitch), as well as vice versa? are they working with the right hiring budget? these are the basic questions you use to judge the quality of a sales person. they have to "get it" on a relationship level, not a technical level.
peteretep 11y ago
You know, the best ones aren't always the most technical ones (and I say that as someone with many many years development experience) - I would ask your friends and community for recommendations, rather than trying to figure it out yourself. I would also look for ones who are investing heavily in one community. Someone who does exclusively Python in London, sponsors all the conferences, and has done for a while is likely to know which places are nice to work at, where pays well comparatively, and so on.

bitwize 11y ago

When you see results, it should be easy to work out which jobs are posted by recruiters, and which have been posted directly by the company. Why should I do this myself? I hate sausage on pizza. If I order a pepperoni and mushroom slice, I'm gonna get mad if the guy gives me back a pepperoni, mushroom, and sausage slice and tells me "it should be easy to pick out the sausages if you don't like 'em".

peteretep 11y ago
So, uh, what's your solution to be able to find lots of company-advertised jobs again?
- bitwize 11y ago
  Job boards that enforce rules against recruit spam. Near as I can tell, AngelList does this, for example.

giaour 11y ago

> * The recruiter will get much much more candid feedback about you than you'll ever get directly from the client This is why I really appreciated going through recruiters early in my career. Companies will never give feedback directly to candidates, but for some reason they feel perfectly comfortable passing it along when there's a recruiter acting as a middleman.