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My experiences as a Recruiter on Hacker News
- swombat 15y agoI don't want an apology on behalf of the very angry minority, not even close. You may not want one, but you deserve one. It's sad to see that even without the visibility of the mob amplifying itself in public, you still get a private lynching of sorts... Perhaps the same people who sent those emails can come out of the woodwork now and apologise. That'd be big of them.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jswinghammer 15y agoI think you have to write a post like that with such a statement even if it's not true. He deserved and should want an apology. Even if he was trying to be a bad guy why bother sending hate mail? And the guy trying to get him fired was particularly strange.
- Peroni 15y agoThat particular guy was an anomaly. He claimed that his 'friend' sent me his CV and that I then called every single company on the CV trying to pick up jobs. I did try and reason with him and he refused to point out who this particular 'friend' was and it was simply his insistance that I was corrupt against my instance that I kept my word about not taking advantage of my situation.
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- megamark16 15y agoMy first thought was "so there are 45 other recruiters on HN and they're not happy with what he's doing".
- Peroni 15y agoHopefully I will upset a lot more recruiters along the way.
- Peroni 15y agoYou may not want one, but you deserve one. Feel free to buy me a pint on behalf of the community at the next HN London meet-up. ;)
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- petercooper 15y agoUnfortunately, like most sites HN has its fair share of borderline-psychotic oddballs who like to send angry e-mails to people and attempt to upset them. I've had a few private e-mails responding to innocuous comments of mine over the years threatening all sorts of stuff. I put it down to the "if you're out there enough, you'll keep encountering that 1% of crazies" rule and assume my reach must be getting better ;-)
- elliottcarlson 15y agoMore interestingly, I once had a slightly heated debate on HN - nothing serious - just different points of views - and in the end the person managed to hunt down my email address just to apologize in case there were any hard feelings (which there weren't). This community is one of a kind, even with your occasional borderline-psychotic oddballs :)
- dasil003 15y agoHacker sociopaths are one of the most disturbing varieties.
- 3am 15y agohttp://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-fr...
- dasil003 15y agoGreat story, imagine how scary it would be if the guy was smart enough to crack WEP in less than two weeks.
- dennisgorelik 15y agoGreat story. I just submitted it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2757234 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2757234
- allantyoung 15y agoIt's unfortunate a few knuckleheads decided to "teach you a lesson." You can't please everyone. Thank you for wanting to contribute to the community and giving a gift to people who were not confident of their CVs and resumes. I'm sure you were able to help at least one person drastically change their CV for the better. Can you elaborate on your "edge" when you worked as a recruiter with a tech background?
- Peroni 15y agoKeep an eye out for future posts on what I think is drastically wrong with the recruitment industry. In a nutshell, I worked as a developer for a number of years and two key factors seem to have made a drastic difference: 1. Practical industry experience. I understand the full software development lifecycle. I know what it's like to work on boring, unchallenging projects and I like to think know what get's people excited about going to work in the morning. 2. I'm self-aware. I know our industry is universally hated by clients and candidates alike. I understand exactly why our industry has a terrible reputation and I actively conduct my business in the opposite manner to what you may have come to expect from recruiters. I don't 'key word match', money is not my primary focus, I don't try and shoe-horn candidates into roles that won't interest them and when it comes to clients I find out everything I need to know at the beginning and I try to be as unintrusive as physically possible throughout the process.
- rluhar 15y agoHaving worked with recruiters a few times, I would say you are most definitely an exception rather than the rule. Mostly it comes down to buzzword bingo. I had problems when trying to explain to a recruiter that we were looking for a junior Java developer, but they kept sending us CVs with people with 8-10 years experience. After all they had "Java" on their CV didn't they. Very frustrating. A recruiter who understands, and has true experience in the domain is invaluable. I wish you all the best!
- Peroni 15y agoThanks!
- michael_dorfman 15y agoI know this wasn't a pity post, and that you're not looking for an apology, but I just have to say, I'm a bit disappointed that some portion of the community interpreted took time out of their busy day to give you flack for an act of kindness, when you specifically set things up in a way to show that your intentions were altruistic. Your original post was classy, as was this follow-up. Well done, sir.
- martswite 15y agoA nice article. It's a shame that people misunderstood your intentions regardless of how clear you were. I'd say you deserve an apology. Just from reading this article my perceptions of recruiters has changed slightly, though I fear recruiters such as yourself are few and far between? Hope your start-up becomes what you want it to be. Good luck Peroni
- Peroni 15y agoThanks for the kind words. I agree that decent recruiters are few and far between however I think there is a lot that can be done to help change the industry. I will be following up with another post in a week or so outlining exactly what I believe are the issues with my industry and what steps need to be taken to change things.
- yxhuvud 15y agoLet me guess - it will involve a lot of recruiters not understanding (and in some cases, not wanting to understand) the businesses and needs of the companies they recruit for? Or in other words - they spend a lot of time recruiting people they don't have any clue of what they are good at, to jobs where they don't understand what the jobs involve.
- Peroni 15y agoPretty much spot on. There is a lot more to it than that but what you've just said is the fundamental issue.
- 44Aman 15y agoIt always amazes me how people will actually take time out of their day to personally abuse someone. Great response post and best of luck with your recruiting!
- Peroni 15y agoI agree and I was equally amazed by those who were offering to donate money to my paypal in exchange for what was a pretty run-of-the-mill offer of assistance.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoEvery community has idiots. The ones who emailed you can be easily dismissed as fools, but the guy who phoned your company went too far and owes you an apology and explanation. Stuff like that can seriously affect peoples lives and is totally unnecessary.
- patio11 15y agoI am sorry that members of the community treated you shabbily.
- Peroni 15y agoIt was an incredibly small minority and the positive feedback far outweighed the negative. I did feel the need to highlight the hate as I think it's pretty indicative of the automatic assumption that we are all selfish, money grabbing salesmen.
- d0m 15y agoLife is like that; minority ruins it all. Better to focus on the great feedback. Still, I'm surprised that HN users acted like that.. maybe there's something we don't know. But anyhow, I feel sorry for you as it was a great initiative. Good luck in your next startup :)
- praptak 15y agoHats off to you, OP for not having gotten discouraged by the hate. Rock on.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- thaumaturgy 15y ago1. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of anonymity is that it allows people to not be responsible for their actions. That's endemic to any anonymous forum; the only thing that varies is the level and amount of abuse. Anonymity has its advantages, but this is an inescapable disadvantage. 2. People's reading comprehension aren't perfect, or even all that great. People -- myself included -- often seem to miss points being made in discussions and subsequently leap to conclusions that are usually a result of some combination of their own mood, biases, and prejudices. 3. I personally don't see anything wrong with you doing recruiting work here -- so long as you advertise it clearly as such and make it entirely opt-in. i.e., there are monthly posts on HN for people looking for work (freelance and otherwise), and as long as you were clear and asked them ahead of time if they were interested, it shouldn't be a problem. That's just my take on it though, others here may have some strong aversion to recruiters or something. You do have a lot of value to offer here, you just have to be careful about that line between offering value and taking advantage -- just as everyone else does here.
- MattBearman 15y agoI think we can safely say it's a tiny minority of HN users that would respond in that manner. I'm glad to see you've come back to HN, and although you say you don't want an apology, I hope those responsible (especially the one who phoned your boss) do apologise to you. I'd like to say its a shame recruiters have such a bad rep, but 99% of the ones I've dealt with have been a lot more interested in getting their commission than getting me the right job. That said, I've met some genuinely awesome recruiters, and you seem like one of those, so keep fighting the good fight :)
- Peroni 15y agobut 99% of the ones I've dealt with have been a lot more interested in getting their commission than getting me the right job. There's the rub. The vast majority are only focused on how much money they can make from you and how quickly.
- trotsky 15y agoeven if we aren't one of the 'cool crowd' Funny what a difference a couple of decades makes. Saying something like that in 1991 about programmers would have been obvious, biting sarcasm.
- Peroni 15y agoFair point! It was sincere though. I have a massive amount of respect for the level of talent and creativity among the users of HN and I think it's about time you got the level of respect you deserve.
- donaq 15y agoPeople like you make HN worth visiting. Good luck with your startup!
- jsavimbi 15y agoNo good deed goes unpunished. Also, stop calling me; I'm not interested in working with Flash/Flex, servlets and C# on a Tcl app for a Fortune 500 company within 200 miles of my local area.
- jsavimbi 15y agowhy the downvotes? Do people not understand sarcasm?
- Peroni 15y agoI was thinking the same thing. I think people are being a bit protective of me on the back of my bad experience. If it's any consolation, I thought it was funny!
- jsavimbi 15y agoI wish I had an explanation for weird internets us/them/genocidal behavior. Thanks anyways.
- epochwolf 15y agoMy reason for down voting is it came across as mocking Peroni. I certainly understood it was sarcasm but I did not think it was funny. Edit: well, Peroni found it funny (didn't see his post when I replied.)
- jsavimbi 15y ago> No good deed goes unpunished. I never understood that to be a form of mockery, more of sympathy. So I looked it up and yes, I was apparently, and unintentionally, mocking Peroni. My apologies.
- alain94040 15y agoThe hate mail is weird. I made a similar offer two years ago (http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/05/13/being-a-new-cs-grad-in-this-economy-sucks/ http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/05/13/being-a-new-cs-grad-...), received a lot of resumes, and I can't remember receiving even one complaint.
- Peroni 15y agoI think the key difference is that I am a Tech Recruiter. Your own background is a lot more credible and there is no reason why anyone would assume that you would take advantage of the info you received.
- maxklein 15y agoThe problem with hate mail is that it's a lot more affecting than positive mail. The best way to deal with it is simply to smile and delete. Everyone is entitled to their opinion - but they are not entitled to change _your_ life.
- agilebyte 15y agoGreat post Steve! I guess much like some developers contribute to open source software projects, 1 recruiter wants to do the same in his field. Looking forward to meeting you on the next HN London meetup.
- roel_v 15y agoI think you're entirely within your right to post the abuser's email addresses / HN handles on your blog or elsewhere.
- Peroni 15y agoNo chance. That's one thing I love about HN. Even when you do encounter the odd troll, people here rise above it and don't play into their hands. The guy was an idiot, my boss at the time thought it was hilarious and he was only one person. He didn't mention his HN handle (most of the people who emailed me didn't) but hopefully he spots this post.
- roel_v 15y agoSure, and I guess it would be a net negative for you since most people would find it petty, but at some point someone needs to take a stand against idiots who think they can hide behind their keyboards and who feel they have the moral high ground and that that gives them the right to bully others into molding their behavior according to the bully's world view. (not saying you have some moral responsibility to be a crusader against internet bullies here, just that 'trolling' isn't funny anymore when people start calling other people's jobs and families and that we shouldn't just shrug it off and accept it as a normal thing on the internet)
- dennisgorelik 15y ago"Take a stand against idiots"? Really? It's better to ignore idiots.
- Mz 15y agoA friend of mine from another culture used to say 'The only good reply to stupid people is silence'.* I assume it was some saying from their culture. I really need to remember that more often. * I don't really like that framing but my memory is that is what he said. I would personally make that "The only good reply to stupid remarks is silence." or "The only good reply to stupidity is silence." We all do dumb stuff sometimes. It isn't necessarily proof that an individual is actually an idiot.
- bambax 15y agoAlthough I'm currently self-employed (and therefore neither trying to recruit or be recruited) I have dealt with recruiters before, both as a client and as a candidate. I don't think recruiters are hated by their clients; they offer a service: an expensive service that they usually don't do very well, but they're willing to work hard, they can be called at any time, filter as many hundreds or thousands of CVs as needed, so it's not all bad. The hate, I think, comes from the candidates. The reason is because recruiters treat candidates as meat, and it shows. It's not just a problem of domain expertise, it's a problem of human compassion. I read a study a while ago that showed that people don't sue incompetent doctors more than others, even when faced with complications; they sue doctors who they think don't care about them. Recruiters don't need PhDs, they need to be perceived as caring (and the most straight way to acheive that is to actually care).
- Peroni 15y agoRecruiters don't need PhDs, they need to be perceived as caring (and the most straight way to acheive that is to actually care). I agree although I do believe a lot of clients are jaded by their own experiences with poor recruiters. If I pick up the phone to speak to a candidate almost all will take my call and answer my questions however when I call a prospective client for the first time they are usually skeptical as some receive dozens of calls a day from recruiters all claiming to be the best in their respective field. The key is differentiating yourself from the herd. Hopefully this blog will play a small part in doing that eventually.
- bambax 15y ago> If I pick up the phone to speak to a candidate almost all will take my call and answer my questions Well, yes, candidates don't have much to lose by talking to a recruiter, and the potential reward is high; for a prospective client the potential reward to talk to yet another recruiter is low / nonexistent, since they're probably already in business with one, and one is enough? But that doesn't mean candidates like recruiters more than clients do; they have different incentives. (What you're trying to do is great, BTW).
- invalidOrTaken 15y ago
- Mz 15y agoI spent a lot of years being all helpful in public and had the living shit kicked out of me over it. So I spent a lot of time working on how to make peace with my internal wiring (where I am sincerely just a helpful person...and often wish I could gnaw my left arm off and escape this trap) and the kind of reactions that gets when acted on publicly. So this is my personal opinion about why this kind of thing, which you would think would be well received, typically goes over so very badly: When speaking in public, especially on the internet, you are speaking to a very diverse crowd. It is inevitable that some of the people "listening" will have serious personal issues: They had abusive childhoods, they were badly burned in some way by someone "like" you in some way, they got taken advantage of in some gruesome fashion by someone claiming to offer help, they are still suffering for it, they are currently in an abusive situation of some sort...etc. Any time someone as an individual offers publicly to personally do something for a bunch of total strangers, well, you can't equally "love" everyone. And some people have a very hard time accepting "love"/help...whatever you want to call it. I've worked hard at trying to put info on websites, instead of making public personal offers, in part to make it less personal. People can read it and see if it makes sense to them or not and it punches fewer of those buttons because it is more "information" and less "a person/personal favor". And someone will always be left out. You had to close the offer and only got to 80% of what was sent to you. The folks who didn't get something for free will feel (somewhat irrationally) kind of screwed over. You can't do that kind of thing for everyone. So it's best to handle things more discreetly. I try to not make "blanket" public offers I can't back up. There isn't enough time in the day to give away everything for free to every single individual in need. I try to find ways to make the world a better place without it being so personal, without it being so much about me helping lots of other people individually. Because one of the things I have found is that making a personal offer like that gets read by the crowd as "ego". People think I am attention-mongering or something and if someone else hasn't had enough ego strokes for the day or I am threatening to steal their thunder or something, watch out! There will be hell to pay. The people in the world who are in a lot of pain, so much pain they would piss on you to that degree, they need a lot more love and assistance than reading their resume is going to provide. And they basically feel like it's just not fair that others are getting what they need and they are not. I know that in part because I was an abused child and I spent a lot of years feeling angry and jealous and invisibly left out and so on. And it often struck me as cruel when other people would try to talk to me about things in a well meaning way but still could not/would not meet my needs. So if I can't genuinely help someone who is living with some kind of enormous suffering, I try hard to not step in it, to not say anything that will sound like rubbing their face in their suffering and all that they don't have. It's part of why I have left some of the health lists I have left: I got myself well and I share my story in hopes of helping others get well but it mostly gets rage and abuse heaped on me. I actually understand their emotional reaction: They are doomed to a cruel fate and my presence just makes them all the more painfully aware of how unfair it is. I still don't know how to resolve the situation. I don't feel right about withdrawing entirely and leaving them to their dire fate when I know it's possible to get healthier. But what I have been doing hasn't been terribly effective and seems to just rub salt in a very, very, very bad wound. Anyway, this is not about "me". I just tell my story as an example, because I am still compulsively helpful and public lynchings have yet to cure me of that. Peace.
- tomjen3 15y agoI understand why those persons send you that email (not that I agree with it). Wild guess only one or two of the CVs had the personal details removed? It would seem to be an excellent scam and since there are 80k visitors to HN, it isn't strange that a few tenths of a percent of the userbase should have encountered really unethical recruiters and be mad enough to do something about it. Just the way things are, I guess.
- Jgrubb 15y agoHelp me out, because I've never been in a position to be "recruited" for anything technical. What does an unethical recruiter do that ends up screwing over the recruited?
- Peroni 15y agoThere are a couple of options. I could phone your previous employers without your permission on the guise of taking a reference for you and use that opportunity to build credibility with the potential client. I could contact you and find out where you are currently interviewing and approach those companies with stronger candidates.
- psykotic 15y agoThose are fortunately pretty rare behaviors. They call for a degree of sociopathy rather than merely buffoonish incompetence. An unfortunately common story I hear from acquaintances who have used recruiters in my industry is that many recruiters will use a shotgun approach and feed lines of bullshit to prospective employee and employer alike. The recruiter might take your resume, massage it to hit all the right notes for a wide range of listed positions, and then submit it. That will probably garner a few phone interviews and on-site visits at the very least. Once the candidate gets on the phone or on site, he and the people he's interviewing with will soon realize he's being tested for an entirely inappropriate position for his skill set. Not only is this a waste of time for everyone involved, but it permanently damages the candidate's reputation with that company and the people involved in the interviewing.
- 15y ago
- mgkimsal 15y ago@peroni - this is a little offtopic, but hopefully not too much, and I'd like your opinion. Many other creative disciplines offer agents/managers/handlers for the 'creative' - think sports players, writers, actors, bands, etc. I've been wondering if a model like this would work in the tech industry for developers. I'm not sure developers would go for it, since many tend to have a 'DIY' attitude about everything. What I see in the agent model is that someone follows you and your career for the long haul, and finds you work that helps advance your careers (gets you better parts in projects, better gigs for the band, etc). I've never met a recruiter that has kept in touch with me for more than a month or so after a successful placement. They're only working for the employer, because that's who pays them. Would developers be willing to fork over 10% of their pay to an agent who negotiated better pay and benefits for them, helped get better gigs, etc? As attractive as this model sounds on paper, I'm wondering if this has a snowball's chance of working. Thoughts? Oh, and thanks for your offer to the group, even if it was abused by a few people. I do this occasionally for members of our local php user group, and it's fun to help people understand how to promote themselves more positively. :) Never done it on the scale you did, and can't imagine the time/effort involved!
- bradfa 15y agoOr could a high quality recruiter just start doing this with a small number of select, high quality, recent clients? (developers are the clients in this case) Starting from the ground up with no clients and trying to build a client base on this model would be difficult. If you can't show results, I'm not going to give you 10% (or any other percentage), mostly because so far I've been DIYing it and doing decent. But if I already had a "relationship" with a recruiter, maybe one who's actually good at technical placement and they found something good for me along with offering to be a long term career guide / mentor / agent, I'd be interested in listening to them much more than if someone just calls me out of the blue. And if the pay was more than I get now, even with the 10% cut taken out, and involved interesting projects, that would get my attention. I think the long term career guide and mentoring part would have to be a big part of it. I know my skills but I don't necessarily know who out there wants them, maybe there's people out there who need my skills but also don't know it. The agent comes into play here and matches up two people who don't know they really need each other in order to make great things. This takes a lot of work on the part of the agent. If you have this business model, managing 10 to 20 developers and taking 10% cut of salary, that's enough to make a nice living on and you'd have time to be personal with all of them.
- skimbrel 15y agoWow. I'm no huge fan of recruiters, but I'd also never send anonymous hate mail to one. Sorry you had to deal with that, and I'm glad you're making the effort to stick around on HN. If I can ask one question, though: Why do some recruiters seem keen on ignoring the phrase "I'm not interested in new opportunities at this time"? I have set my LinkedIn profile to say this, and it's the first thing out of my mouth when I get cold-called, but there are some who are not stopped by it. It'd go a long way in my view if recruiters would simply take it at face value when I tell them I'm not interested at the moment.
- Peroni 15y agoNo one pays any attention to your preferences on Linkedin. Every recruiter believes that the job they have for you is better than the one you've got. Few believe that you are 100% happy with your current career choice. That doesn't make it right or true, it's simply the way they work.
- skimbrel 15y agoThat's sad. I'd like to be treated as a person, not a "resource", and the zeroth step in that is respecting my wishes. When I want to make a career change, I will make said desire known. Is there anything I can start saying to recruiters that could plant the seed of this idea in their minds? I know it's hard and that I have to compete with a $25,000 fee, but everyone has to start somewhere.
- Peroni 15y agoThe only thing I can think of is trying to make it a bit more obvious on your likedin profile that you are not interested in hearing about new roles. That is one of the many issues with the recruitment industry, you could launch a national advertising campaign highlighting the fact that you DO NOT want a new job & I will bet good money you will still get recruiters calling you.
- Alan01252 15y agoI was one of the few guys who missed out. :( If you do ever get round to it, it would be greatly appreciated still. I also appreciate this follow up post, I looked a couple of times at the previous user name and realised you'd stopped commenting. It did make me think at the time maybe it was a (rather elaborate)scam to harvest C.V's after all. I'm glad to know I was well and truly wrong.
- Peroni 15y agoMy email is in my profile. Send the CV on and I'll look at it immediately.
- edw519 15y agoHow I deal with recruiters: If they need understanding of the technology, I will gladly help them with that. If they need understanding the domain knowledge, I will gladly help them with that. If they need understanding of interpersonal, organizational, or "soft" issues, I will gladly help them with that. If they want referrals, I will usually do what I can. If they don't call back or follow up, I will eliminate them. If they are ever dishonest in any way, shape, or form, I will eliminate them and tell everyone I know. For a recruiter, brutal honesty can overcome any perceived weakness and enable others (even us hackers) to be on their side. Steve, thanks for your brutal honesty here at hn. That's the best we could hope for and should be a model for any other recruiters lurking here. Respect.
- Peroni 15y agoThanks Ed. As for the points you mentioned, you nailed it.
- dolinsky 15y agoI think that honesty is a two-way street, especially in this scenario, and too many developers wind up holding a recruiter over a fire for what the developer perceives as a dishonest/snake oil salesman approach when they themselves are often inflating the truth either on their resume or when talking about previous accomplishments (I was guilty of this early in my career as well). Now I do my part to be honest, and I look for the same in any recruiter I come across. I'll echo Ed's sentiment in saying thanks and it's nice to read about recruiters who have a passion for the industry and the people in it and not just a passion for making the sale.
- clistctrl 15y agoSo true, there's a lot of bad recruiters out there. However the few I know to be good, I try to keep a good relationship with.
- shailesh 15y agoI'm sorry to learn that you're were treated in a rather indecent manner by some; hopefully the immature response of those folks doesn't deter your noble initiative.
- Valien 15y agoGood post. I spent 3 years in the Tech Recruiting industry. Did sales, recruiting for both direct-hire and contract. There are a lot of bad apples out there because it's a low-barrier career. But solid recruiters are a gem and take care of their candidates. Most good recruiters make more money than most developers out there and know their industry well. There are those that are idiots and don't know jack about IT (I'm an IT guy so I did well and understood candidates and clients). Reason I got out of it was that my passion is in IT so I got back into that world. Now I get to listen to shoddy recruiters calling me and I usually laugh at them... :D So ignore the bad candidates and focus on the good ones. They are the ones that will put food on your table.
- lsc 15y agoA low barrier career? really? It's different from developing, certainly, and different even from hiring people to work for you. But, as far as I can tell, it's quite difficult to actually get set up as a paid recruiter. I've gotten quite a few people jobs. Hell, I've gotten people who worked for me jobs elsewhere, and never once have I gotten a dime out of the deal.
- scdc 15y agoYou were smart to tell your boss ahead of time.
- shrikant 15y agoWelp, I might've accidentally down-voted you when meaning to upvote. As I have no way of telling, apologies if that happened!
- ajennings 15y agoThanks for coming back! If there were any "common themes" in the resumes you reviewed or if you have any general advice for the HN crowd regarding resumes, I would love to hear them.
- Peroni 15y agoGood idea. Rather than post my advice here and have it lost in the noise I will write a new post over the next day or two pointing out exactly what you suggested, common themes, common mistakes, general advice, etc. Great shout.
- josefresco 15y agoHonestly the one takeaway I got from this is that there are roughly 45 active HNers that I absolutely do not want to interact with. While I know Peroni will never share those email addresses (he's much to polite) I somehow wish we could see which users are that rude/psycho to send this guy hate mail and stalk him (albeit online with the exception of the one nutcase who called his boss)
- Peroni 15y agoI'm pretty confident that a lot of them were lurkers. The grammar and general literacy levels seemed to be well below your typical HN standard. ;)
- xxjaba 15y agoBeing the son of a recruiter and a software developer myself I've had the pleasure of meeting many good recruiters and many bad ones. I've noticed that the key differentiator between the two is that good recruiters understand how to build solid relationships with people that are based on trust, honesty, and integrity with mutual financial gain being necessary but not the foundation of the relationship. Bad recruiters build relationships based on mutual financial gain and little else. In the short term the bad recruiters often come out on top since treating people as numbers leads to higher short-term throughput, but long term the solid relationships are what will make a recruiter a success. They are what lead to referrals both from managers and candidates, allow bad news to be communicated without hesitation or undue stress (as honesty is a basis of the relationship), and best of all move with the recruiter as they change firms and grow as a professional. I very much look forward to seeing your post about how being a software developer gives you an edge over your peers in the recruiting industry.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Uchikoma 15y ago341 * 20 * 0.8 = 5456 minutes of reading CVs. Looks like a lot of work.
- Uchikoma 15y ago341 * 20 * 0.8 = 5456 minutes. Looks like a lot of work.
- run4yourlives 15y agoA couple of things struck me about this post. First, the hate mail. I'm happy that you're taking it in stride, but personally, I think all of the hate mail senders should be outed and their accounts removed from HackerNews. (Yes, I know they can just make a new one.) This community shouldn't tolerate this type of bullying - which is exactly what this is - and resetting karma to zero and forcing people to own up to their actions in public is the type of response I'd think appropriate. Second, given the response, there is clearly a huge demand here. Perhaps a business opportunity is worth exploring in this context? People are clearly not getting the feedback they need from existing services. I wonder if there is some sort of "pay per submission" service that could be linked to reputation to facilitate CV/resume reviews... like linked in without the recruiters. Obviously needs more thought but there's definitely something there given the interest you received.
- GrooveStomp 15y agoI completely agree. Hacker News is supposed to be an open, intelligent community and we really shouldn't tolerate that kind of bullying. It's amazing how some people react to acts of public good.