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> immature state of the US agency > recruitment market compared to Europe You really have no idea about mature recruitment markets. The UK recruitment indu

> immature state of the US agency > recruitment market compared to Europe You really have no idea about mature recruitment markets. The UK recruitment industry you represent needs to be replaced with a number of short Bash scripts, so that people like you (yes, you) will lose their jobs and suffer. The sooner it will happen, the better for everyone. I'm a Russian living in London and always mention Russian recruitment industry as an example of smoothly-functioning market with most inefficiencies resolved in a way you would expect in a modern economy. In short, agencies in Russia only deal with hiring top-level execs, equivalent to someone on £200K+ salary in the UK (i.e. less than 0.1% of the country's labour force). The rest is handled directly by companies directly through two of the largest websites -- job.ru and hh.ru (it actually feels weird to describe this on a forum that talks about disrupting something all the time!) The traffic on those websites is enormous, the number of applicants for any vacancy is much higher than any recruiter I used in the UK ever brought in. It costs the company a fraction of recruiter costs; it shows the applicant the company name immediately so he or she can do their own due diligence without listening to things like "top-tier investment bank" that you and your colleagues have invented. It's better for everyone. Compared to that, UK recruitment looks like car boot sale compared to eBay. Best companies like Yandex normally also advertise on their websites with few questions dropped into a vacancy to filter out non-qualified people (see, for example http://company.yandex.com/general_info/jobs/develop_cpp.xml http://company.yandex.com/general_info/jobs/develop_cpp.xml). Now, please, tell me about the added value recruiters in the UK bring anyone.

_random_ 12y ago
Yes, unfortunately in London either: 1) recruiter effectively steals a percent of your starting salary; 2) company is so cheap they cannot afford a recruiter; 3) big tech companies are paying extremely low in comparison to the primary sector - finance (and the most interesting stuff will still be developed in USA).
- walshemj 12y ago
  re 1 Its illegal for recruiters to charge the employee in the UK re 3 is mainly related to the poor social standing of STEM employees in the UK
  - ropiku 12y ago
    I think by "effectively" he means the company will pay the employee less to compensate for the recruitment fee, not that the employee is directly charged.
    - vinceguidry 12y ago
      Recruiters only make sense in an environment where labor supply is short. Potential employees are not going to accept lower salaries simply because the recruiter's client has a recruitment fee to pay on top of it. So the client ends up paying both.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      If you get employed directly you don't get paid any more do you - sounds like the OP is young and doesn't understand how the world works - or more negatively is not suited for a professional role ie what can I scam out of my employer no mater what
- peteretep 12y ago
  > 1) recruiter effectively steals a percent of your > starting salary This is absolutely true for contractors, and absolutely not true for permanent staff. I have only lengthy experience to back this up, rather than anything I can link you to, but: * For a contractor, companies budget a maximum amount to spend per day. How that gets cut between the recruiter and the contractor, they don't care about. If you're going through a recruiter, you could be charging the employing company exactly what they're being charged by the recruiter, and pocketing £70-£120/day difference. * For permanent staff, it's accounted very differently. Companies large enough to have people employed in an HR capacity will treat recruiter fees and salary very differently. Salaries will normally have an upper-band, the salaries of other employees and future employees will need to be taken in to account, the precedent set will need to be taken in to account, generally payroll and hiring costs are accounted for differently, and so on. A three-person company will see it all as cost, but a larger company will treat the recruiter fee and the salary as completely different. Additionally, it's in the recruiter's interest to get you the best salary they can, as they take a percentage from the employer. They will know the limit the employer will pay, and will try and get you the best salary they think the employer will go for; generally they are far better negotiators than developers!
  - _random_ 12y ago
    "better negotiators than developers" - well in my experience they are always trying to "tempt" with a mere £5k boost and never going for the top bracket offered. It is in their interest to play it safe.
walshemj 12y ago
Because the job market is completely different in developed countries no offence meant but former warsaw pact countries are in no way the same as the UK/USA It looks Russian companies do more in house recruiting and employ FTE to do this where as in the developed world this is out sourced to a large extent it doesn't make sense to have full time staff recruiting unless you are the size of Ford or Google
walshemj 12y ago
The values add is you can reduce the size and of your hr team
peteretep 12y ago
In reverse order... > please, tell me about the added value recruiters in the UK bring anyone Sure. Firstly, the last 5 candidates I've placed were not looking for jobs. Each was in a role where they were slightly unhappy, but inertia was keeping them put. Having chatted to them, I was able to find them roles they enjoyed more, with a significant pay rise. You could see this as introducing liquidity to the market. A job-board would not have found them. Secondly, of the last job ads I've posted to job-boards, fully 50% of the applicants came from a single non-European company, and the applicants had no right to work in the UK. Of the remaining 50%, almost all were totally unqualified by CV alone. Of the handful who were qualified, a very quick technical chat on the phone weeded out approximately half again. Then the ones whose salary expectations were out of line with the hiring company needed filtering out too. When you're in a position to actually hire people, you'll get a feel for how time-consuming it can be to hire a single role. When you have 5 to fill, it can become a full-time job. Thirdly, as an immigrant to the UK (welcome!), you'll be well-acquainted with the foibles of the UK immigration system. Candidate A's wife is on a Tier II inter-company transfer visa, and he wants to get a role; does the hiring company need to be on the UK BA list or can you just hire him? What if it's a subsidiary company of a larger company that is on the UK BA list, but it doesn't have its own registration? Is the candidate worth pursuing? What if the candidate applied for ILR four weeks ago? Is it safe to make him a job offer? Fourthly, as you point out, the UK job-board market is not centralised, and it's not a monopoly. Where should you post a Python job? LinkedIn? Monster? CV Library? Twitter? Reed? Jobsite? Facebook? Jobserve? Any number of the scammy Python-specific job-boards? As a direct employer, your media cost is £200 a pop. Filling out each form take half an hour. Each of these systems has a different way to get the candidates and format them. As a recruiter, however, I'm using a multi-poster, and I'm paying ~£10 for the media cost, and I have the time and motivation to post the job to a wide-range of channels, but I also have a pretty good feel for where my return on investment will be. Fifthly: What's a reasonable salary for a Ruby developer in London? What if you need them hired in the next four weeks, urgently? What about a contractor? You've probably got a gut feeling, but look, all the job ads show a range, and not an actual salary. How much would you pay for a superstar? How much for a junior? Are you paying more or less than the competition? Two types of people have access to salary data across the industry: HR people, who aren't allowed to share it, and recruiters, who share it as part of their value-add. There are sixthly, seventhly, eighthly and ninthly here, but who reads long comments anyway? > Russian recruitment industry as an example of smoothly- > functioning market ... through two of the largest > websites So, to summarize, the Russian way is better because there is a duopoly in the job-board market, rather than meaningful competition. I can't tell if you're making a very clever ironic comment on economic centralization and its effects on the Russian economy, or you're just not thinking through the implications of what you write... > that people like you (yes, you) will lose their jobs and > suffer You should consider re-reading the HN guidelines.

_random_ 12y ago

Yes, unfortunately in London either: 1) recruiter effectively steals a percent of your starting salary; 2) company is so cheap they cannot afford a recruiter; 3) big tech companies are paying extremely low in comparison to the primary sector - finance (and the most interesting stuff will still be developed in USA).

walshemj 12y ago
re 1 Its illegal for recruiters to charge the employee in the UK re 3 is mainly related to the poor social standing of STEM employees in the UK
- ropiku 12y ago
  I think by "effectively" he means the company will pay the employee less to compensate for the recruitment fee, not that the employee is directly charged.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    Recruiters only make sense in an environment where labor supply is short. Potential employees are not going to accept lower salaries simply because the recruiter's client has a recruitment fee to pay on top of it. So the client ends up paying both.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    If you get employed directly you don't get paid any more do you - sounds like the OP is young and doesn't understand how the world works - or more negatively is not suited for a professional role ie what can I scam out of my employer no mater what
peteretep 12y ago
> 1) recruiter effectively steals a percent of your > starting salary This is absolutely true for contractors, and absolutely not true for permanent staff. I have only lengthy experience to back this up, rather than anything I can link you to, but: * For a contractor, companies budget a maximum amount to spend per day. How that gets cut between the recruiter and the contractor, they don't care about. If you're going through a recruiter, you could be charging the employing company exactly what they're being charged by the recruiter, and pocketing £70-£120/day difference. * For permanent staff, it's accounted very differently. Companies large enough to have people employed in an HR capacity will treat recruiter fees and salary very differently. Salaries will normally have an upper-band, the salaries of other employees and future employees will need to be taken in to account, the precedent set will need to be taken in to account, generally payroll and hiring costs are accounted for differently, and so on. A three-person company will see it all as cost, but a larger company will treat the recruiter fee and the salary as completely different. Additionally, it's in the recruiter's interest to get you the best salary they can, as they take a percentage from the employer. They will know the limit the employer will pay, and will try and get you the best salary they think the employer will go for; generally they are far better negotiators than developers!
- _random_ 12y ago
  "better negotiators than developers" - well in my experience they are always trying to "tempt" with a mere £5k boost and never going for the top bracket offered. It is in their interest to play it safe.

walshemj 12y ago

Because the job market is completely different in developed countries no offence meant but former warsaw pact countries are in no way the same as the UK/USA It looks Russian companies do more in house recruiting and employ FTE to do this where as in the developed world this is out sourced to a large extent it doesn't make sense to have full time staff recruiting unless you are the size of Ford or Google

walshemj 12y ago

The values add is you can reduce the size and of your hr team

peteretep 12y ago

In reverse order... > please, tell me about the added value recruiters in the UK bring anyone Sure. Firstly, the last 5 candidates I've placed were not looking for jobs. Each was in a role where they were slightly unhappy, but inertia was keeping them put. Having chatted to them, I was able to find them roles they enjoyed more, with a significant pay rise. You could see this as introducing liquidity to the market. A job-board would not have found them. Secondly, of the last job ads I've posted to job-boards, fully 50% of the applicants came from a single non-European company, and the applicants had no right to work in the UK. Of the remaining 50%, almost all were totally unqualified by CV alone. Of the handful who were qualified, a very quick technical chat on the phone weeded out approximately half again. Then the ones whose salary expectations were out of line with the hiring company needed filtering out too. When you're in a position to actually hire people, you'll get a feel for how time-consuming it can be to hire a single role. When you have 5 to fill, it can become a full-time job. Thirdly, as an immigrant to the UK (welcome!), you'll be well-acquainted with the foibles of the UK immigration system. Candidate A's wife is on a Tier II inter-company transfer visa, and he wants to get a role; does the hiring company need to be on the UK BA list or can you just hire him? What if it's a subsidiary company of a larger company that is on the UK BA list, but it doesn't have its own registration? Is the candidate worth pursuing? What if the candidate applied for ILR four weeks ago? Is it safe to make him a job offer? Fourthly, as you point out, the UK job-board market is not centralised, and it's not a monopoly. Where should you post a Python job? LinkedIn? Monster? CV Library? Twitter? Reed? Jobsite? Facebook? Jobserve? Any number of the scammy Python-specific job-boards? As a direct employer, your media cost is £200 a pop. Filling out each form take half an hour. Each of these systems has a different way to get the candidates and format them. As a recruiter, however, I'm using a multi-poster, and I'm paying ~£10 for the media cost, and I have the time and motivation to post the job to a wide-range of channels, but I also have a pretty good feel for where my return on investment will be. Fifthly: What's a reasonable salary for a Ruby developer in London? What if you need them hired in the next four weeks, urgently? What about a contractor? You've probably got a gut feeling, but look, all the job ads show a range, and not an actual salary. How much would you pay for a superstar? How much for a junior? Are you paying more or less than the competition? Two types of people have access to salary data across the industry: HR people, who aren't allowed to share it, and recruiters, who share it as part of their value-add. There are sixthly, seventhly, eighthly and ninthly here, but who reads long comments anyway? > Russian recruitment industry as an example of smoothly- > functioning market ... through two of the largest > websites So, to summarize, the Russian way is better because there is a duopoly in the job-board market, rather than meaningful competition. I can't tell if you're making a very clever ironic comment on economic centralization and its effects on the Russian economy, or you're just not thinking through the implications of what you write... > that people like you (yes, you) will lose their jobs and > suffer You should consider re-reading the HN guidelines.