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This is about scale. Technical recruiters sometimes need to be able to reach out to hundreds and maybe thousands of candidates at once, and making "personal con

by lxe 8y ago

This is about scale. Technical recruiters sometimes need to be able to reach out to hundreds and maybe thousands of candidates at once, and making "personal connections" does not scale in this case. Even if they automagically parse the keywords and plug them into a template, sometimes things are missed and mis-placed (Java vs JavaScript, etc...).

leerob 8y ago
I understand the current recruiting ecosystem is largely the way it is due to scale. Companies need a lot of talent and they need it last week. Hence, blasting out thousands of emails (e.g. the Amazon recruiter I mentioned). I’m simply trying to challenge that status quo. There has to be a better way. I’ll admit I don’t have the answer, largely because I’ve never worked as a recruiter, but it seems like the process is broken for recruitees.
bradleyjg 8y ago
If the numbers being thrown around are accurate (e.g. $30,000 for a single hire) then the amount of time it’s reasonable to expect someone to spend on a single job is on the order of months. That time needn’t be spent all the end either. Someone could work his way up to knowing most of the several hundred experts in whatever technology in whatever city and have a nice little thing going. Of course that doesn’t scratch that get rich quick “scaling” itch that spamming my inbox with an automagic template does.
alkonaut 8y ago
But sending vague initial messages to hundreds of candidates and saying they are a great match and that they want to discuss over the phone can’t scale! It must be much better to just give the basic info (level, tech stack, location, salary range, job description ...) so that you don’t waste time calling people who will realize 10 minutes into the call that the position is in the wrong city or whatever. If such a message actually leads to a phone call, then it’s bound to be with the most desperte candidates and not with the best match candidates. If they send out a more detailed message to 1000 people, and get responses from 25, then there should be time to research these candidates further to build a personal connection, including having a phone call.
- hash872 8y ago
  I'd like to see you read the Medium posts of 1000 developers and develop a personalized message for each person based on that, and see how long that takes and how that scales. No defender of the current recruiting system, but I think the expectation of extreme personalization is a bit much. Like my example below of scrapping factories and having Toyota craftsman handmake each individual car for the buyers
  - alkonaut 8y ago
    What I said was they should spam 1000 devlopers and then read up on those that actually respond - exactly because they can't be personal with 1000 people. Personalized would be great and costly. However, being mass produced spam doesn't explain why critical info is left out, such as - in what city is the position? - what job would I do in this role? Developer? Project owner? Details like these are deliberately left out, so I'm wondering why that is. Theories I have seen that don't quite fly are: - They think they are so good they can convince me if they get my ear in a phone interview (Phone interviews are expensive if 99 of 100 calls end with the person realizing after 5 minutes that the job is for a skill they don't have, or in a city they can't move to). Theories that are more plausible, still don't seem likely: - There is a 419-scam element where the emails are crafted to attract the most desperate candidates, and actually repel any qualified ones which would likely reject the offer anyway. (This seems like bad economics even at scale since no one will do good business recruiting bad candidates, but together with the above theory it might work) - The recruiters are incompetent. They actually do waste time in phone interviews with peoplethat could have been filtered away because of e.g. the wrong skills or location. They actually thought that being vague and talking about "great opportunity for personal development" would attract devs more than "Backend Go gig in Boston". This is plausible (explains what is observed) but it seems far fetched that a large fraction of the industry would be this incompetent. Curiously, even when the first contact is a phone call the details are hidden! "Hi this is Bob from X recruiting, I want to talk do you about vague vague thing, when is a good time to talk?" If they already have my ear what makes them reluctant to use the info then? They have to spill these details at some point so why not open with "Hi, I'm Bob from X recruiting. A client of mine is looking to fill a position as a Go Backend dev in Boston. Not sure what your status is right now, would you be willing to discuss this?" The most plausible theories if you ask me: - There is recruiter subcontracting going on, where a top level "good" recruiter uses spam-recruiters for leads, and don't give them more than a minimum information and compensation to get those leads. Possibly even with multiple levels so that the top level firm doesn't even realize what goes on at the bottom. - There is no position at all, or there is a position but filling the position isn't what drives the recruiters business since these are low-level recruiters (see above). Instead they want a 5 minute chat where they can ask me questions and build a profile with info they can't find in e.g. LinkedIn. This info they can then aggregate sell to other recruiters for good money, way more for a good money than the cost of a 5-10 minute phone call.

by lxe 8y ago

leerob 8y ago

I understand the current recruiting ecosystem is largely the way it is due to scale. Companies need a lot of talent and they need it last week. Hence, blasting out thousands of emails (e.g. the Amazon recruiter I mentioned). I’m simply trying to challenge that status quo. There has to be a better way. I’ll admit I don’t have the answer, largely because I’ve never worked as a recruiter, but it seems like the process is broken for recruitees.

bradleyjg 8y ago

If the numbers being thrown around are accurate (e.g. $30,000 for a single hire) then the amount of time it’s reasonable to expect someone to spend on a single job is on the order of months. That time needn’t be spent all the end either. Someone could work his way up to knowing most of the several hundred experts in whatever technology in whatever city and have a nice little thing going. Of course that doesn’t scratch that get rich quick “scaling” itch that spamming my inbox with an automagic template does.

alkonaut 8y ago

But sending vague initial messages to hundreds of candidates and saying they are a great match and that they want to discuss over the phone can’t scale! It must be much better to just give the basic info (level, tech stack, location, salary range, job description ...) so that you don’t waste time calling people who will realize 10 minutes into the call that the position is in the wrong city or whatever. If such a message actually leads to a phone call, then it’s bound to be with the most desperte candidates and not with the best match candidates. If they send out a more detailed message to 1000 people, and get responses from 25, then there should be time to research these candidates further to build a personal connection, including having a phone call.

hash872 8y ago
I'd like to see you read the Medium posts of 1000 developers and develop a personalized message for each person based on that, and see how long that takes and how that scales. No defender of the current recruiting system, but I think the expectation of extreme personalization is a bit much. Like my example below of scrapping factories and having Toyota craftsman handmake each individual car for the buyers
- alkonaut 8y ago
  What I said was they should spam 1000 devlopers and then read up on those that actually respond - exactly because they can't be personal with 1000 people. Personalized would be great and costly. However, being mass produced spam doesn't explain why critical info is left out, such as - in what city is the position? - what job would I do in this role? Developer? Project owner? Details like these are deliberately left out, so I'm wondering why that is. Theories I have seen that don't quite fly are: - They think they are so good they can convince me if they get my ear in a phone interview (Phone interviews are expensive if 99 of 100 calls end with the person realizing after 5 minutes that the job is for a skill they don't have, or in a city they can't move to). Theories that are more plausible, still don't seem likely: - There is a 419-scam element where the emails are crafted to attract the most desperate candidates, and actually repel any qualified ones which would likely reject the offer anyway. (This seems like bad economics even at scale since no one will do good business recruiting bad candidates, but together with the above theory it might work) - The recruiters are incompetent. They actually do waste time in phone interviews with peoplethat could have been filtered away because of e.g. the wrong skills or location. They actually thought that being vague and talking about "great opportunity for personal development" would attract devs more than "Backend Go gig in Boston". This is plausible (explains what is observed) but it seems far fetched that a large fraction of the industry would be this incompetent. Curiously, even when the first contact is a phone call the details are hidden! "Hi this is Bob from X recruiting, I want to talk do you about vague vague thing, when is a good time to talk?" If they already have my ear what makes them reluctant to use the info then? They have to spill these details at some point so why not open with "Hi, I'm Bob from X recruiting. A client of mine is looking to fill a position as a Go Backend dev in Boston. Not sure what your status is right now, would you be willing to discuss this?" The most plausible theories if you ask me: - There is recruiter subcontracting going on, where a top level "good" recruiter uses spam-recruiters for leads, and don't give them more than a minimum information and compensation to get those leads. Possibly even with multiple levels so that the top level firm doesn't even realize what goes on at the bottom. - There is no position at all, or there is a position but filling the position isn't what drives the recruiters business since these are low-level recruiters (see above). Instead they want a 5 minute chat where they can ask me questions and build a profile with info they can't find in e.g. LinkedIn. This info they can then aggregate sell to other recruiters for good money, way more for a good money than the cost of a 5-10 minute phone call.