4 ms·

Urgh the whole recruiter-hate thing is so boring. Get off your high horse and realise that some people are just trying to make a living - posting a relevant ad

by retube 15y ago

Urgh the whole recruiter-hate thing is so boring. Get off your high horse and realise that some people are just trying to make a living - posting a relevant ad to a mailing list occasionally is hardly the crime of the century. Re his 3 points: - A recruiter is never going to reveal the employer name as this risks them getting cut out of the loop - So what if a recruiter is trying to make money? Believe it or not line managers are trying to make money too. They wouldn't employ you if they weren't getting a postive ROI. - This _was_ a MongoDB ad, not Erlang or whatever. Provided a post like this is occasional and relevant, I really don't see the issue. It could really help someone land a great job too.

zalew 15y ago
The problem is not the existence of recruiters but spammy flavor of their posts and online profiles.
Peroni 15y ago
Get off your high horse and realise that some people are just trying to make a living The HN High Horse is pretty justified to be fair. Most recruiters haven't the first clue about the technology they recruit for and the amount of underhanded and often illegal tactics recruiters engage in warrants most of the hate they receive. Yes there are decent recruiters but they are a very rare breed and the decent ones generally know they are decent and consider themselves to be miles apart from the general stereotype and don't get offended by the hate. Shameless Plug: Have a look at my blog linked in my profile for more info on why recruiters are universally hated.
- retube 15y ago
  I was making no reference, good or bad, to recruiters in general. I was referring to this particular example in isolation. To me that mailing list post seemed inoffensive and relevant. Assuming it's occasional, what's the problem? What the author is doing is worse. He's using this minor indiscretion (if it's even that) to jump on the recruiter-bashing band wagon and churn out a blog post and get himself a bit of traffic.
  - Peroni 15y ago
    I think the issue is that the ad is so vague that it could, and probably is, simply a fishing attempt to find candidates and generate leads. There is nothing in the ad to give you any form of confidence in the legitimacy or existence of a job. No mention of industry, the type of project involved, ideal experience required, etc. They are simply looking for 'MongoDB' people. It's more of a waste of time and space than anything else. EDIT: For the record, I'm not the one downvoting your posts!
    - retube 15y ago
      OK Fortune1000 and 115k is not a huge amount of info, but it's fairly definitive nonetheless. Of course it _could_ be fishing, but that's kind of my point: because it's a recruiter everyone assumes the worst. > I'm not downvoting your posts Yeah sure, any opinion that diverges from the HN hivemind is gonna get dv'd in oblivion.
  - dblock 15y ago
    You're reading too much between the lines. Quote from the post: "Please note that I don’t think recruiters are evil. They provide valuable services to both companies and candidates. But good recruiting takes hard work, time and social skills building relationships over a long period of time – something that justifies a 25% ticket from your year’s salary upon hire. In contrast, what’s the definition of sending an e-mail to 800 people because you have their e-mail address and think they are in your target demographic? Spam."
    - notahacker 15y ago
      In fairness this is an unusually well targeted email - assuming there's a real job they've effectively alerted 800 people in a relatively small niche to its existence in a relatively inoffensive way (you'd rather they did it the hard work way by bothering you at meetups and calling you to see if you're ready to ditch your startup yet? Really?). The ratio of people that might actually be interested in the job to people who wasted approximately 2 seconds parsing the email is quite high. Now I start laughing when recruiters match me with CS graduate jobs which match up with me on their database because they're in the same part of the country as the university I went to, four years ago, in a completely different subject area...
- retube 15y ago
  They're not universally hated. I don't hate them for a start, and i've used recruiters as employee and employer. Like estate agents, you're SUPPOSED to hate them, and sadly it seems, most people won't think for themselves or draw their own conclusions based on the their own personal experiences.
chrisbennet 15y ago
It's not about a recruiter making a living, it's about putting signs for his business on someone elses "front yard" (the mongodb list). ["But your front yard has such great visibility, surely you don't mind if I put my signs on it?"]
nicholasjbs 15y ago
A recruiter is never going to reveal the employer name as this risks them getting cut out of the loop We (Hackruiter, YC S10) are fully transparent about the companies we work with and it's never been a problem.
dblock 15y ago
When you don't reveal the company name you tend to look like this guy: http://www.meetup.com/New-York-MongoDB-User-Group/messages/22580472/ http://www.meetup.com/New-York-MongoDB-User-Group/messages/2... - maybe do some A/B testing and see whether you get better candidates or not.

by retube 15y ago

zalew 15y ago

The problem is not the existence of recruiters but spammy flavor of their posts and online profiles.

Peroni 15y ago

Get off your high horse and realise that some people are just trying to make a living The HN High Horse is pretty justified to be fair. Most recruiters haven't the first clue about the technology they recruit for and the amount of underhanded and often illegal tactics recruiters engage in warrants most of the hate they receive. Yes there are decent recruiters but they are a very rare breed and the decent ones generally know they are decent and consider themselves to be miles apart from the general stereotype and don't get offended by the hate. Shameless Plug: Have a look at my blog linked in my profile for more info on why recruiters are universally hated.

retube 15y ago
I was making no reference, good or bad, to recruiters in general. I was referring to this particular example in isolation. To me that mailing list post seemed inoffensive and relevant. Assuming it's occasional, what's the problem? What the author is doing is worse. He's using this minor indiscretion (if it's even that) to jump on the recruiter-bashing band wagon and churn out a blog post and get himself a bit of traffic.
- Peroni 15y ago
  I think the issue is that the ad is so vague that it could, and probably is, simply a fishing attempt to find candidates and generate leads. There is nothing in the ad to give you any form of confidence in the legitimacy or existence of a job. No mention of industry, the type of project involved, ideal experience required, etc. They are simply looking for 'MongoDB' people. It's more of a waste of time and space than anything else. EDIT: For the record, I'm not the one downvoting your posts!
  - retube 15y ago
    OK Fortune1000 and 115k is not a huge amount of info, but it's fairly definitive nonetheless. Of course it _could_ be fishing, but that's kind of my point: because it's a recruiter everyone assumes the worst. > I'm not downvoting your posts Yeah sure, any opinion that diverges from the HN hivemind is gonna get dv'd in oblivion.
- dblock 15y ago
  You're reading too much between the lines. Quote from the post: "Please note that I don’t think recruiters are evil. They provide valuable services to both companies and candidates. But good recruiting takes hard work, time and social skills building relationships over a long period of time – something that justifies a 25% ticket from your year’s salary upon hire. In contrast, what’s the definition of sending an e-mail to 800 people because you have their e-mail address and think they are in your target demographic? Spam."
  - notahacker 15y ago
    In fairness this is an unusually well targeted email - assuming there's a real job they've effectively alerted 800 people in a relatively small niche to its existence in a relatively inoffensive way (you'd rather they did it the hard work way by bothering you at meetups and calling you to see if you're ready to ditch your startup yet? Really?). The ratio of people that might actually be interested in the job to people who wasted approximately 2 seconds parsing the email is quite high. Now I start laughing when recruiters match me with CS graduate jobs which match up with me on their database because they're in the same part of the country as the university I went to, four years ago, in a completely different subject area...
retube 15y ago
They're not universally hated. I don't hate them for a start, and i've used recruiters as employee and employer. Like estate agents, you're SUPPOSED to hate them, and sadly it seems, most people won't think for themselves or draw their own conclusions based on the their own personal experiences.

chrisbennet 15y ago

It's not about a recruiter making a living, it's about putting signs for his business on someone elses "front yard" (the mongodb list). ["But your front yard has such great visibility, surely you don't mind if I put my signs on it?"]

nicholasjbs 15y ago

A recruiter is never going to reveal the employer name as this risks them getting cut out of the loop We (Hackruiter, YC S10) are fully transparent about the companies we work with and it's never been a problem.

dblock 15y ago

When you don't reveal the company name you tend to look like this guy: http://www.meetup.com/New-York-MongoDB-User-Group/messages/22580472/ http://www.meetup.com/New-York-MongoDB-User-Group/messages/2... - maybe do some A/B testing and see whether you get better candidates or not.