4 ms·

Hacker Fair in Mountain View: Recruiters outnumber job-seekers

41 points by citizenkeys 15y ago

TorKlingberg 15y ago
The key sentence here: "recruiters made the rounds to stations occupied by a candidate, each of whom was required to have created a project they could demonstrate to show off their software, hardware or other technical skills."
- maeon3 15y ago
  I'd ask the recruiters for their resume, tell them some lame sentence about what I'm all about, then tell them to visit my website with a deliberately painful user interface that reminds them of how desperate they really are. 'Supply and demand' meets 'power corrupts'.
  - noonespecial 15y ago
    I sense a tremor in the force. Its as if the probability wave in Randall's head collapsed from a thousand cartoons into one Xkcd.
  - euroclydon 15y ago
    Why? What could that possibly demonstrate except that you're vindictive and put such little value on your time that you're willing to go to a recruiting event just to pay back the wrong person for some perceived way you've been wronged.
    - maeon3 15y ago
      Sometimes I go out of my way to make Karma real for individuals who push negative energy into the universe. I was out of work for longer than I wanted last year, and I found exactly zero recruiters who treated me like a human being. I was treated as a number. You can't blame them, because of supply and demand meet power corrupts. What goes around comes around.
      - endtime 15y ago
        Spitefulness is generally not a good strategy.
      - nbm 15y ago
        Were these company recruiters, or third-party recruiters? I've never really had any luck with third-party recruiters - they don't seem to have an interest in understanding you and your skills, assuming they even understand those skills. My experience with Facebook's recruiting team has been amazing, though. August last year I was approached by a technical recruiter at Facebook because I attended Velocity. I was initially quite skeptical about the entire thing (I'm from South Africa, needed a H-1B, needed my partner to get a visa as well) as well as generally jaded due to burn-out. She kept on my case, roping in lawyers and so forth to answer my more detailed questions about the work visa situation. Another recruiter was involved in the final prep, on-site interview, offer, and acceptance, and then through all the visa paperwork (and boy do I hate paperwork!), up till the first day at work. And then they didn't disappear - they've been keeping in contact with me, meeting at lunch every few weeks, seeing how I'm settling in, whether I want to stay where I am in the company, and introducing me to people. And I've now worked with them twice at recruiting events - at Velocity and Hacker Fair. So, I hope you encounter recruiters who make you feel like a human being, and who care as much about doing a good job as you do, because they are out there.
        rdl 15y ago
        Palantir, FB, and Quora all have top-notch internal recruiters - it's one of their big differentiators. A bunch of other top-tier startups have their top, productive execs handle most high-profile recruiting (Keith Rabois at Square, ...) Most startups have the founders handle recruiting, except for the mechanical details of HR compliance and scheduling. Recruiting is probably the #1 task of a startup founder on an ongoing basis; sales being #2, and product work being #3.
        bluehat 15y ago
        We did not permit any 3rd party recruiters to register for the fair. Companies had to prove that they were hiring and while equity was permitted they had to prove they were able to pay a living wage in addition to the equity package. Most of this was done by checking on their website, and for the small places generally lurking around Crunchbase etc.
vessenes 15y ago
As a counterpoint, I just hired a personal assistant in Seattle. I had 140 resume submissions in four days. You can read about my takeaways on G+: https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749/posts/L4bzKXxCE2a https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749/posts/L4bzKXxC... In brief, though, there is a significant disparity in the US job markets. I'm not sure how it's going to get sorted.
- Luyt 15y ago
  This grabbed my attention: Peter Vessenes: "I received one impressively long 14 point lavender comic sans missive which made me want to meet the person, but only in a public place." David O'Neill: "On that score, Comic Sans for editing code might be amusing..." Actually, it is. I do this since years. Not in lavender, but dull grays and subdued colors... http://www.michielovertoom.com/incoming/comic-sans-python.jpg http://www.michielovertoom.com/incoming/comic-sans-python.jp...
kordless 15y ago
I went to this and I can tell you there were far more than 24 candidates that didn't show up. In the first room alone, there were more empty positions than there were filled ones. It was so bad, at one point as I was working on modifying candidate short list (over 75% weren't there) I got asked if I was a candidate myself! As a result of the no-shows, the recruiter to candidate ratio was probably 5 to 1, which caused lines to form around the existing job-seekers. The space was hardly big enough as it was - I can't imagine what we would have done if all the candidates showed up too. I think the event was was a good experiment, but frankly for the price it wasn't worth my time to attend. I'd much rather see a speed-dating format. That way everyone gets to talk to each other and you work around the issue of having more recruiters than candidates.
- bluehat 15y ago
  Hey, I co-organized this event, so the actual statistics were that out of 97 registered candidates under 10 dropped of their own accord and there were 40 no-shows. There were approximately 50 companies attending. While the ratio was not great, and the fact that most companies sent at least two people made the odds of humans bizarre, a 1:1 ratio is not what we hoped for but not 5:1. At the last fair we got about 2:1 candidates to recruiters, which was closer to what we were hoping for. At the next fair we plan to take $20 deposits which can be refunded by either attending the fair or giving 48 hours warning that you are dropping out. At this fair we actually had to stop accepting candidates because we had so many that we were running out of room and worried the ratio would go too far the other way.

41 points by citizenkeys 15y ago

The key sentence here: "recruiters made the rounds to stations occupied by a candidate, each of whom was required to have created a project they could demonstrate to show off their software, hardware or other technical skills."

maeon3 15y ago
I'd ask the recruiters for their resume, tell them some lame sentence about what I'm all about, then tell them to visit my website with a deliberately painful user interface that reminds them of how desperate they really are. 'Supply and demand' meets 'power corrupts'.
- noonespecial 15y ago
  I sense a tremor in the force. Its as if the probability wave in Randall's head collapsed from a thousand cartoons into one Xkcd.
- euroclydon 15y ago
  Why? What could that possibly demonstrate except that you're vindictive and put such little value on your time that you're willing to go to a recruiting event just to pay back the wrong person for some perceived way you've been wronged.
  - maeon3 15y ago
    Sometimes I go out of my way to make Karma real for individuals who push negative energy into the universe. I was out of work for longer than I wanted last year, and I found exactly zero recruiters who treated me like a human being. I was treated as a number. You can't blame them, because of supply and demand meet power corrupts. What goes around comes around.
    - endtime 15y ago
      Spitefulness is generally not a good strategy.
    - nbm 15y ago
      Were these company recruiters, or third-party recruiters? I've never really had any luck with third-party recruiters - they don't seem to have an interest in understanding you and your skills, assuming they even understand those skills. My experience with Facebook's recruiting team has been amazing, though. August last year I was approached by a technical recruiter at Facebook because I attended Velocity. I was initially quite skeptical about the entire thing (I'm from South Africa, needed a H-1B, needed my partner to get a visa as well) as well as generally jaded due to burn-out. She kept on my case, roping in lawyers and so forth to answer my more detailed questions about the work visa situation. Another recruiter was involved in the final prep, on-site interview, offer, and acceptance, and then through all the visa paperwork (and boy do I hate paperwork!), up till the first day at work. And then they didn't disappear - they've been keeping in contact with me, meeting at lunch every few weeks, seeing how I'm settling in, whether I want to stay where I am in the company, and introducing me to people. And I've now worked with them twice at recruiting events - at Velocity and Hacker Fair. So, I hope you encounter recruiters who make you feel like a human being, and who care as much about doing a good job as you do, because they are out there.
      - rdl 15y ago
        Palantir, FB, and Quora all have top-notch internal recruiters - it's one of their big differentiators. A bunch of other top-tier startups have their top, productive execs handle most high-profile recruiting (Keith Rabois at Square, ...) Most startups have the founders handle recruiting, except for the mechanical details of HR compliance and scheduling. Recruiting is probably the #1 task of a startup founder on an ongoing basis; sales being #2, and product work being #3.
      - bluehat 15y ago
        We did not permit any 3rd party recruiters to register for the fair. Companies had to prove that they were hiring and while equity was permitted they had to prove they were able to pay a living wage in addition to the equity package. Most of this was done by checking on their website, and for the small places generally lurking around Crunchbase etc.

vessenes 15y ago

As a counterpoint, I just hired a personal assistant in Seattle. I had 140 resume submissions in four days. You can read about my takeaways on G+: https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749/posts/L4bzKXxCE2a https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749/posts/L4bzKXxC... In brief, though, there is a significant disparity in the US job markets. I'm not sure how it's going to get sorted.

Luyt 15y ago
This grabbed my attention: Peter Vessenes: "I received one impressively long 14 point lavender comic sans missive which made me want to meet the person, but only in a public place." David O'Neill: "On that score, Comic Sans for editing code might be amusing..." Actually, it is. I do this since years. Not in lavender, but dull grays and subdued colors... http://www.michielovertoom.com/incoming/comic-sans-python.jpg http://www.michielovertoom.com/incoming/comic-sans-python.jp...

kordless 15y ago

I went to this and I can tell you there were far more than 24 candidates that didn't show up. In the first room alone, there were more empty positions than there were filled ones. It was so bad, at one point as I was working on modifying candidate short list (over 75% weren't there) I got asked if I was a candidate myself! As a result of the no-shows, the recruiter to candidate ratio was probably 5 to 1, which caused lines to form around the existing job-seekers. The space was hardly big enough as it was - I can't imagine what we would have done if all the candidates showed up too. I think the event was was a good experiment, but frankly for the price it wasn't worth my time to attend. I'd much rather see a speed-dating format. That way everyone gets to talk to each other and you work around the issue of having more recruiters than candidates.

bluehat 15y ago
Hey, I co-organized this event, so the actual statistics were that out of 97 registered candidates under 10 dropped of their own accord and there were 40 no-shows. There were approximately 50 companies attending. While the ratio was not great, and the fact that most companies sent at least two people made the odds of humans bizarre, a 1:1 ratio is not what we hoped for but not 5:1. At the last fair we got about 2:1 candidates to recruiters, which was closer to what we were hoping for. At the next fair we plan to take $20 deposits which can be refunded by either attending the fair or giving 48 hours warning that you are dropping out. At this fair we actually had to stop accepting candidates because we had so many that we were running out of room and worried the ratio would go too far the other way.