Ask HN: How do I contact a recruiter? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I contact a recruiter?

17 pointsmattchue31 comments

I've seen sites like Hired or Triplebyte that are supposed to put you in touch with potential employers, but they seem more geared towards people with a lot of experience. I'm a new developer, mostly focusing on the front-end and I'm trying to get a feeling for where my skill level is at with respect to the rest of the field. I have a little less than two years experience. I've been struggling getting responses or meaningful feedback from the places I have applied to, but I believe a recruiter would be able to give me some insight as to what I need to be a more enticing candidate. What is the best way to find or get in touch with a recruiter?

Thank you!

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> I've been struggling getting responses or meaningful feedback ...

Recruiters are NOT in the feedback business.

They lack brains, time, and professionalism. Plus, they're often afraid they might say the wrong thing, better to say nothing at all.

What to do?

Jump on Linkedin's advanced search feature. Zero-in on interesting profiles in your market of senior managers/executives you can possibly help. Ping them, tell them you're seeking career advice. Ask for a 10-15 minute phone call. You may be may surprised how responsive people are to your request. BTW, stay in touch with those folks with updates. Start building your network.

Cold calling? That's pretty old-school :) My sales background jives with that, though, so I will investigate that option. Thus far, people in the industry that I have been introduced to are extremely helpful, so this definitely sounds like a good approach. It's more so hiring managers at companies I have applied to that I am struggling to get feedback from, but I suppose that's not exactly their job. Thanks for your response!

As a side note, why is it that recruiters seem to be strongly disliked by the HN community? As a new developer, I figured a recruiter would probably be the best person to talk to seeing as they handle a lot of hiring.

> why is it that recruiters seem to be strongly disliked by the HN community?

Chief complaints-- recruiters are spammers, individuals get treated like shark bait, and general lack of tech savvy/business acumen. *Of course, there are exceptions. Those guys can be GOLDEN. Always keep an eye-out for the exceptional ones.

> Cold calling? That's pretty old-school :)

Try using Linkedin Inmail & email first to warm-up the call. Keep in mind-- hiring managers can be crazy busy people. Try a few times to show you're serious. Make sure your message is buttoned-up.

Get an introduction.

Go out and meet as many people as you can. (Meetups, Random drinking nights, etc) Connect to everyone you meet on LinkedIn. Have someone introduce you to the recruiter. Not everyone will do it, but enough people out there will be helpful. The recruiter has many more resumes than jobs. A referral will almost always cut the line. If you can the introduction to the hiring manager, even better.

By recruiter I mean corporate recruiter, not headhunter. No need to get an introduction to a headhunter. If you're a 100% match to a job, they're helpful. Otherwise they're not.

Good luck!

I would absolutely love to attend meetups as Ionic/AngularJS is my core competency (which, as I understand, are big meetup topics), but I am currently seeking a job in Seattle, and I live just far enough away where day tripping on a weeknight doesn't mesh with my work schedule. This sounds like the most direction option for a referral, so taking time away from my current job to attend a meetup may be necessary. The 100% match is a great explanation, I guess if they're getting paid to find people jobs faster money takes a higher priority. Thanks so much for your response!

Attend meetups where you are. You never know where the connection you make tomorrow will have connections. I had a friend in India refer me to a job halfway across the country.

Also... The best networkers give before they ask. Volunteer to help at the meetups you attend.

With JavaScript and AngularJS as my core competencies, I'm a little intimidated to attend the only meetup I'm aware of in my town, which is for PHP. Are devs of all kinds usually welcome at these sorts of events?

Great note about volunteering, that was something I hadn't otherwise considered.

Yes. Go and learn too. And help!

Rather than waste your time with a recruiter, do the following:

1) Figure out exciting companies/teams/individuals 2) Research what they are doing 3) Reach out with a humble email almost like what you wrote, but make it about their company and what you like about them. 4) Rinse, repeat

Thanks for the response! I've been trying to do a bit of this with my cover letter: the way I have it structured allows me to write a portion of it specific to each application, and I've been including the cover letter even when not required. It sounds like you are suggesting I ditch the letter altogether for a more succinct note explaining why I am interested and why I would be a good fit in situations where it is not required. I will definitely give that a shot.

I have found that most technical people won't read a cover letter, HR will generally, but if there is an HR then it isn't an issue. Instead, use a quick 2-3 sentence description why you are applying and why you think you are a good fit.

And in the end it is a numbers game, as sebg pointed out, rinse and repeat.

I highly recommend customizing each note you send with your resume, don't ever use a "form" style. In the past I would even sometimes adjust my resume to highlight specific skills that are relevant, but that usually comes when you have a lot of varied experience and you need to draw peoples attention to specific skills.

Noted. I imagine systems like Lever or proprietary hiring platforms usually appear more with companies that have HR, whereas a few sentences for a position that only accepts application materials via email will go a lot further than a multi-section cover letter. I've been trying to stay away from making my cover letter feel too much like a form, but because I'm shorter than most on experience, I feel like it's important to explain myself a bit in the cover letter, but, if it never gets read, it's kind of a moot point anyway. I've thought about switching up my resume depending on the position, but I don't really have a big collection of tools to showcase quite yet so I'm thinking its current permutation is more or less complete.

Thanks so much for your feedback!

You might try two things, just as ideas -- even just try it on a few and see if it changes responses any. Or send these to people who never got back to you the first time.

1. In your cover letter quickly describe one/two thing(s) that you have done that is relevant and might open a dialog for further discussion. Or peak someones interest at least.

2. Try reformatting your resume to be less about chronological order and more about skill set and tasks you have done. Use bullet points for libraries, API's etc to help bulk it up and make it obvious what you have worked with. Just don't ever lie.

Option #2 is what people with only a little or people with a lot of experience generally use because chronology puts an age on our head. Personally, I have seen that many people immediately calculate my age after seeing that I have been in industry for quite a while. Sometimes it is funny to watch/hear, other times it is just sad as you literally can watch their attitude flip, same goes for when you are young too. It is just human nature to some degree.

I'll definitely play around with this. I hadn't considered trying to turn my cover letter into more of a factsheet, or at least formatting information about technical skill. Really appreciate the specific suggestions you're lending.

I am interested to get into a face-to-face conversation with a potential employer, because I sound significantly older on paper and I'm curious how that'll affect the interaction.

FWIW: I'm an engineer and at my last employer I reviewed hundreds of applications and I'd weigh the cover letter heavily. Someone who's passionate about the job is a huge asset and can easily overcome any minor weaknesses.

I personally 100% agree with you. I always weigh the cover letter or email when I am recruiting. My observation is of lately (last few years), both the last two team leads that worked for me wouldn't read the emails/letters. And now recently I have started my own job search and not a single one of my cover letters has been read unless it went to HR first. I say this because after speaking with the hiring managers it was completely obvious they read my resume but not the cover letter sent with it. Yet the HR people had read them because they would ask me questions directly from my cover letter.

I always was trained and believe that you use the cover letter/email to highlight things your resume glosses over because none of us could describe everything we do in each tech role, or resumes would be 50 pages. So the cover letter helps to fill in the gaps, but sadly it just doesn't seem to get read now. I will say at least not consistently it doesn't get read, as I am sure there are more people like us that appreciate them.

Your "cover letter" can also be a direct email to the hiring manager which mostly guarantees that they'll at least skim it.

Honestly, this is kind of what I'm hoping for. I'm a pretty adept writer, and my passion for something tends to come through in my writing. It is definitely good to hear that someone out there is hunting for a stand-out cover letter. Thanks for the responses!

Well, to answer your question: Post your resume on a job board (dice, ziprecruiter, monster, whatever), make sure the text is machine readable, and your contact info is included. If you do that, the recruiters will come.

But as everyone else has mentioned, you probably don't wanna do that. The best feedback comes directly from hiring managers themselves, not recruiters. Recruiters aren't necessarily incentivized to paint you an accurate picture.

Recruiters aren't going to give you a good idea of where you are. They largely know clusters of keywords (Rails, Ruby, RSpec) from what I gathered. When I last used recruiters I had ~1.5yrs experience and one said "I think you're at a Senior Engineer level..." And I thought "You have no idea what you just said".

Talk to a more senior engineer you know, or go get to know one to get this feed back. They are more qualified.

Thanks for your response. I'm sitting at about 1 1/2-2 years experience right now. How did your job search go around the time you were talking to the recruiter?

If you want a bunch of recruiters to contact you. Put your resume on job boards like monster.com, indeed, careerbuilder, etc. It might not be the best way to get a job (as others have mentioned), but I guarantee recruiters will contact you.

Contact the recruiters directly. This is one: http://arrowsolutionsgroup.com/ that I have found pleasant to work with.

I will definitely contact them. Thanks for the lead!

If it were me I'd do stock fighter.io. patio11 & tptacek are the only recruiters I'd bother with & the game is going to be Nx more interesting than any other recruiter pipeline.

create a linkedin profile, add your skills. The site is well used by recruiters. A few should reach out to you.

My LinkedIn has been updated for quite some time now, and I've yet to hear from anybody. I have a little less than two years experience building SPAs in Angular, and an Associate's degree, so perhaps my profile is not as enticing as others.

Wow. I put 0 work into linkedin. Literally a list of jobs and techs. No description on any of my jobs. I get 5 or so LinkedIn emails per week. No idea what they search for though... a lot mention something like Java or Scala which I have n my resume, but no reason people would not also be looking for Angular or JavaScript...

Hmmm, interesting! Do you have things related to Java or Scala in your 'Skills' section on LinkedIn? I have it listed under my experience, but I didn't have it added to 'Skills', which might have been what it was. Oh well, it's updated now. I think the rest of my profile does a pretty good job of explaining my capabilities. Thanks for the response!

Chase them via linkedin too. If you know their name, great, 2 days after applying (enough time to read your CV) send a request to contact. If you don't know their name, find someone in the company that seems like them and send a tactful message. Most people in a recruiting position should be interested in a conversation and at worst someone to call back in a year's time.

(I work at Hackerrank)

You could give hackerrank.com/jobs a try -- if you qualify, recruiters are required to respond within a few business days.

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