4 ms·

Been there, done that. Don't get me started on recruiters ... they could be so much more effective in my experience.

mgkimsal 15y ago
they could be so much more effective in my experience. Amen! I can count on one hand the number of recruiters that I'd recommend to either a company or someone looking for work. As an industry, they must be being 'effective enough' because they're still doing it. I'm waiting for a disruptor to hit that market and radically change the way things are done. It'd be huge.
- bumbledraven 15y ago
  http://www.hackruiter.com http://www.hackruiter.com
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  @bumbledraven Neat idea, but "All the jobs are in New York or the San Francisco Bay Area. If you're looking to work elsewhere, we can't help you right now. Sorry!" It's great to have focus, but there's a much larger group of developers out there who A) don't live in those areas, B) don't/can't move to those areas and C) don't want to work at a 'startup'. Hackruiter looks neat, but I don't think it's 'disruption' in the sense I was talking about. It's catering to a very small niche of people who are risk-takers and probably "off the beaten path" anyway. I couldn't reply directly to you, so had to do it one level above!
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Instead of just hoping, why not be the disruption?
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  @tomjen... This has been on my mind for some time (years), but as with many things, it's little more than an idea. But I have many other ideas which are equally compelling, and I'm pursuing yet other compelling ideas right now too. Just because someone sees an opportunity in a market doesn't necessarily mean that they're the best equipped (or equipped at all) to actually tackle it. But thanks for the public push all the same.
- hapless 15y ago
  It's like real estate. Recruiting looks like easy money, so it attracts many, many entrants. Only a few are successful enough to stick to it as a full-time job. The incentives don't make sense. As a realtor, you get a huge, immediate payoff when the house sells. You don't care about the price. Recruiters are worse. As a recruiter, you get a huge, immediate payoff when your client hires any candidate at any price. You don't actually care how good the fit is, so the rational behaviour is to spray as many candidates at as many clients as possible.
  - __mharrison__ 15y ago
    The real estate analogy is a good one. The incentives for the recruiter don't line up. (Hence many companies refusing to work with recruiters)
  - gnosis 15y ago
    "As a realtor, you get a huge, immediate payoff when the house sells." "immediate", except for the fact that you might have been working to find or sell the house for a year, and months to put the deal together. This is assuming the house ever does sell at all, and you haven't worked for months or years to get absolutely nothing. And it assumes that if the house sells you don't get cheated by your client and actually do get paid. "You don't care about the price." Except that usually real estate agents get a percentage of the sale price as commission. Real estate agents also want to make their client happy so that they'll get recommendations and referrals from them in the future, and want to work with that agent again when they look to buy or sell another home.
    - hapless 15y ago
      Exactly, they get a percentage of the sale price as a commission. 1% of a $300,000 house is $3,000. 1% of a $325,000 house is $3,250. The realtor has $250 to gain from holding your house price as high as possible, increasing the amount of work he has to do. He has $3,000 on the line to sell it at the lower price, with less work. The rational behaviour is to sell as fast as possible, and damn the price.
pkteison 15y ago
I think it's like real estate agents. It's possible to luck into a payday even if you do a poor job because the quality of the product being purchased is divorced from the quality of the service you provide - luck into showing the right job to the right person, and you get paid, even if you didn't add any other value anywhere. So you can either try to do a good job of matching people and jobs, or else just shoot for numbers and try to match a lot of people and jobs. I've recently been doing a job search, and I've had one recruiter who I felt really helped me do a better job searching for jobs. I've had five do zero-value-added resume forwarding. One more who is somewhere in between. And two dozen who didn't even read my geographic or full-time preferences who have received quick nos. The part that really bugs me is I actually like one of the jobs from the zero-value-added resume forwarding, so a poor recruiter might end up getting paid through sheer luck and numbers.

they could be so much more effective in my experience. Amen! I can count on one hand the number of recruiters that I'd recommend to either a company or someone looking for work. As an industry, they must be being 'effective enough' because they're still doing it. I'm waiting for a disruptor to hit that market and radically change the way things are done. It'd be huge.

bumbledraven 15y ago
http://www.hackruiter.com http://www.hackruiter.com
mgkimsal 15y ago
@bumbledraven Neat idea, but "All the jobs are in New York or the San Francisco Bay Area. If you're looking to work elsewhere, we can't help you right now. Sorry!" It's great to have focus, but there's a much larger group of developers out there who A) don't live in those areas, B) don't/can't move to those areas and C) don't want to work at a 'startup'. Hackruiter looks neat, but I don't think it's 'disruption' in the sense I was talking about. It's catering to a very small niche of people who are risk-takers and probably "off the beaten path" anyway. I couldn't reply directly to you, so had to do it one level above!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
tomjen3 15y ago
Instead of just hoping, why not be the disruption?
mgkimsal 15y ago
@tomjen... This has been on my mind for some time (years), but as with many things, it's little more than an idea. But I have many other ideas which are equally compelling, and I'm pursuing yet other compelling ideas right now too. Just because someone sees an opportunity in a market doesn't necessarily mean that they're the best equipped (or equipped at all) to actually tackle it. But thanks for the public push all the same.
hapless 15y ago
It's like real estate. Recruiting looks like easy money, so it attracts many, many entrants. Only a few are successful enough to stick to it as a full-time job. The incentives don't make sense. As a realtor, you get a huge, immediate payoff when the house sells. You don't care about the price. Recruiters are worse. As a recruiter, you get a huge, immediate payoff when your client hires any candidate at any price. You don't actually care how good the fit is, so the rational behaviour is to spray as many candidates at as many clients as possible.
- __mharrison__ 15y ago
  The real estate analogy is a good one. The incentives for the recruiter don't line up. (Hence many companies refusing to work with recruiters)
- gnosis 15y ago
  "As a realtor, you get a huge, immediate payoff when the house sells." "immediate", except for the fact that you might have been working to find or sell the house for a year, and months to put the deal together. This is assuming the house ever does sell at all, and you haven't worked for months or years to get absolutely nothing. And it assumes that if the house sells you don't get cheated by your client and actually do get paid. "You don't care about the price." Except that usually real estate agents get a percentage of the sale price as commission. Real estate agents also want to make their client happy so that they'll get recommendations and referrals from them in the future, and want to work with that agent again when they look to buy or sell another home.
  - hapless 15y ago
    Exactly, they get a percentage of the sale price as a commission. 1% of a $300,000 house is $3,000. 1% of a $325,000 house is $3,250. The realtor has $250 to gain from holding your house price as high as possible, increasing the amount of work he has to do. He has $3,000 on the line to sell it at the lower price, with less work. The rational behaviour is to sell as fast as possible, and damn the price.

pkteison 15y ago

I think it's like real estate agents. It's possible to luck into a payday even if you do a poor job because the quality of the product being purchased is divorced from the quality of the service you provide - luck into showing the right job to the right person, and you get paid, even if you didn't add any other value anywhere. So you can either try to do a good job of matching people and jobs, or else just shoot for numbers and try to match a lot of people and jobs. I've recently been doing a job search, and I've had one recruiter who I felt really helped me do a better job searching for jobs. I've had five do zero-value-added resume forwarding. One more who is somewhere in between. And two dozen who didn't even read my geographic or full-time preferences who have received quick nos. The part that really bugs me is I actually like one of the jobs from the zero-value-added resume forwarding, so a poor recruiter might end up getting paid through sheer luck and numbers.