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Comment by namelezz | Hacker News Reader

Believe or not. None. They humiliate those who naively think they are genuine. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/429671620671237170/

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Snark aside, I ask because I've met some who seriously seemed to care about what I was interested in, and not to push. One was Barry Kwok (Scribd, Airbnb, Coinbase), and the other was Hong Quan (worked with Thiel Foundation). I'm sure there are some great ones out there.

@ryanmickle:

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).

I would love to get that contact as well if you don't mind. She sounds like she could definitely be of help.

If you think of it as anything other than a business relationship you're in for a rude surprise. Recruiters exist to do one thing: sell you to potential employers. In exchange they receive a cut of your potential salary as a commission. Thus it's both in their best interests to market you and to make sure the company they're selling you to won't fire you too quickly. If you don't have good experiences with them it's probably because they don't know how to sell you.

What do you mean by "naively think they are genuine?" What false assumptions are peopke making about recruiters?

One assumption would be that they have been personally selected after careful research by the recruiter, instead of "sent a mail-merge email after a keyword search on LinkedIn".

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