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I am on the other side of this. As a hiring manager using recruiters, I am annoyed by: - lack of diversity in candidates. (not just virtue signaling. if all I

I am on the other side of this. As a hiring manager using recruiters, I am annoyed by: - lack of diversity in candidates. (not just virtue signaling. if all I see are nearly identical resumes, I assume the recruiter is just phoning it in.) - candidates “just a little out of your price range” who are 30% over the top end of my budget. - “confidentially” telling me what other offers a candidate has because then I know they are also leaking my offers to my competitors - telling me every candidate is great - telling me every candidate is a hot commodity like they are hotels.com

stuckonempty 5y ago
Probably annoying as a hiring manager, but one of the best ways for workers wages to rise is by using competing, “leaked” offers against each other. This is in effect how you gauge what your talents are worth in the labor market. I’m glad offers get leaked for this reason
- leni536 5y ago
  Well, this how I could negotiate up my starting salary. I told each recruiter the competing offer, they didn't have to leak anything.
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  What it means is that I don’t tell the recruiter. The candidate can do whatever they want. We pay well. I don’t alter my offers based on the others I hear about. We usually beat them anyway, but when we don’t, that’s too bad.
garmaine 5y ago
> - “confidentially” telling me what other offers a candidate has because then I know they are also leaking my offers to my competitors The only problem here is that they're claiming confidentiality which is obviously not true. Workers and their agents should be playing offers off each other.
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  These recruiters are not agents of the workers. My company, not the candidates, pay the recruiters.
  - garmaine 5y ago
    Some of us actually have agents which represent us to recruiters.
b9a2cab5 5y ago
You aren't getting what you want if nobody in those demographics is choosing to get a degree in CS in college. I choose to believe this is a cultural problem (which is why Nigerians are even more overrepresented relative to U.S. population in higher education than Asians, despite being black [1]), but certainly there are many factors that play into it. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-10-13/it-isn-t-just-asian-immigrants-who-excel-in-the-u-s- https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-10-13/it-isn...
spuz 5y ago
> if all I see are nearly identical resumes, I assume the recruiter is just phoning it in. Could you explain what you mean by this? I don't quite understand the language.
- username314159 5y ago
  verb gerund or present participle: phoning // ... INFORMAL work or perform without much effort, interest, or enthusiasm. "I think of my playing as committed—I can't remember ever phoning it in at any performance"
- MillenialMan 5y ago
  Phoning it in means giving up on doing a good job, and just putting in the bare minimum effort to get the job done. It comes from the idea of phoning in rather than putting in the effort to show up in person. So in this case, they don't actually care about finding good (or underpriced) candidates, they're just spamming a basic resume match.
  - dcminter 5y ago
    +1 By way of example from the other side of the fence - my LinkedIn profile asks recruiters to state that they've read my pre-requisites for a role when they contact me. 90% don't do that (and clearly haven't). The kind of recruiter that doesn't bother to read the candidate's profile is "phoning it in" I delete all of those - the remaining recruiters are generally ok, though they're often offering roles that are trivially discoverable to anyone actively job hunting.
  - spuz 5y ago
    I think there is more to the original comment than this though. I'm interested to know how they measure diversity when reading a CV and how they judge a recruiter to be "phoning it in" or not. I know what the phrase means - I just don't understand the meaning in this context.
    - MillenialMan 5y ago
lordnacho 5y ago
The diversity thing is really hard to do anything about. I think I've seen maybe 10-15 relevant (in the loosest sense: person was a dev of some sort, not a career switcher) CVs from a woman over my entire career. And I did hire three of them, compared to dozens of men and thousands of CVs. Perhaps my estimate is wrong or something, it's hard to keep track of this number, but I do tend to give it an extra good look when it's a woman just because it's so rare. I think it's the pipeline as well as selection: I work in finance and usually in smaller firms.
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  It may be hard, but that is their job. They are supposed to find me the very best candidates. There are plenty of professional groups, alumni associations, meetup groups, etc. devoted to diversity in tech. If they can’t even find a few women, then how can I trust they are really looking everywhere to find the very best?

stuckonempty 5y ago

Probably annoying as a hiring manager, but one of the best ways for workers wages to rise is by using competing, “leaked” offers against each other. This is in effect how you gauge what your talents are worth in the labor market. I’m glad offers get leaked for this reason

leni536 5y ago
Well, this how I could negotiate up my starting salary. I told each recruiter the competing offer, they didn't have to leak anything.
Hnrobert42 5y ago
What it means is that I don’t tell the recruiter. The candidate can do whatever they want. We pay well. I don’t alter my offers based on the others I hear about. We usually beat them anyway, but when we don’t, that’s too bad.

garmaine 5y ago

> - “confidentially” telling me what other offers a candidate has because then I know they are also leaking my offers to my competitors The only problem here is that they're claiming confidentiality which is obviously not true. Workers and their agents should be playing offers off each other.

Hnrobert42 5y ago
These recruiters are not agents of the workers. My company, not the candidates, pay the recruiters.
- garmaine 5y ago
  Some of us actually have agents which represent us to recruiters.

b9a2cab5 5y ago

You aren't getting what you want if nobody in those demographics is choosing to get a degree in CS in college. I choose to believe this is a cultural problem (which is why Nigerians are even more overrepresented relative to U.S. population in higher education than Asians, despite being black [1]), but certainly there are many factors that play into it. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-10-13/it-isn-t-just-asian-immigrants-who-excel-in-the-u-s- https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-10-13/it-isn...

spuz 5y ago

> if all I see are nearly identical resumes, I assume the recruiter is just phoning it in. Could you explain what you mean by this? I don't quite understand the language.

username314159 5y ago
verb gerund or present participle: phoning // ... INFORMAL work or perform without much effort, interest, or enthusiasm. "I think of my playing as committed—I can't remember ever phoning it in at any performance"
MillenialMan 5y ago
Phoning it in means giving up on doing a good job, and just putting in the bare minimum effort to get the job done. It comes from the idea of phoning in rather than putting in the effort to show up in person. So in this case, they don't actually care about finding good (or underpriced) candidates, they're just spamming a basic resume match.
- dcminter 5y ago
  +1 By way of example from the other side of the fence - my LinkedIn profile asks recruiters to state that they've read my pre-requisites for a role when they contact me. 90% don't do that (and clearly haven't). The kind of recruiter that doesn't bother to read the candidate's profile is "phoning it in" I delete all of those - the remaining recruiters are generally ok, though they're often offering roles that are trivially discoverable to anyone actively job hunting.
- spuz 5y ago
  I think there is more to the original comment than this though. I'm interested to know how they measure diversity when reading a CV and how they judge a recruiter to be "phoning it in" or not. I know what the phrase means - I just don't understand the meaning in this context.
  - MillenialMan 5y ago

lordnacho 5y ago

The diversity thing is really hard to do anything about. I think I've seen maybe 10-15 relevant (in the loosest sense: person was a dev of some sort, not a career switcher) CVs from a woman over my entire career. And I did hire three of them, compared to dozens of men and thousands of CVs. Perhaps my estimate is wrong or something, it's hard to keep track of this number, but I do tend to give it an extra good look when it's a woman just because it's so rare. I think it's the pipeline as well as selection: I work in finance and usually in smaller firms.

Hnrobert42 5y ago
It may be hard, but that is their job. They are supposed to find me the very best candidates. There are plenty of professional groups, alumni associations, meetup groups, etc. devoted to diversity in tech. If they can’t even find a few women, then how can I trust they are really looking everywhere to find the very best?