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One angle on the idea of disrupting the industry; It seems like a lot of programmers would be in a good position to do recruiting on the side for a few hours a

One angle on the idea of disrupting the industry; It seems like a lot of programmers would be in a good position to do recruiting on the side for a few hours a week. They already know a lot of other people in the field. And they obviously are able to recognize technical skills and filter people. Could a startup make a setup where anyone can sign up and become a part time recruiter? Maybe you set up a real recruiting company to handle the paper work and billing, and let programmers sign on to be your staff. Then give them a big cut of any fees they make. Anyone interested in helping me flush out this idea? It might be a viable startup, no?

tocomment 14y ago
Another twist on this is that many big companies will pay their employees say a free ipod if they recruit someone to join the company, but will pay a recruiter 20K or more. That never seemed fair to me. I wonder if a twist on this is that the employee can refer his friend to the recruiter and then go to his employer and say I have a friend perfect for this job. He's represented by recruiter X. Then recruiter X splits the fee with the employee.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  They don't want to pay enough that it distracts too much from people doing what they were really hired for.
- fecak 14y ago
  That always seemed a bit odd to me as well, though I had a client a few years ago that had a points system where different referrals had points value (director = 10, sr engineer = 7, etc.) which they could use to get cars, cash, etc. It seemed to work well but didn't distract employees.
- YokoZar 14y ago
  One possible (but not great) excuse is that there is a perverse incentive going on if the employee has any say over potential hires. If I get 20k every time one of my friends gets hired (and "lose" 20k each time a normal candidate gets hired) I have a huge incentive to not give a fully honest opinion about how good someone was during an interview. Big companies can use their size as a workaround (ie, only let you refer candidates to other departments), but in startup land this incentive will probably be very real.
Peroni 14y ago
Short answer: it's not viable. There are laws and liabilities to consider. Also, recruiters are essentially sales people. They need to have a degree of sales ability. You need to be able to sell the benefits of a job to a candidate and the benefits of a candidate to a hiring manager. Also, decent recruiters spend a huge amount of time on the phone. Not just calling every and any candidate that looks remotely decent but simply trying to get through to a select few people takes a crazy amount of time.
antonwinter 14y ago
hard to say if the ctos/dev managers would "elevate" a potential candidate if the recruiter was a programmer, or if the cv would be in the pile with the rest of them.

tocomment 14y ago

Another twist on this is that many big companies will pay their employees say a free ipod if they recruit someone to join the company, but will pay a recruiter 20K or more. That never seemed fair to me. I wonder if a twist on this is that the employee can refer his friend to the recruiter and then go to his employer and say I have a friend perfect for this job. He's represented by recruiter X. Then recruiter X splits the fee with the employee.

dllthomas 14y ago
They don't want to pay enough that it distracts too much from people doing what they were really hired for.
fecak 14y ago
That always seemed a bit odd to me as well, though I had a client a few years ago that had a points system where different referrals had points value (director = 10, sr engineer = 7, etc.) which they could use to get cars, cash, etc. It seemed to work well but didn't distract employees.
YokoZar 14y ago
One possible (but not great) excuse is that there is a perverse incentive going on if the employee has any say over potential hires. If I get 20k every time one of my friends gets hired (and "lose" 20k each time a normal candidate gets hired) I have a huge incentive to not give a fully honest opinion about how good someone was during an interview. Big companies can use their size as a workaround (ie, only let you refer candidates to other departments), but in startup land this incentive will probably be very real.

Peroni 14y ago

Short answer: it's not viable. There are laws and liabilities to consider. Also, recruiters are essentially sales people. They need to have a degree of sales ability. You need to be able to sell the benefits of a job to a candidate and the benefits of a candidate to a hiring manager. Also, decent recruiters spend a huge amount of time on the phone. Not just calling every and any candidate that looks remotely decent but simply trying to get through to a select few people takes a crazy amount of time.

antonwinter 14y ago

hard to say if the ctos/dev managers would "elevate" a potential candidate if the recruiter was a programmer, or if the cv would be in the pile with the rest of them.