Comment by kafkaesq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kafkaesq | Hacker News Reader

Do such recruiters exist?

My sense at this point is that they basically don't. My experience has been that while there have always been recruiters who were shady and/or flakey, until about 5 years ago a significant enough minority were at least borderline competent at the task they were nominally intended for (to wit: provide ballpark vetting of candidates + finessing the negotiation and relationship, generally). And up until then, they (also) seemed to be in it for the longer haul -- and to at least intuitively understand that referrals and repeat business actually matter, and hence, that one's reputation is extremely important (and not to be jeopardized by flakiness, shabby behavior generally).

That is: I never used to particularly like dealing with them... but there seemed to be about 15% or so of their lot who seemed to be basically honest, and if not particularly gifted at the vetting and relationship-building part, they did manage to create value once in a while. Also, there wasn't nearly the stigma against them (among both companies and developers) like there is now.

By now, though -- it seems this 15% has basically dried up. Now, it's not just fake chumminess (and the considerable slice out of our paychecks), and occasional lies we have to expect in dealing with them -- nowadays, they routinely lie, and routinely blow you off the minute they don't see a commission coming. They blatantly don't care about repeat business with you, or their reputation, at all.

There might be one or two out holdouts from the older, by no means "golden" more more pragmatic, business-oriented days of this profession -- but if there are, I don't see any significant chance that I might run into one.

I sincerely hope that you're wrong, but I suspect that you are not. I would love to be able to outsource the task of searching for new work and to stay focused on the needs of my clients and learning new skills. Perhaps I'm dreaming. :-)

I think that you are saying you need a salesperson, someone who sells your services to potential clients. That is not the same as a recruiter. A recruiter is paid by a company to find people to hire, whereas you pay a salesperson to find people to pay you.

That's an interesting way to put it.

It partly depends on scale. At the individual freelancer level it is hard to think about or justify paying a salesperson to sell your services. It often becomes clear when you have grown your freelance business into a small consultancy with 4 or 5 consultants that you need to keep busy. Now it becomes clear that what you need is a salesperson whom you pay and whose expertise and interests are aligned with yours.

Another thing to consider is mutual commission arrangements with consultants whose skills and services are complementary to your own. I have this arrangement with a friend 10% commission on referred projects.

It hasn't been a great steady source but a project here and there comes my way.

I believe the word you are looking for is agent.

Why can't you seek new employee through projects/social media? Honest question. It seems the last couple of contractors at my current work place have made they mark enough to be noticed and welcomed.

You're not dreaming. Outsourcing sales is nothing new. I've seen a lot of failure with this approach. If the cost is low enough and you're not too picky, it's worth it, but if you'd like Clojure work and someone keeps finding you Scala jobs, you're wasting . At that point, you may as well either bring it in-house or do it yourself.

Maybe some of us are thinking about this wrong. Do you know who actually talks to the hiring manager? 9 times out of 10 it is the Account Executive...the sales person that speaks to the hiring manager not the recruiter. An epiphany for me at least.

Perhaps we're looking at recruiters as a means to get to the goal, when it really should be us reaching out to the Account Executives as they are the most necessary person in that chain. Consider hoe valuable and AE is to the recruiting company, and to us. Interestingly, when I ask a recruiter if I can talk to the Account Executive working the account I am usually politely told "No." The reason I have asked is because it was obvious the recruiter was reading a poorly worded position description to me without understanding the client's actual needs. However, I have only spoken to a handful of AEs and that was usually due to client requirements that required more resources than originally anticipated.

Thanks to all of the recruiters that are also AEs and also technical and are in this thread.

What you need is a partner to handle sales and operational tasks while you do the consulting. From there you can grow. I know plenty 100+ people companies that started similarly. Two people are key, just like in startups. Way too much work for one to deal with.

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