6 ms·

Flipping the Script on Recruiters

75 points by markhenderson 12y ago

cheriot 12y ago
This would be an interesting twist on a job board. After reaching critical mass, charge recruiters to see the updates. They get a pool of people they already qualified when they're actually looking and developers get more control over the process.
- jkochis 12y ago
  Wow. Charging someone to help you find a job. Now that's really flipping the script!
  - cheriot 12y ago
    I was thinking that the job board would get all of the money, but revenue sharing with the developers would be even more interesting! The amounts paid to external recruiters in this industry are insane...
    - organsnyder 12y ago
      Aren't you basically describing a (better) LinkedIn?
jkochis 12y ago
I like this. I know that recruiters are something a lot of us have to deal with, and most of the time they are an annoyance. This approach sounds like it could save a lot of wasted time for both of us. That said, I realize I don't know much about the business of being a recruiter, and I wonder what their perspective might be.
- markhenderson 12y ago
  Yeah. I would actually love to hear their point of view on this. Surely they don't like cold calling and emailing all day but also there might be a lot we don't know about as the talent.
zedpm 12y ago
This is an interesting approach that I might adopt, if only because my ordinary interactions with recruiters have been so wretched. It can hardly be worse than my results thus far. The behavior of recruiters is puzzling to me. I've repeatedly been contacted by recruiters who want to talk to me about opportunities at X (where X has been Amazon, Google, and a few others). I've responded to these and then received no further contact from the recruiter. They go to the trouble of making a pitch to me and then disappear when their pitch is well-received. My only guess is that they're operating like a telemarketer, spamming the message out to some large number of people to ensure they get a few responses and ignoring any extras. Just last week a Google recruiter contacted me and gave me a link to his calendar to schedule an appointment. I made the appointment and he no-showed. He later contacted me and said he'd spent the day at a conference he received a last-minute invite to attend. I'm just astounded that these folks treat people with such contempt, given that it reflects poorly on them and the business they're associated with.
- jkochis 12y ago
  Some are worse than others, but that guy sounds particularly bad.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - walshemj 12y ago
    seems to be the spec recruiters that the big SV players use. I have only had 2 bad experiences with recruiters one was just a dick about salary disclosure (whom I fired and put his agency on my personal black list) and one totally misrepresented me to the client. Having your recruiters behave badly doesn't really help the company brand.
    - kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
      I really hate the guys that insist on "getting a number" right off the bat before they'll even consider opening the door for you. Then there's the ones who offer "benefits" so you should be perfectly happy with $40/hr. Most of them don't even have a direct line to the hiring manager and are slaves to the fickle ATSs. There's no point in talking money if there is no chance of ever having a technical discussion with a human being in the company. When I point this out I often get the apologetic spiel about how they understand but that's the way this company works. It just tells me that this company is only willing to offer 50th percentile pay for 50th percentile workers while demanding a 90th percentile skillset. A bullet I'm happy to dodge.
copsarebastards 12y ago
All the independent recruiters in my area have an autoresponder set up in my GMail that tells them politely that I don't work with their kind because the incentive structure of their business creates quantity of matches over quality. I'm happy to receive interest from recruiters who work for the companies they're recruiting for, though.
nfriedly 12y ago
I started just replying with a "No thanks, but I'll hang onto your info in case anything changes or I come across anyone else who's looking", and then I add their email to a "recruiters" contact list in Gmail. I now have close to 300 folks split between internal/external/vc. I haven't needed to use the list yet, but I have shared it with one or two friends who were interested in changing jobs.
- markhenderson 12y ago
  That's great! I like the stats that an email vendor provides. :)
ottertown 12y ago
There seems to be in this thread (and on HN in general) a lack of empathy for the recruiter. Here's my perspective on (internal) recruiters as someone who sits next to them at an office: 1. Recruiters tend to be really nice people. 2. All day long they talk about prospects with other recruiters almost as if they were talking about potential romantic partners. Except replace any discussion of your physical characteristics with your intellectual / linkedin characteristics. It would be weird if it weren't their job. 3. If a recruiter sends you an InMail, if you reply back (no matter what the response) it helps them as each unanswered InMail costs them money (they don't get to reuse it). 4. Their job is really hard (especially for finding developers), and they are under a ton of pressure, especially when a company is growing, to build head count. Investors really value head count growth heading into a Series B / Series C round of funding. So, consequently, I would recommend that devs cut recruiters some slack. Be grateful we live in a time where our greatest annoyance is someone contacting us with a job opportunity. It wasn't always like this and it probably won't be forever.
- markhenderson 12y ago
  Thank you for this response. I fully admit that I don't see the recruiter side of things. There isn't a lot of discussion about the trade, or craft, or whatever you want to call it and I think there should be. I will certainly reply to every InMail that I get now. It is my hope that methods and conversations like this can make the field better for everybody.
  - jghn 12y ago
    I respond to InMails where it is clear the recruiter actually took the time to read my profile and had a valid reason to believe there might be a match. Knowing now that unanswered InMails cost them money, I'm doubling down on my stance to not answer InMails from recruiters who are spamming and/or clearly didn't bother to take the time to see if I really would be a good match or if they just matched a couple of buzzwords and hit send.
- pronoiac 12y ago
  Isn't the dislike for external recruiters? They can be wildly variable in quality - spamming by keywords, regardless of geographic areas. And the good ones may overprepare, asking questions that the company won't. Edit: oh yeah. Sudden radio silence. Adding bogus resume tidbits. Posting bogus jobs, just to pump their contact numbers in the database. I see a lot more bad external recruiters than good.
GBKS 12y ago
I like the proactive approach. Just yesterday, I went to an IXDA breakfast event and some recruiters showed up. Some people were just annoyed by their presence, but I thought it was a good opportunity to talk. They were pretty new to the industry, so I gave them pointers about how supporting the community by sponsoring events, organizing talks at companies they are hiring for, telling better stories about the companies they are hiring for, etc could get them better results than the usual cold-emailing. I just think that if you don't like how they are doing things, give them pointers. Won't work everywhere, but sometimes it will, and that will be worth it.
mocko 12y ago
For an illustration of just how dishonest, lazy and rude IT recruiters can be check out http://shit-it-recruiters-say.tumblr.com/ http://shit-it-recruiters-say.tumblr.com/. Yes, at least in the UK they really are that bad.
snambi 12y ago
Nice idea.

75 points by markhenderson 12y ago

This would be an interesting twist on a job board. After reaching critical mass, charge recruiters to see the updates. They get a pool of people they already qualified when they're actually looking and developers get more control over the process.

jkochis 12y ago
Wow. Charging someone to help you find a job. Now that's really flipping the script!
- cheriot 12y ago
  I was thinking that the job board would get all of the money, but revenue sharing with the developers would be even more interesting! The amounts paid to external recruiters in this industry are insane...
  - organsnyder 12y ago
    Aren't you basically describing a (better) LinkedIn?

jkochis 12y ago

I like this. I know that recruiters are something a lot of us have to deal with, and most of the time they are an annoyance. This approach sounds like it could save a lot of wasted time for both of us. That said, I realize I don't know much about the business of being a recruiter, and I wonder what their perspective might be.

markhenderson 12y ago
Yeah. I would actually love to hear their point of view on this. Surely they don't like cold calling and emailing all day but also there might be a lot we don't know about as the talent.

zedpm 12y ago

This is an interesting approach that I might adopt, if only because my ordinary interactions with recruiters have been so wretched. It can hardly be worse than my results thus far. The behavior of recruiters is puzzling to me. I've repeatedly been contacted by recruiters who want to talk to me about opportunities at X (where X has been Amazon, Google, and a few others). I've responded to these and then received no further contact from the recruiter. They go to the trouble of making a pitch to me and then disappear when their pitch is well-received. My only guess is that they're operating like a telemarketer, spamming the message out to some large number of people to ensure they get a few responses and ignoring any extras. Just last week a Google recruiter contacted me and gave me a link to his calendar to schedule an appointment. I made the appointment and he no-showed. He later contacted me and said he'd spent the day at a conference he received a last-minute invite to attend. I'm just astounded that these folks treat people with such contempt, given that it reflects poorly on them and the business they're associated with.

jkochis 12y ago
Some are worse than others, but that guy sounds particularly bad.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- walshemj 12y ago
  seems to be the spec recruiters that the big SV players use. I have only had 2 bad experiences with recruiters one was just a dick about salary disclosure (whom I fired and put his agency on my personal black list) and one totally misrepresented me to the client. Having your recruiters behave badly doesn't really help the company brand.
  - kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
    I really hate the guys that insist on "getting a number" right off the bat before they'll even consider opening the door for you. Then there's the ones who offer "benefits" so you should be perfectly happy with $40/hr. Most of them don't even have a direct line to the hiring manager and are slaves to the fickle ATSs. There's no point in talking money if there is no chance of ever having a technical discussion with a human being in the company. When I point this out I often get the apologetic spiel about how they understand but that's the way this company works. It just tells me that this company is only willing to offer 50th percentile pay for 50th percentile workers while demanding a 90th percentile skillset. A bullet I'm happy to dodge.

copsarebastards 12y ago

All the independent recruiters in my area have an autoresponder set up in my GMail that tells them politely that I don't work with their kind because the incentive structure of their business creates quantity of matches over quality. I'm happy to receive interest from recruiters who work for the companies they're recruiting for, though.

nfriedly 12y ago

I started just replying with a "No thanks, but I'll hang onto your info in case anything changes or I come across anyone else who's looking", and then I add their email to a "recruiters" contact list in Gmail. I now have close to 300 folks split between internal/external/vc. I haven't needed to use the list yet, but I have shared it with one or two friends who were interested in changing jobs.

markhenderson 12y ago
That's great! I like the stats that an email vendor provides. :)

ottertown 12y ago

There seems to be in this thread (and on HN in general) a lack of empathy for the recruiter. Here's my perspective on (internal) recruiters as someone who sits next to them at an office: 1. Recruiters tend to be really nice people. 2. All day long they talk about prospects with other recruiters almost as if they were talking about potential romantic partners. Except replace any discussion of your physical characteristics with your intellectual / linkedin characteristics. It would be weird if it weren't their job. 3. If a recruiter sends you an InMail, if you reply back (no matter what the response) it helps them as each unanswered InMail costs them money (they don't get to reuse it). 4. Their job is really hard (especially for finding developers), and they are under a ton of pressure, especially when a company is growing, to build head count. Investors really value head count growth heading into a Series B / Series C round of funding. So, consequently, I would recommend that devs cut recruiters some slack. Be grateful we live in a time where our greatest annoyance is someone contacting us with a job opportunity. It wasn't always like this and it probably won't be forever.

markhenderson 12y ago
Thank you for this response. I fully admit that I don't see the recruiter side of things. There isn't a lot of discussion about the trade, or craft, or whatever you want to call it and I think there should be. I will certainly reply to every InMail that I get now. It is my hope that methods and conversations like this can make the field better for everybody.
- jghn 12y ago
  I respond to InMails where it is clear the recruiter actually took the time to read my profile and had a valid reason to believe there might be a match. Knowing now that unanswered InMails cost them money, I'm doubling down on my stance to not answer InMails from recruiters who are spamming and/or clearly didn't bother to take the time to see if I really would be a good match or if they just matched a couple of buzzwords and hit send.
pronoiac 12y ago
Isn't the dislike for external recruiters? They can be wildly variable in quality - spamming by keywords, regardless of geographic areas. And the good ones may overprepare, asking questions that the company won't. Edit: oh yeah. Sudden radio silence. Adding bogus resume tidbits. Posting bogus jobs, just to pump their contact numbers in the database. I see a lot more bad external recruiters than good.

GBKS 12y ago

I like the proactive approach. Just yesterday, I went to an IXDA breakfast event and some recruiters showed up. Some people were just annoyed by their presence, but I thought it was a good opportunity to talk. They were pretty new to the industry, so I gave them pointers about how supporting the community by sponsoring events, organizing talks at companies they are hiring for, telling better stories about the companies they are hiring for, etc could get them better results than the usual cold-emailing. I just think that if you don't like how they are doing things, give them pointers. Won't work everywhere, but sometimes it will, and that will be worth it.

mocko 12y ago

For an illustration of just how dishonest, lazy and rude IT recruiters can be check out http://shit-it-recruiters-say.tumblr.com/ http://shit-it-recruiters-say.tumblr.com/. Yes, at least in the UK they really are that bad.

snambi 12y ago

Nice idea.