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I think this is by design - it's a commission based non-skilled sales position. The people who get into it are the same selling automobiles, real-estate, fire

I think this is by design - it's a commission based non-skilled sales position. The people who get into it are the same selling automobiles, real-estate, fire extinguishers, etc, and can easily move between these industries based on how hot they are. It's cheap for the agencies to recruit just about anyone, and those who are truly skilled will rise to the top while the rest are naturally culled. With the software recruiting industry the issue is somewhat made worse by the basic gender imbalance that exists... agencies try to capitalize on the environment of nerdy male engineers by having an unusually high number of attractive women to get a higher response. EDIT: unfortunately I'm not able to find any direct stats on the software recruitment industry itself please regard my comment as anecdotal.

cbanek 9y ago
> agencies try to capitalize on the environment of nerdy male engineers by having an unusually high number of attractive women to get a higher response This seems questionable. All the recruiters I've ever dealt with are over email and phone, and you might not even meet them when you interview on-site (because there may be an on-site recruiter for the interview). I don't see how physical attractiveness comes into it. I also find that my chance of having a male recruiter or a female recruiter contacting me is about 50/50.
- brandall10 9y ago
  My own experience is from Linked-In and at tech meetups. In the latter, I can't even recall ever seeing anyone other than an attractive 20-something female present, at least here in San Diego. As far as actual statistics, I know I've seen a few over the years where it was shown that > 80% of tech recruiters are female but I'm having trouble finding much due to the influx of hits regarding recruiting female engineers. I did find this one for the recruitment industry in general in Israel: http://staffingtalk.com/why-most-recruiters-female/ http://staffingtalk.com/why-most-recruiters-female/ With particular interest to this update: "*UPDATE: Bradley Ruffle recently noted via a comment on this post that they expanded their initial survey to 208 companies. 91% of these recruiters were female (with the majority still being single and under 30 years old)."
  - cbanek 9y ago
    My experience is also from linkedin and just random emails - I don't really do the meetups, although I could see where that could come into play. Though I think most engineers are actually more excited to find an engineer wearing a shirt from a company they want to work for and talk about tech. I don't have any data to back this up either, but I wonder if the companies contacting me might also have a certain pattern. Bigger companies, like Google & FB, I think I have had more recruiters with female names contact me (although I have had some male ones as well). Small startups it seems to be more males, or maybe even just direct employees if they have no recruiters.
    - brandall10 9y ago
      Right - there is often representation from engineering in a recruitment capacity. To be clear, I'm talking only of people who are employed as recruiters.

cbanek 9y ago

> agencies try to capitalize on the environment of nerdy male engineers by having an unusually high number of attractive women to get a higher response This seems questionable. All the recruiters I've ever dealt with are over email and phone, and you might not even meet them when you interview on-site (because there may be an on-site recruiter for the interview). I don't see how physical attractiveness comes into it. I also find that my chance of having a male recruiter or a female recruiter contacting me is about 50/50.

brandall10 9y ago
My own experience is from Linked-In and at tech meetups. In the latter, I can't even recall ever seeing anyone other than an attractive 20-something female present, at least here in San Diego. As far as actual statistics, I know I've seen a few over the years where it was shown that > 80% of tech recruiters are female but I'm having trouble finding much due to the influx of hits regarding recruiting female engineers. I did find this one for the recruitment industry in general in Israel: http://staffingtalk.com/why-most-recruiters-female/ http://staffingtalk.com/why-most-recruiters-female/ With particular interest to this update: "*UPDATE: Bradley Ruffle recently noted via a comment on this post that they expanded their initial survey to 208 companies. 91% of these recruiters were female (with the majority still being single and under 30 years old)."
- cbanek 9y ago
  My experience is also from linkedin and just random emails - I don't really do the meetups, although I could see where that could come into play. Though I think most engineers are actually more excited to find an engineer wearing a shirt from a company they want to work for and talk about tech. I don't have any data to back this up either, but I wonder if the companies contacting me might also have a certain pattern. Bigger companies, like Google & FB, I think I have had more recruiters with female names contact me (although I have had some male ones as well). Small startups it seems to be more males, or maybe even just direct employees if they have no recruiters.
  - brandall10 9y ago
    Right - there is often representation from engineering in a recruitment capacity. To be clear, I'm talking only of people who are employed as recruiters.