Ask HN: Which recruiters do you like?
Who are the most genuinely helpful recruiters (individuals), who you've interacted with and why? Hoping this might be a good supplement to Who's Hiring.
A better post would be to evaluate companies so that we can bypass the recruiters, make our own educated unbiased decisions, and capture all of our market value.
A recruiter's listings are somewhat important, but not as important as their knowledge of the market. A recruiter could have a weak contingency relationship with all the best companies in town, but if they don't understand something as basic as the market value of each candidate (not to mention a host of other things) they are doing their candidates a disservice.
Good recruiters usually have good listings because hiring companies tend to disengage from recruiting agencies that don't act ethically.
In my experience, companies that (have to) use recruiters tend to have other broken practices as well. For example, the person in charge of recruiting agency relationships - usually a non-technical middle manager - may neither know nor care about sound or ethical results.
Employers rarely post salary ranges and it kept me from wasting time by just telling recruiters I won't interview for any job that pays less than $X. I had 10 phone screens with different companies and an offer within two weeks - without blindly applying for a job that would have paid much less than was acceptable.
She's a close friend, does none of the "bad recruiter" things (spam, annoying, etc.) and does all of the "good recruiter" things (interview prep, helps you negotiate salary, knows all the hiring managers at all the top hedge funds, etc.)
I know HN is a Silicon Valley-centric crowd, but for better or for worse, if you're the kind of engineer that wants to make $350k+ in finance, she'll help make that happen.
Anything else the employee is just going to Google if they don't know it, or it's a personal/goal type question which again preparation is better in my opinion.
I'm usually quite proud of the United States but it was baffling to me how challenging this was. We have a highly qualified person, who has an employer looking to pay them, of which they will have taxes going to the United States, you've already vetted them as being okay, and yet it's still going to take nearly half a year for you to allow them to come work here.
It makes me wonder what the hell people do all everyday at the government.
To answer your question, I don't think anyone, especially a recrutier, can make the process easier.
They handled all payslips from client to myself, superannuation payments, tax, etc on their end. Threw a Christmas party for all of their contractors every year.
The things I enjoyed most was reach-ability, them fighting for a higher hourly rate for me when renewals came up (at one point agreeing to forego their usual fee in my rate increase to make sure I got the entire increase to myself), and overall professionalism.
Outside of large tech focused firms, your typical HR department doesn't have the specialized knowledge to do tech recruiting. Outside resources and hiring "internal" recruiters has become pretty standard in the SF bay area for small to mid sized firms.
* was direct and forthcoming with the kind of work, the stage and culture of the company; * knew exactly what kind of work I did; * understood the field and could answer my questions.
None of the blanket "Oh hi, are you interested in position <has nothing to do with my line of work." crap. One cold call stating directly the kind of work which was actually relevant to me, said exactly what the position was and the relevant details.
Wes Putnam of Putnam Recruiting Group (http://www.putnamrecruiting.com/). A former employee of his got me a great job, and when he left West personally took over the relationship, occasionally checking in to make sure I was still happy. They have a long-standing relationship with said employer of mine, and it seems they operate like that in general.
Spencer Allen of Fulcrum Hire (http://www.fulcrumhire.com/). Introduced to me by a former colleague, Spencer works with high quality and low quantity. The one interview he arranged for me nearly resulted in a job, and would've been a great fit if I had had a bit more experience at the time. He placed a close friend of mine with a company he's been very happy with for over a year, too.
I can heartily recommend both to anyone looking for a technology position in LA.
If, however, they want to meet in person, that's a sign that they're likely to match you with jobs that you have a reasonable chance of getting.
Most of them talk to you to get an idea of cost and benefits so they can try to sell it to their bosses. You never hear back from them because they couldn't get any backing from the people above them. It's not that they weren't sincere, it's that there's a lack of support for their initiative, and the kind of decision they were trying to make required more buy-in than they could get at the time.
I think recruiters end up in this cycle too. The difference is that because you're the product you never hear about any of the actual sales work that goes on.
She was incredibly helpful on both a personal and professional level. She reached out, and up an interview at a top Ecommerce company in NYC.
The company wasn't a great match for what I was looking for at the time (earlier stage, smaller team, building the groundwork) and she introduced me to an (at the time) much smaller company that I had never heard of.
But it was a great fit, and I loved the job for 2.5 years and used her to help grow that team.
She was probably the first person to convince me that not all recruiters are terrible.
He's a tech recruiter now working for improbable.io < amazing startup in London.
Quality recruiters are very in-the-know as to who is hiring, what the going salaries are and are able to help you back-channel and get the scoop on people and companies.
I've had nothing but bad experiences over the last few years so tend to ignore them now, but it'd be good to have a little list of decent ones.
Ruby: Rhys Evans - https://twitter.com/rhysyevans
.NET: Adam Bolton - https://twitter.com/Adam__Bolton
Everything else - https://twitter.com/TeamPrimeLtd
Beyond.com is still spamming me with openings even after I asked them to stop and the one rep I spoke to on the phone barely had a clue what I did and just kept trying to make my job experience fit what she was trying to push.
Some recruiting firms are very specialized and can charge a premium because of it.
We've hired from them, and although I think the signal-to-noise ratio has got worse in the past year, I usually still see one or two interesting people.
Beyond that, it's early days for me on Hired. Just a few views so far (one of which I've already interviewed at).
Same. I'll PM you the main person I've worked with in the past. I've worked with her for basically 15 years. She's probably pretty familiar with Barry; however, I don't generally want to share her with "the general public" (because of her position she's not compensated based on placements and I'd rather not overwhelm her).