6 ms·

I need to write a post to discuss this at greater depth, but... I am fucking astonished at how inept most recruiters are. I mean, just awful and useless at the

I need to write a post to discuss this at greater depth, but... I am fucking astonished at how inept most recruiters are. I mean, just awful and useless at their "jobs." If we concede the point that, especially in the Valley, technical talent is in high demand, it stands to reason that any overture to such talent needs to be persuasive, informative and intriguing. It should explain the role in reasonable detail, while making a sane case for how cool the company and opportunity will be. Ideally, it should demonstrate that the recruiter has a basic understanding of a given prospect's skills and career trajectory. Super bonus points if it doesn't seem like a form letter. Instead, what I get is stuff like "Hey, I'm looking for developers for a role I'm filling. You need to be this, this, and this. Oh, and this is a plus. Mmkay, lemme know!" Well. Congratulations? Hey, I have a job. And it doesn't involve proving to a random recruiter that I'm skilled at it. And from such pitches, how would I know that I'd even care? I know nothing about the company and only have the vaguest notion of what I'd be wanted for. Recruiters are a waste of time, though mostly their own. A founder out being social has a much better chance, I think, at successfully recruiting limited talent. Not that they have time, I know. And don't get me started on the pitch that opened with "I'm looking for some iOS studs!" I had a friend at the company they were pitching. They weren't impressed when they heard about this one, especially since they had no formal relationship with the bozo.

dpritchett 15y ago
Maybe you're not looking, but don't you have some iOS dev friends who are less comfortable in their current positions? I take unsolicited recruitment approaches with a grain of salt, but I make an honest effort to go through my mental Rolodex to see if there's anyone I know who might benefit from making the connection. When I respond to a cold call it's either politely or not at all. Just tracking the volume and content of these approaches is valuable information that I can use to better manage my own career in the years ahead, not to mention the goodwill I can engender by making the occasional introduction.
- danilocampos 15y ago
  > don't you have some iOS dev friends who are less comfortable in their current positions? Gave this some thought for awhile. But no. Everyone I know worth their salt in iOS has solid gigs – way better than a lot of the turds recruiters are offering, anyway.
- angelbob 15y ago
  Sure, but do you really want to point this guy at your friends? Your friends could easily find really awesome jobs. How you can you tell what's an awesome job? Well, for starters they don't need desperate huckster/telemarketers to shill for them, by and large.
brador 15y ago
If they had the skill set they'd be using it. Think "Those who can't, teach". Similar concept with recruiters. They're salespeople, not talent.
- yuhong 15y ago
  After reading Peroni's articles, I am thinking that recruiting firms need to hire great and talented recruiters instead of using incentives.
  - Peroni 15y ago
    The ultimate issue here is that demand for recruiters (in London at least) far outweighs the talent pool so companies choose to hire decent sales people and mould them into recruiters. Due to the sales culture involved, monetary incentives are the only thing decent recruiters are interested in. If you find a talented and successful recruiter I can guarantee they are earning close to six figures a year (some earn a lot more than £100k) and should they put their own CV on the market they would have dozens of companies throwing ridiculous money at them to get them to come work for them.
    - yuhong 15y ago
      Of course, moulding technical people into recruiters would be much better.
- TDL 15y ago
  Salespeople can certainly be talent, even recruiters. Too many in sales fields are transactionally oriented as opposed to building long term relationships (which are easier & less costly to sell to.) Regards, TDL
arethuza 15y ago
I had one idiot who kept phoning me about a "great position" with an investment bank that offered less money, a lot less holidays, a lot more pressure (which I interpreted as being required to be available 24x7) and less interesting work than what I currently do. I kept asking him why I should be interested in such a role, of course, he couldn't tell me. The sheer desperation in his voice was almost enjoyable.
- fennecfoxen 15y ago
  I have one idiot who made me an offer which might have been somewhat realistic: it was at a networking company, doing C++ for APs/controllers (5 years experience wanted). I told him something like "sorry, no, I'm just leaving that field (and that city) for a little startup, I was more of an NMS guy anyway, and I wasn't using C++ - you could do a better job of convincing me that you understand my background and skill-set; I see you even are advertising for NMS positions on your company's site." I also allude to his company's competence using abstruse engineering language: "I've worked with your products before, and already faced some of these 'unique challenges' you promise." Three months later he contacts me about the same C++ positions, with the same language. After me telling him exactly how to do his job. This time I was a little more explicit, and asked him to keep contacting me so I could make fun of him and his company to my engineering buddies. :P Probably a bridge burned, but one I'll never use, and I don' t make a habit of this.
  - hkmurakami 15y ago
    "you could do a better job of convincing me that you understand my background and skill-set; I see you even are advertising for NMS positions on your company's site." I had a similar experience, and because I had multiple people from their office call me about different positions in the same time period, I became convinced that recruiters are just allotted a concrete list of positions that _they_ are responsible for. (think of it like randomly handing out a different list of target customers to each member of your sales team) Even if you aren't a good fit for a given position, they'll call you about that position and not the one you're a better fit for, because well, it's not _their_ job to fill the other role.
adestefan 15y ago
I think you underestimate the number of people that are inept at their job in every field.
- hga 15y ago
  We've certainly talked enough about that, especially in the context of tests like FizzBuzz. It's my personal observation from back in the mid-late '90s when I was last involved in recruiting that at least half of the people who call themselves programmers can't program their way out of a wet paper bag. Note that this is before we even ask the question "are they very good at programming?"....
dabent 15y ago
I've worked with third-party recruiters for many jobs I had while contracting. The pitch you mentioned can work, but only in the high-turnover world of contract consulting for big companies. This is NOT going to work for startups, or anything even close. Contract programmers often switch jobs once a year. That's driven my duration limits set by companies, layoffs and the wanderlust that contractors often have. Big companies don't seem to want to be bothered with in-house recruiters, so they pay third-party companies to do the work. In the midst of that shuffle, a job requirement is handed from a hiring manager (who may not know how to code) to a company HR rep (who may edit it) to the recruiter. What you end up with looks like this: Req: JAVA Developer REQUIRED: - 5-7 Years Java Experience - 3-5 Years J2EE Experience - 1 Year JDBC - 3-5 Years Oracle - MUST HAVE WEBLOGIC 10.3.5 PLUSSES: - C/C++ - Perl Of course, this may or may not have anything to do with what the job actually requires. They may have a taped-together C/C++ and Perl system they're trying to move to JEE/Weblogic They probably haven't really ordered (or gotten approval for) Weblogic, but it's what all the other companies seem to use. So, the recruiter goes around spamming folks, and manages to find someone who's just hit their 12-month limit at BigCo and is open to find another position. The recruiter gets paid, the contractor may or may not like the position (but gets paid, anyway), and the hiring manager gets bagels brought in, courtesy of the recruiter's firm. Everyone wins, so to speak. That's why the cycle persists. I'm describing this as someone who played that game successfully for many years. To someone who's working in startup circles it may seem like madness, and it would be if applied to startups. But it's how Fortune 500 companies, for better or worse, find talent. To put it in startup terms, the third-party recruiter model seems to work well for companies who've found their business model and need people to execute it. For companies who are in a race to iterate and find a product-market fit, it's the kiss of death. Skip the free bagels, delete the emails and find people on your own or with internal recruiters who really know your company well.
- dos1 15y ago
  That is so accurate I wish I could upvote you more.
- danilocampos 15y ago
  I don't have anything more to contribute but I want to make a point of saying thanks for helping me understand this so clearly.
robeastham 15y ago
I'm thinking about adding a follow feature and a map based directory to http://mightycv.com http://mightycv.com soon. It might make the service a bit more useful for those looking for good hackers to work with and hopefully help put a nail in the coffin of traditional recruiters - at least the bad ones anyway. I'm hoping that if MightyCV becomes a popular place for hackers to create and home their resumes then it might allow people to bypass recruiters completely on occasion. It's early days, but if you're interested in what a MightyCV looks like then take a look at mine: http://robeastham.mightycv.com http://robeastham.mightycv.com Hope you like the look of it, if so then feel free to sign up for the private beta on the main homepage.
gaius 15y ago
I have to give a counterpoint, I recently had a great recruiter experience. The company had given him a spec of the person they wanted (someone who had been both a developer and a DBA on 24/7 trading systems), he went out and found me, made a convincing case as to why my career ambitions could be better fulfilled at his client, managed the whole process, negotiated me a great package, and I start there next week. Absolutely professional from start to finish, he's as good as his job as I am at mine. These guys are worth their weight in gold - but I'll admit, they are rarer than hen's teeth.

dpritchett 15y ago

Maybe you're not looking, but don't you have some iOS dev friends who are less comfortable in their current positions? I take unsolicited recruitment approaches with a grain of salt, but I make an honest effort to go through my mental Rolodex to see if there's anyone I know who might benefit from making the connection. When I respond to a cold call it's either politely or not at all. Just tracking the volume and content of these approaches is valuable information that I can use to better manage my own career in the years ahead, not to mention the goodwill I can engender by making the occasional introduction.

danilocampos 15y ago
> don't you have some iOS dev friends who are less comfortable in their current positions? Gave this some thought for awhile. But no. Everyone I know worth their salt in iOS has solid gigs – way better than a lot of the turds recruiters are offering, anyway.
angelbob 15y ago
Sure, but do you really want to point this guy at your friends? Your friends could easily find really awesome jobs. How you can you tell what's an awesome job? Well, for starters they don't need desperate huckster/telemarketers to shill for them, by and large.

brador 15y ago

If they had the skill set they'd be using it. Think "Those who can't, teach". Similar concept with recruiters. They're salespeople, not talent.

yuhong 15y ago
After reading Peroni's articles, I am thinking that recruiting firms need to hire great and talented recruiters instead of using incentives.
- Peroni 15y ago
  The ultimate issue here is that demand for recruiters (in London at least) far outweighs the talent pool so companies choose to hire decent sales people and mould them into recruiters. Due to the sales culture involved, monetary incentives are the only thing decent recruiters are interested in. If you find a talented and successful recruiter I can guarantee they are earning close to six figures a year (some earn a lot more than £100k) and should they put their own CV on the market they would have dozens of companies throwing ridiculous money at them to get them to come work for them.
  - yuhong 15y ago
    Of course, moulding technical people into recruiters would be much better.
TDL 15y ago
Salespeople can certainly be talent, even recruiters. Too many in sales fields are transactionally oriented as opposed to building long term relationships (which are easier & less costly to sell to.) Regards, TDL

arethuza 15y ago

I had one idiot who kept phoning me about a "great position" with an investment bank that offered less money, a lot less holidays, a lot more pressure (which I interpreted as being required to be available 24x7) and less interesting work than what I currently do. I kept asking him why I should be interested in such a role, of course, he couldn't tell me. The sheer desperation in his voice was almost enjoyable.

fennecfoxen 15y ago
I have one idiot who made me an offer which might have been somewhat realistic: it was at a networking company, doing C++ for APs/controllers (5 years experience wanted). I told him something like "sorry, no, I'm just leaving that field (and that city) for a little startup, I was more of an NMS guy anyway, and I wasn't using C++ - you could do a better job of convincing me that you understand my background and skill-set; I see you even are advertising for NMS positions on your company's site." I also allude to his company's competence using abstruse engineering language: "I've worked with your products before, and already faced some of these 'unique challenges' you promise." Three months later he contacts me about the same C++ positions, with the same language. After me telling him exactly how to do his job. This time I was a little more explicit, and asked him to keep contacting me so I could make fun of him and his company to my engineering buddies. :P Probably a bridge burned, but one I'll never use, and I don' t make a habit of this.
- hkmurakami 15y ago
  "you could do a better job of convincing me that you understand my background and skill-set; I see you even are advertising for NMS positions on your company's site." I had a similar experience, and because I had multiple people from their office call me about different positions in the same time period, I became convinced that recruiters are just allotted a concrete list of positions that _they_ are responsible for. (think of it like randomly handing out a different list of target customers to each member of your sales team) Even if you aren't a good fit for a given position, they'll call you about that position and not the one you're a better fit for, because well, it's not _their_ job to fill the other role.

adestefan 15y ago

I think you underestimate the number of people that are inept at their job in every field.

hga 15y ago
We've certainly talked enough about that, especially in the context of tests like FizzBuzz. It's my personal observation from back in the mid-late '90s when I was last involved in recruiting that at least half of the people who call themselves programmers can't program their way out of a wet paper bag. Note that this is before we even ask the question "are they very good at programming?"....

dabent 15y ago

I've worked with third-party recruiters for many jobs I had while contracting. The pitch you mentioned can work, but only in the high-turnover world of contract consulting for big companies. This is NOT going to work for startups, or anything even close. Contract programmers often switch jobs once a year. That's driven my duration limits set by companies, layoffs and the wanderlust that contractors often have. Big companies don't seem to want to be bothered with in-house recruiters, so they pay third-party companies to do the work. In the midst of that shuffle, a job requirement is handed from a hiring manager (who may not know how to code) to a company HR rep (who may edit it) to the recruiter. What you end up with looks like this: Req: JAVA Developer REQUIRED: - 5-7 Years Java Experience - 3-5 Years J2EE Experience - 1 Year JDBC - 3-5 Years Oracle - MUST HAVE WEBLOGIC 10.3.5 PLUSSES: - C/C++ - Perl Of course, this may or may not have anything to do with what the job actually requires. They may have a taped-together C/C++ and Perl system they're trying to move to JEE/Weblogic They probably haven't really ordered (or gotten approval for) Weblogic, but it's what all the other companies seem to use. So, the recruiter goes around spamming folks, and manages to find someone who's just hit their 12-month limit at BigCo and is open to find another position. The recruiter gets paid, the contractor may or may not like the position (but gets paid, anyway), and the hiring manager gets bagels brought in, courtesy of the recruiter's firm. Everyone wins, so to speak. That's why the cycle persists. I'm describing this as someone who played that game successfully for many years. To someone who's working in startup circles it may seem like madness, and it would be if applied to startups. But it's how Fortune 500 companies, for better or worse, find talent. To put it in startup terms, the third-party recruiter model seems to work well for companies who've found their business model and need people to execute it. For companies who are in a race to iterate and find a product-market fit, it's the kiss of death. Skip the free bagels, delete the emails and find people on your own or with internal recruiters who really know your company well.

dos1 15y ago
That is so accurate I wish I could upvote you more.
danilocampos 15y ago
I don't have anything more to contribute but I want to make a point of saying thanks for helping me understand this so clearly.

robeastham 15y ago

I'm thinking about adding a follow feature and a map based directory to http://mightycv.com http://mightycv.com soon. It might make the service a bit more useful for those looking for good hackers to work with and hopefully help put a nail in the coffin of traditional recruiters - at least the bad ones anyway. I'm hoping that if MightyCV becomes a popular place for hackers to create and home their resumes then it might allow people to bypass recruiters completely on occasion. It's early days, but if you're interested in what a MightyCV looks like then take a look at mine: http://robeastham.mightycv.com http://robeastham.mightycv.com Hope you like the look of it, if so then feel free to sign up for the private beta on the main homepage.

gaius 15y ago

I have to give a counterpoint, I recently had a great recruiter experience. The company had given him a spec of the person they wanted (someone who had been both a developer and a DBA on 24/7 trading systems), he went out and found me, made a convincing case as to why my career ambitions could be better fulfilled at his client, managed the whole process, negotiated me a great package, and I start there next week. Absolutely professional from start to finish, he's as good as his job as I am at mine. These guys are worth their weight in gold - but I'll admit, they are rarer than hen's teeth.