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IT recruiters, in their own words
- Uchikoma 15y agoI only know one excellent one, one where I could hire all developers unseen from.
- jarofgreen 15y agoCurious what you think makes them excellent - for example, do they do the process differently in any way?
- veyron 15y agoI think that IT recruiters who are more technical in nature (ie were former IT employees) attract more competent IT people and know which candidates are relevant to employers. As a result, the experience from the employer is much more pleasant.
- Uchikoma 15y agoNo, all the others either a.) send PHP developers for Java positions or vice versa b.) try to sell you mediocre developers as top notch c.) send you profiles that do not match at all. a+b+c often means, recruiters are worse than the developers that just send you a resume. Excellent are those that only send you resumes that do fit and represent excellent developers. I think the process is the same, the results are different.
- wccrawford 15y agoCost: There's more to it than just the filtering and introduction. Agencies we've worked with have had a guarantee clause. If the person quits within 90 days, the recruiting company pays their salary. If they quit after 90 days, the hiring company pays them. This gives companies a way to soften the blow of bad recruits, at the cost of higher fees to the recruiter. It's insurance.
- CodeMage 15y agoJust out of curiosity, what happens if the person is fired, instead of quitting?
- wccrawford 15y agoI'm pretty sure it's the same deal... But I could see how that could cause an integrity issue. Generally, a company wastes enough time and money training a person that firing and hiring every 89 days wouldn't be worth it.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoYou're paying for the recruiter's database of programmers. I get calls from recruiters who first contacted me 5 years ago, from time to time. That database is invaluable in most cities, where programmers are more sparse than in the west coast. If you have to rely only on people who are applying or putting their resume on Monster, CareerBuilder, etc. it can take a long time to find someone competent (I've seen it first hand). But recruiters have no problem calling up people they've placed as recently as a year ago.
- gaius 15y agoHeh, I spoke to a recruiter recently who was concerned that I had no Unix experience. What it has on my CV is about 15 years of Solaris and Linux...
- golgo13 15y agoI got a call from one guy that said I didn't have enough TSQL for a particular role. Never mind the 6 years of SQL Server...
- wslh 15y agoThe future is dangerous! looking forward advanced recruiters could begin to use API from sites like StackOverflow to retrieve developers with high reputation. Yesterday I just wrote a small post about it since I needed to recruit people for my company around my location (Buenos Aires, Argentina). If you're interested for a responsible use :-) http://blog.databigbang.com/converting-excel-cells-to-hyperlinks-google-page-rank-didnt-catch-this-1st/ http://blog.databigbang.com/converting-excel-cells-to-hyperl...
- gaius 15y agoSO already does that, inviting high-rep individuals to Careers 2.0.
- wslh 15y agoThe point is that the Armageddon will come with a zillion of recruiters using web mashups. They don't need invitations.
- benmac 15y agoThat service (reputations from SO, Github, LinkedIn etc) is available: http://strictlydev.com/ http://strictlydev.com/
- tobych 15y agoSo when recruiters contact me (Python, Seattle or telecommuting), what might I ask them to find out whether it's worth my time? I guess first I'd want to know all the things recruiters are influenced by or tend to do that I don't like, and see what I can ask them that would suggest they're less likely to do those things than most. o Do you get paid a flat-rate? o What's the difference between Unix and Linux? o ...